Sword in the Sky Quake

Kennedy (2007:98) discussed chronological problems with dating the early Islamic conquests.

Immediately after Muhammad’s death, the caliph Abū Bakr sent another expedition to Syria, an expedition that marked the beginning of the real conquest of the country. The sequence of events becomes extremely confused at this point. We have a vast mass of traditions about major battles and minor engagements and about the capture of cities. But the truth is that there is no way of reconciling the different chronological schemes that were elaborated by different Muslim editors, and there are very few external sources to give us any sort of guidance. As the great Muslim historian Tabarī complained when he was collecting the conquest narratives, ‘in fact, one of the most annoying things about this study is the occurrence of such differences as the one I have noted above about the date of this battle. Such differences arose because some of these battles were so close together in time’.³ In the end, we can only be certain that campaigning began in earnest from 632 and that eight years later, in 640, all of Syria was under some sort of Muslim rule with the exception of the coastal city of Caesarea. The account that follows is based on the most generally accepted chronology, but it should be treated with considerable caution.

Footnotes

3. Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2156.

Kennedy (2007:99-111) summarized the early conquests up to the Battle of Yarmouk.

The objective of these early expeditions was to assert the control of Medina over the Arab tribes on the fringes of the settled land. On the western borders of the fertile land of Iraq and along the edges of the Nile valley in Egypt, the border between the desert and the sown is a comparatively firm line between one ecological zone and another. In Syria the distinction is much less clear cut. Moving east from the well-watered Mediterranean coast, the landscape becomes gradually more arid. At the line of the 200mm isohyet (the line beyond which there is less than 200mm annual average rainfall) settled agriculture is impossible without oasis irrigation. West of the line is a zone that can be used as pasture by the Bedouin or by dry farming. Many Bedouin have also been parttime farmers, cultivating small fields of grain as well as pasturing their animals. The policy of securing the allegiance of the Syrian Bedouin to Islam led the Muslims inexorably into conflict with the Byzantine imperial authorities and their Arab allies. It was a very conscious and deliberate policy move by the caliph Abū Bakr and the rest of the Muslim leadership: all nomad Arabs were to pledge their allegiance to the Muslim state and those who did not do it voluntarily were to be coerced.

Abū Bakr is said to have dispatched four small armies to operate independently in the frontier zones to the east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan valley, attaching banners to the spears of the leaders as a sign of authority. His choice of commanders was to be very important in the history of the early Islamic state. One of them was Yazīd, the son of Abū Sufyān, who took with him his brother, Mu'āwiya. As we have seen, the family already had properties in Syria and knew the area well. Yazīd was to be one of the leading Muslim commanders in the conquest, and this enabled him and his brother to establish the power of their family in Syria. Yazīd died of the plague before the conquests were finally complete, but his brother Mu'cāwiya inherited his role. The power base he built up in Syria during and immediately after the conquests enabled him to establish himself as the first Umayyad caliph in 661 and rule the entire Muslim world from Damascus.

Another appointment with long-term consequences was that of Amr b. al-Ās, shrewd and cunning rather than a great warrior, the wily Odysseus of the early Islamic armies. His background as a merchant trading in Gaza had recommended him to the Prophet, who had chosen him to collect taxes from the tribes on the road from Medina to Syria. He chose to lead his men, said to have been about three thousand in number, many from Mecca and Medina,⁴ to the area with which he was already familiar. He travelled along the Red Sea coast as far as the head of the Gulf of Aqaba then turned west, camping with his men in the great sandy depression between Jordan and Israel known as the Wadi Araba. From there they climbed up the escarpment to the plateau of the Negev before heading for the sea at Gaza. Here Amr began negotiations with the local military commander, probably demanding money, and there is a tradition that the Byzantine governor attempted to capture or murder him as they were parleying. Finally, on 4 February 634,⁵ there was a battle in which Amr and his men defeated the small Byzantine army at a village called Dāthin, near Gaza, and killed its commander. The Arab victory made an immediate impression. News travelled fast, and we are told that a Jewish community near Caesarea openly rejoiced at the death of a Byzantine official and the humiliation of the imperial authority.⁶

The Muslim victory at Dāthin may have been on a fairly small scale but it alerted the Byzantine authorities to the new threat from the south. Overall command lay with the emperor Heraclius. He was around 60 years old at this time and was certainly no pampered denizen of the vast and luxurious palaces of Constantinople; rather, he was a man with a vast amount of military experience, well used to the hardships of campaign. He was also at the height of his powers and, even as the earliest Muslim raids on Syria began, had just celebrated a major triumph with the return of the True Cross to Jerusalem. Heraclius never led his armies against the Muslims in person (but neither did the Muslim caliphs lead the armies of Islam) but he remained behind the lines in Syria, in Homs or Antioch, directing operations, appointing generals and issuing instructions. The portrayal of Heraclius in the Arabic sources is very interesting.⁷ He is renowned for his shrewdness and wisdom and his ability to foresee the future. In one story, Abū Sufyān, the Meccan aristocrat, tells how he saw Heraclius when he was visiting Syria with a group of merchants. ‘We arrived there when Heraclius had just defeated the Persians and driven them out of his territory recapturing from them the great cross, which the Persians had stolen . . . Heraclius then left Homs, which was his headquarters and walked on foot . . . in order to pray in the Holy City. Carpets were spread for him and aromatic herbs were thrown on the carpets. When he reached Jerusalem, Heraclius prayed together with the Byzantine nobles.’⁸ He is shown here victorious but modest and pious.

In a number of anecdotes, Heraclius is said to have recognized the greatness of Muhammad and would have become a Muslim if the Byzantine nobles had not been so hostile to the idea. To the Arabs, he was the key, symbolic leader of the Byzantine resistance to the armies of Islam, the ancient enemy. He is shown to be proud and autocratic but he also goes through moments when he alone of his advisers and courtiers can see how strong the Muslims are and recognizes that they are bound to prevail. The image the Arab sources give of Heraclius is not entirely unsympathetic: he is a tragic figure whose failure to embrace Islam meant that his career ended in humiliation and failure

Up to this point, the Muslim attacks on Syria had amounted to little more than pinpricks along the frontier. The next phase of the conquest began with the arrival of Khālid b. al-Walīd and his men after the forced march across the desert from Iraq, where he had been raiding along the desert frontier. Khālid’s march across the Syrian desert, with perhaps five hundred of his troops, has been enshrined in history and legend:⁹ Arab sources marvelled at his endurance; modern scholars have seen him as a master of strategy.¹⁰ The story is often told of how he crossed six waterless days of desert by making some of his camels drink more than their fill, binding their jaws so that they could not chew their cud, then slaughtering them one by one so his men could drink the water from their stomachs. At another stage, when Khālid and his men were stumbling along, suffering from extreme thirst, he asked one of his men, Rāfi, who had been in the area before, whether he had any idea about water. Rāfi said that there was water near at hand: ‘Go on and look for two hummocks which look like two women’s breasts and then go to them.’ When they arrived he told them to search for a thorn bush like a man’s buttocks. They scrabbled around and found a root but no sign of a tree, but Rāfi told them that this was the place and they should dig there. Soon they uncovered damp ground and small quantities of sweet water. Rāfi, greatly relieved by the discovery, said to Khālid, ‘O Commander, by God, I have not come to this waterhole for thirty years. I have only been once before when I was a boy with my father.¹¹ So, the account goes on, they prepared themselves and attacked the enemy, who could not believe that any army could cross the desert to them.

The trouble is that the accounts of this expedition, though vivid, are very confused. We can be certain that Khālid did cross the desert from Iraq to Syria some time in the spring or early summer of 634, that it was a memorable feat of military endurance and that his arrival in Syria was an important ingredient of the success of Muslim arms there. The problem is that some sources suggest that he went on the long southern route by Dūmat al-Jandal, while others are equally certain that he made the journey via Palmyra to the north. There are good arguments on each side and simply no knowing which version is correct.

The Arabic narratives give pride of place to Khālid as the commander who provided the most effective leadership, even after Umar had dismissed him from supreme command and replaced him with Abū Ubayda. It was Khālid who united the different Muslim armies on his arrival, it was Khālid who began the conquest of Damascus by opening the East Gate, and it was Khālid who devised the tactics that won the battle of Yarmūk. He then went on to take a leading role in the conquest of Homs and Chalkis (Ar. Qinnasrīn). His reputation as a great general has lasted through the generations and streets are named after him all over the Arab world. Despite his undoubted achievements, however, his reputation in the sources is mixed. He came from one of the most aristocratic families in Mecca and like many of people of his class he had been deeply suspicious of Muhammad with his preaching of social justice and simple monotheism. He had not been one of the early converts to Islam; indeed, he had been among the enemies of the Prophet, actually fighting against him at the battle of Uhud, but he converted to Islam soon after. Once converted he become staunchly Muslim and began to devote all his considerable military talents to the support of the new Muslim state. On Muhammad’s orders, he destroyed one of the most famous of the old idols, the image of the goddess al-Uzza at Nakhla near Mecca. He enjoyed the confidence of the first caliph Abū Bakr and was entrusted with commanding the armies against the rebel Arab tribes in the ridda wars. He won great victories but also gained a reputation for ruthless and sometimes over-hasty reactions: on one occasion he massacred a whole group of Muslims by mistake and compounded the offence by immediately marrying the widow of one of his victims.¹² His later fame seems to have rankled with some early Muslims, notably the caliph Umar, who strongly believed that early commitment to Islam was essential for anyone who wished to be a leader, that late conversion did not suffice, and that a little humility would not go amiss. A story told of Khālid attempts to explain his life and rehabilitate him. In a dialogue with the Armenian general Jurjah immediately before the battle of Yarmūk, Khālid is made to justify his career and explain why he was popularly called the ‘Sword of God’.

God sent us his Prophet, who summoned us, but we avoided him and kept well away from him. Then some of us believed him and followed him, whereas others distanced themselves from him and called him a liar. I was among those who called him a liar, shunned him and fought him. Then God gripped our hearts and our forelocks, guiding us to him so that he followed him. The Prophet said to me ‘You are a sword among the swords of God which God has drawn against the polytheists’, and he prayed for victory for me. Thus I was named the Sword of God because I am now the most hostile of Muslims to the polytheists.

Khālid had been instructed by Abū Bakr to march as quickly as possible to aid the conquest of Syria, which had now reached a critical state. On Easter Day, 634 (24 April), he and his forces suddenly appeared and fell upon the Ghassānid Christian allies of the Byzantines, who were celebrating the festival amid the lush grass and spring flowers of the Meadow of Rāhit just north of Damascus.¹³ He then turned south to join up with the other Muslim commanders already operating in Syria, who now seem to have been united under his command to face the challenge posed by the Byzantine imperial armies. They began with an attack on the city of Bostra.¹⁴

Bostra lies just north of the modern Syrian-Jordanian border in a flat but fertile landscape strewn with the black basalt boulders characteristic of much of the area. To the north of the city, and clearly visible from its walls, rise the volcanic hills of the Hawrān. Though the mountains are rugged, if not especially high, they contain, like many volcanic areas, patches of extremely fertile soil. The hinterland of Bostra was the closest area to Arabia which could supply the wheat, oil and wine the Bedouin desired. The city had become rich as a trading entrepôt, and it was widely believed that the Prophet himself had visited it in his youth and had been instructed in the mysteries of the Christian faith there by the monk Bahira. Bostra was also a political centre. When the Roman emperor Trajan had annexed the Nabataean kingdom in 106 and turned it into the Roman province of Arabia, he had moved the capital from distant Petra in the south to the more accessible (accessible from Rome, that is) city of Bostra. Built of tough, unyielding black basalt, the ruins of the ancient city of Bostra are among the most impressive in the Near East. The huge Roman theatre there still survives almost intact, forming the centre of a later medieval fortress. Columns and paving stones indicate the routes of ancient streets, and there are the remains of baths and a number of important Christian churches, including a magnificent round cathedral.

It is not clear whether the Byzantines had re-established an imperial presence in the city after the departure of the Sasanians. The city seems to have put up little resistance, and towards the end of May 634 it made peace with the Muslims, the citizens agreeing to pay an annual tax. It was the first major Syrian city to be taken by the invaders.

After the surrender of Bostra, the Muslim force marched west to meet up with Amr b. al-Ās. Amr, after his first victory at Dāthin, was now confronted by a large Byzantine force which had gathered south-west of Jerusalem on the road to Gaza. Khālid and the others crossed the Jordan valley without apparently encountering any resistance and met up with Amr and his men. The combined Muslim army is said in one source to have been about twenty thousand strong and was under the command of Amr, who is the only Arab general named in the sources, where his image is consistently one of shrewdness and intelligence. He is described spying out the enemy camp in person or sending agents to do so, while the Byzantine general writes to him as someone equal to himself in cunning.¹⁵ The armies met at a place the Muslim authors called Ajnādayn, and a major battle developed. We have no detailed information about the nature of the conflict but it is clear that the Byzantines were defeated and that the remnants of their army withdrew to Jerusalem and other fortified sites. News of the victory of the Muslims spread far and wide, and it seems to be the battle referred to in the Frankish chronicle of Fredegar composed some twenty years later in France. He includes the interesting, and possibly true, detail that ‘the Saracens’ (the Muslims) offered to sell back to Heraclius the booty they had just taken from his defeated men but that the emperor refused to pay for any of these stolen goods.¹⁶

The contemporary Armenian chronicler Sebeos tells how the Byzantine forces were ordered by the emperor to remain on the defensive.¹⁷ Instead, they left their camps by the river and took refuge in the city of Pella, on the east bank of the river. Pella was a prosperous city in the fertile lands of the Jordan valley and an easily defended acropolis rose above the classical streets and porticoes on the valley floor. Here they were attacked again. As usual, the course of battle is not entirely clear but some features seem to have been remembered. The Byzantine troops had crossed the Jordan valley from Scythopolis on the west bank and, in order to delay the pursuing Muslims, had cut some of the irrigation ditches, allowing the water to spill out and the flat lands of the valley bottom to become an ocean of mud.¹⁸ The Muslims charged on, not knowing what the Byzantines had done, and many of their horses became stuck in the mire, ‘but then God delivered them’. In the end, it was the Byzantines who were trapped in the mire and many were massacred.

The remnants of the Byzantine forces now withdrew to Damascus. The Muslims pursued them. The siege of Damascus became one of the set pieces of the conquest of Syria. To a remarkable extent we can retrace the progress of the siege because of the detailed descriptions of the sources and the preservation of the fabric of the city. The walls of old Damascus, Roman or earlier in origin and continuously restored since, are still largely intact. Only at the western end where the city expanded in Ottoman times is the old circuit breached. All except one of the ancient gates survive and they bear the same names today as they do in the early Arabic sources: it is an astonishing example of the continuity of urban geography and architecture through almost fourteen centuries. We are told that Khālid b. al-Walīd was stationed at the East Gate (Bāb Sharqī), Amr b. al-Ās at St Thomas’s Gate (Bāb Tūma), Abū Ubayda at the now demolished Jābiya Gate on the west side and Yazīd b. Abī Sufyān at the Little Gate and Kaysān Gate on the south side.

The Muslims also took the precaution of stationing a force on the road north of Damascus. This proved a wise move because Heraclius, who is said to have been in Homs at this time, sent a force of cavalry to try to relieve the siege but they were intercepted and never made it.¹⁹ Just how long the siege lasted is not clear. Disconcertingly, the Arabic sources give widely differing estimates, anything from four to fourteen months. The Muslims do not seem to have had any siege engines, or any equipment more sophisticated than ropes and ladders, and even the ladders had to be borrowed from a neighbouring monastery.²⁰ It seems that all the attackers could do against the substantial Roman walls of the city was to mount a blockade and hope that famine, boredom or internal disputes would cause the defenders to give up. When it became clear that no relieving force was going to appear, the defenders of the city began to despair. According to one account, the end came when a child was born to the patrikios (Byzantine commander) in charge and he allowed his men to relax and eat and drink to celebrate. Khālid b. al-Walīd, who was always on the lookout for opportunities and knew exactly what was going on in the city, decided to take advantage. He had ropes and ladders with him. Some of his men approached the gate using inflated animal skins to cross the moat. They threw their ropes around the battlements and hauled themselves up, bringing the ropes up after them so that they would not be seen. Then, at a given signal, with the cry of ‘Allhu akbar’ (God is great) they rushed the gate, killing the gatekeepers and anyone else who resisted.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the town, the Damascenes had begun opening negotiations for a peaceful surrender and Muslim troops began to enter the city from the west. The two groups, Khālid’s men from the east and the others from the west, met in the city centre in the old markets and began to negotiate. Terms were made, leaving the inhabitants in peace in exchange for tribute. Properties belonging to the imperial fisc were confiscated for the benefit of all Muslims, becoming part of the fay (the communal wealth of the Muslim community).²¹ As usual there was booty to be divided up and the commanders were careful to keep a share for those who had been stationed on the road north, for though they had played no direct part in the siege their presence had contributed to the victory and they had earned their booty. The complicated stories which evolved of the taking of Damascus, from two different ends in two different ways, may be an attempt to solve the thorny issue of whether the city was taken by force or by treaty (see above, pp. 18-20). In this case the authorities seem to have tried to reach a compromise that allowed it to be neither one thing nor the other.

The accounts of the fall of Damascus also reflect divided loyalties among the population. The city was a centre of imperial power with a military governor appointed by the emperor himself, but many if not most of the inhabitants were Christian Arabs. It is evident that many of them had split allegiances and that they felt closer to the Arabs outside the walls than they did to the Greeks and Armenians who composed a large part of the garrison. Whatever the explanation, it is clear that Damascus was spared the horrors of bombardment and sack. In the century that followed, the city became the capital of the whole Muslim world and entered what came to be its golden age.

Around the time of the fall of Damascus, and as usual the chronology is very uncertain here, the elderly Abū Bakr, the successor of Muhammad and first caliph of Islam, died in Medina. We know that his death occurred in July 634. What is less clear is what stage this was in the story of the conquest, but there are a number of reports that news reached the Muslim armies in Syria during the course of the siege. The new caliph was the austere and formidable Umar, who is portrayed in many accounts as the mastermind behind the conquests. There was no opposition to his succession among the forces in Syria but the new caliph had clear ideas about command. As we have seen, Umar disliked Khālid b. al-Walīd intensely. The fact that Khālid had fought so brilliantly for the Muslim cause against the ridda in eastern Arabia and again in Iraq and Syria did little to improve his standing with the new caliph. He now abruptly ordered that Khālid be removed from command and return to Medina. In one account, Abū Ubayda, now appointed as supreme commander in Khālid’s place, was ordered to demand that Khālid should confess to being a liar. If he refused, as he was bound to do, his turban should be pulled off his head and half his property confiscated. Faced with this ultimatum the great general asked for time to consult, not as might be imagined with his friends or subordinates, but with his sister. She was clear that Umar hated her brother and if he admitted to being a liar he would be removed all the same. There was no point in trying to placate the caliph by admitting to crimes he did not believe he had committed.

In an interesting reflection on the power of the caliph and the unity of the Muslims, Khālid felt that he had no choice but to go to Medina. A Byzantine general in that position might well have raised a rebellion and called on his troops to support him in a bid for the throne. By contrast, the greatest general of the Muslim army meekly accepted dismissal and humiliation. When he arrived at Medina, Umar pursued his vendetta. Whenever he met Khālid he would taunt him: ‘Khālid, take the property of the Muslims out from under your arse!’, to which Khālid would meekly reply that he did not have any of the ‘Muslims’ property’. In the end a settlement was reached, with Khālid paying over most of his fortune so that he was left only with military equipment (cuddat) and slaves (raqīq). He was soon back in Syria, playing a major role in the battle of the Yarmūk and the subsequent conquests of Homs and Chalkis, where he finally settled. In the end Umar is said to have recognized that he had maligned the ‘Sword of God’ and that Abū Bakr, who supported Khālid, had been a better judge of men.²² The great general died peacefully in 642, a brilliant, ruthless military commander, but one with whom the more pious Muslims could never feel entirely comfortable.

Meanwhile, the emperor Heraclius was preparing one more major effort to drive the Muslim invaders out of Syria. After the fall of Damascus he had retreated to Antioch in the north of Syria, the traditional capital of the entire area. Here he set about directing what was to prove his last campaign. The Byzantines assembled all the troops they could recruit. Arab sources give very large numbers, over 100,000,²³ but comparisons with other Byzantine armies of the period make it clear that this is a huge exaggeration, with numbers between 15,000 and 20,000 being more probable. The armies comprised a very diverse collection of men. There were Byzantine Greeks under the command of Theodore Trithurios, a large contingent of Armenians under Jurjah and the local Christian Arabs led by the king of the Ghassānids, traditional allies of the Byzantines, Jabala b. Ayham. The overall commander was an Armenian called Vahān. The different contingents would have spoken different languages - Greek, Armenian and Arabic - and they may have found it difficult to communicate with each other. There were also profound religious and cultural differences. The Greeks and Armenians would have come from settled, probably rural village backgrounds and were used to living and fighting in upland, mountain terrain. The Arabs, on the other hand, were nomads, used to the mobile traditions of desert warfare. All the troops came from Christian backgrounds but both Armenians and Christian Arabs were regarded as heretics by the orthodox Byzantines. How far these divisions really affected the performance of the Byzantine army is not clear, but the sources are awash with rumours of disaffection, of Jurjah converting to Islam at the hand of Khālid b. al-Walīd on the eve of battle and of the Christian Arabs going over to the Muslim side in the course of battle. The Arab sources also talk of the Byzantine soldiers being chained together so that they could not flee, but this is a story found in many accounts of the conquests, used to contrast the free and motivated Muslims with the serf-like soldiers of their enemies: there is no real evidence for such an impractical idea being put into effect, though it may be a distant reflection of the practice of infantry locking shields together to make a protective wall.²⁴

The Byzantine forces probably assembled in Homs and marched south through the Biqa valley, past Baaalbak with its great pagan temples - now almost empty of worshippers but still magnificent in their decay - and so to Damascus. In anticipation of the arrival of this force, the Arabs seem to have withdrawn from the city, allowing Byzantine forces to reoccupy it unopposed. We have no information on how they found the town but there are reports of tension between the Byzantine generals demanding supplies for their men, as was the usual Byzantine practice, and the local financial administrator, the Arab Mansūr, who maintained that the city did not have sufficient resources to feed them. Certainly the army did not use Damascus as a base but moved on south.

The Byzantine army assembled at Jābiya in the Golan Heights. This was the traditional summer pasture of the Ghassānids. According to the most probable reconstruction, it was now August 636 and the Golan would have provided much-needed food, water and pasture for the army. Meanwhile the Muslim forces prepared to oppose the Byzantines and hold on to their newly won gains. Their army also assembled in the Golan area, to the south-east of the Byzantines. The different Muslim armies had now come together under the command of Abū Ubayda, or possibly Khālid b. al-Walīd. Yazīd b. Abī Sufyān and Amr b. al-Ās both led contingents. According to Muslim sources, the Arab army numbered about 24,000. In view of the downward revision of the numbers on the Byzantine side, it is possible that the two armies were not very different in size.

The battle that ensued between the Christian and Muslim armies is generally known as the battle of Yarmūk and conventionally dated to the summer of 636.²⁵ The battle of Yarmūk is, along with the battle of Qādisiya in Iraq, one of the major conflicts that has come to symbolize the Muslim victories in the Fertile Crescent. As with Qādisiya, the Arab accounts are extensive and confused and it is difficult to be clear about exactly what happened. There is no contemporary or reliable account from the Byzantine point of view. Both sides are said by the Muslim sources to have been inspired by religious zeal. As the Byzantines remained in their fortified camp, preparing for battle, ‘the priests, deacons and monks urged them on lamenting the fate of Christianity²⁶ On the other side, Khālid b. al-Walīd addressed his men: ‘This is one of God’s battles. There should be neither pride nor wrongdoing in it. Strive sincerely, seeking God in your work, for this day also has what lies beyond it [i.e. the afterlife]’, and he went on to urge them to stick together and fight in unison.²⁷

The River Yarmūk, a perennial watercourse, flows down from the plateau of the Hawrān to the Jordan valley, just south of the Sea of Galilee. In the course of its descent into the rift valley, it has gouged out a steep gorge, with high cliffs on each side. On the north side, it is joined by a number of smaller valleys, notably the Wadi al-Ruqqād. These steep ravines were to define the course of the battle and may have proved disastrous to the defeated when they attempted to flee from the scene. The actual site of the battle, between the Yarmūk gorge in the south and the Golan in the north, is a land of rolling, rocky hills, dotted with villages and farms. It was, in fact, good open country for cavalry manoeuvres, but it also provided some cover from rocks or trees for men to hide or set up an ambush. Since 1948 this site has been politically very sensitive, lying as it does on the border between Syria (north of the river), Jordan (south of the river) and the Israeli-occupied Golan. This has made access to the battlefield very difficult for historians. It was not always thus, however. Before the First World War, when the entire area was part of the Ottoman Empire, the battlefield was visited by the great Italian orientalist Leone Caetani, Prince of Sermoneta. He used his first-hand observations and knowledge of the Arabic sources to produce a geographical setting for the battle, which has formed the basis of the most plausible modern accounts.²⁸

The battle of Yarmūk was a series of conflicts that probably lasted more than a month and culminated in a major battle towards the end of August.²⁹ The first encounters took place in the Jābiya region, after which the Muslims retreated east towards Darca. There followed a period of waiting and skirmishing as the Byzantines prepared their army and tried to sow divisions in the Muslim ranks. It seems that the real fighting began when the Muslims feigned a retreat from their positions and lured elements of the Byzantine army into rough terrain, where they were ambushed. During the Muslim counter-attack, the Byzantine cavalry became separated from the infantry, enabling the Muslim cavalry to inflict great slaughter on the foot soldiers while the cavalry were making their way through the Muslim ranks.³⁰ Khālid b. al-Walīd is said to have organized the Muslim cavalry in a ‘battle order which the Arabs had not used before’. He divided the cavalry into small squadrons (kards), between thirty-six and forty in number, apparently so that they would appear more numerous in the eyes of the enemy.³¹ The Byzantines may also have been unsettled by a dust storm. The main Byzantine force was now driven west and hemmed in between the rugged valleys of the Wadi’l-Ruqqād and Wadi’l 'Allān, with the cliffs of the Yarmūk gorge behind them. Any prospect of retreat to the west was destroyed when Khālid b. al-Walīd took the old Roman bridge across the Wadi al-Ruqqād, and Muslim forces went on to storm the Byzantine camp at Yāqūsa on the road to the Sea of Galilee. As the enemy pressed home their advantage, the Byzantine forces were further demoralized by rumours that the Christian Arabs had defected to the Muslims. Morale broke and the Byzantine forces lost all cohesion. There are reports of exhausted and dejected soldiers sitting down, wrapped in their mantles, lamenting the fact that they had not been able to defend Christianity and waiting for death.³² Others were driven down the cliffs into the wadis. The Muslims took very few prisoners.

Footnotes

4 Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, p. 119.

5 For this chronology, based on The Chronicle of 724 see Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, p. 126; Balādhurī, Futūh, p. 109.

6 ‘Doctrina Jacobi Nuper Baptizati’, ed. with French trans. V. Déroche in Travaux et Mémoires (Collège de France, Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance) 11 (1991): 47-273, cap. V, 16 (pp. 208-9).

7 See N. M. El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge, MA, 2004), pp. 39-54.

8 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 1561-2.

9 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2108-25, Balādhurī, Futūh, pp. 110-12; Ibn Ath cam al-Kūfī, Kitab al-Futūh , ed. S. A. Bukhari, 7 vols. (Hyderabad, 1974), vol. I, pp. 132-42; al-Ya‘qūbī, Ta’rīkh, ed. M. Houtsma, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1883), vol. II, pp. 133-4.

10 See Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, pp. 119-27 for the best discussion.
11 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2113-14.

12 P. Crone, ‘Khālid b. al-Walīd’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn.

13 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2097, 2114-15; Balādhurī, Futūh, p. 112.

14 This account is based on the chronology worked out by Ibn Ishāq and al-Wāqidi, two important eighth-century authorities, and described in Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, pp. 128-34. For alternative chronologies, see ibid., pp. 134-9 (Sayf b. Umar) and pp. 139-420.

15 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2398-401.

16 Fredegar, The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar with its Continuations, trans. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (London, 1960), p. 55.

17 Sebeos, The Armenian History, trans. R. W. Thomson, with notes by J. Howard-Johnston and T. Greenwood, 2 vols. (Liverpool, 1999), I, p. 97.

18 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2145-6, 2157.

19 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2152.

20 Balādhurī, Futūh, p. 121.

21 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2154.

22 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2393.

23 See, for example, Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2099.

24 W. E. Kaegi, Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests (Cambridge, 1992), p. 127.

25 Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, p. 133. Kaegi, Byzantium, p. 121, has the climax of the battle on 20 August without citing any sources.

26 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2091.

27 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, pp. 2091-2.

28 See L. Caetani, Annali dell’Islam (Milan, 1905-26), III, pp. 491-613, and the discussion in Kaegi, Byzantium, pp. 122-3, esp. n. 23.

29 The account that follows is based on Kaegi, Byzantium, pp. 119-22 and the map on p. 113.

30 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2099.

31 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2092.

32 Tabarī, Ta’rīkh, I, p. 2100.