Download PDF | David Nicolle - The Great Islamic Conquests AD 632-750-Osprey Publishing (2009).
100 Pages
Born in 1944, DAVID NICOLLE worked in the BBC’s Arabic service for a number of years before gaining an MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and a doctorate from Edinburgh University.
He has written numerous books and articles on medieval and Islamic warfare, and has been
a prolific author of Osprey titles for many years.
PROFESSOR ROBERT O'NEILL, AO D.PHIL. (Oxon), Hon D.
Litt. (ANU), FASSA, Fr Hist S,
is the Series Editor of the Essential Histories. His wealth of knowledge and expertise shapes the series content and provides up-to-theminute research and theory. Born in 1936 an Australian citizen, he served in the Australian army (1955-68) and has held a number of eminent positions in history circles, including the Chichele Professorship of the History
of War at All Souls College, University of Oxford, 1987-2001, and the Chairmanship of the Board of the Imperial War Museum and the Council
of the International Institute
for Strategic Studies, London.
He is the author of many books including works on the German Army and the Nazi party, and the Korean and Vietnam wars. Now based in Australia on his retirement from Oxford, he is the Chairman of the Council
of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, from 1999 to 2005S. Professor O'Neill is currently
the Planning Director of the United States Studies Centre
at the University of Sydney.
Introduction
The early Islamic conquests rank amongst the most remarkable feats of arms in world history, being carried out by small and indeed often tiny armies, which were nevertheless some of the most successful ever seen. Within a century, the forces of
a new religion had inspired and conquered the entire Arabian peninsula, destroying one empire and humbling another. Beyond Arabia, these armies ranged across North Africa and into Europe, crossing the Pyrenees and reaching into France. From the ancient Roman province of Iberia to the heart of the Persian empires in Iran, the conquering Islamic armies irrevocably altered the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean worlds
in a remarkably short period of time.
This successful conquest and subsequent conversion of the Middle East and beyond has inevitably resulted in a variety of myths and prejudices throughout the ages. It is important
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to note that the conversion of the peoples
of what are now the heartlands of the Islamic world was a largely peaceful process and was separate from the Arabs’ military conquest
of these same areas. Indeed, the conversion largely resulted from the example set
by the early Muslim Arabs themselves
and the activities of preachers, missionaries and merchants. A desire for material, cultural and political advantage under the new regime also played a part. This is nevertheless rarely understood by non-Islamic societies, especially in the Western world, where the public often regards Islam as a religion spread by force.
Muslim pilgrims praying towards and walking around
the Ka'ba in Mecca. These were among the primary actions required during their Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca. The numbers of people making the Hajj each year has increased at a relatively steady rate since Muhammad's lifetime, and can now be counted in the millions
In fact, forcible conversion is specifically banned by Islamic Shari’a or religious law.
Here it should also be noted that Muslims believe that the faith of Islam was the first of all religions rather than one of the last to emerge. It was, according to the Islamic interpretation of the history of religion, the faith of Adam and Eve. This, in modern terms, means that Muslims regard Islam as the natural din or religion of mankind and indeed, that of a newborn child before he or she comes under the influence of parents and society. For Muslims therefore, the achievement of the Prophet Muhammad was to bring his followers ‘back to Islam’.
In addition to adding a new civilisation and a very vigorous new world power to the existing cultures of the early medieval period, the Great Islamic Conquests, as they are usually known, had a number of other profound impacts. If any major event could be said to have brought the ancient world to an end, it was this sequence of wide-ranging military campaigns. Nevertheless Graeco-Roman civilisation and knowledge did not disappear. In fact no other medieval culture did more than the early Muslims to preserve Graeco-Roman sciences, literature and other forms of knowledge. Their descendants, along with more recent converts to Islam, would then add massively to this store of knowledge, heralding a ‘Golden Age’ within the ever-increasing realm of Islamic territory. Throughout this period the Islamic world also became the economic powerhouse of the early medieval world, drawing Europe, much of Africa and virtually all of Asia into a new trading network which was for several hundred years centred upon Baghdad. For some centuries, Baghdad was also the biggest city in the world.
Many historians still wrestle with the question of just how the Muslim armies of the first century and a half of Islamic history managed to take control of so much
territory, particularly when it was seized from seemingly powerful and well-entrenched rivals. Many Muslim scholars have also found this difficult to answer, and as a result the concept of ‘The Way Prepared’ came into vogue. This, in essence, suggested that it was God's will that the great imperial powers of the 7th century weakened themselves by fighting one another, so making it possible for supposedly simple and even primitive early Islamic forces to defeat them only a few years later. Such an interpretation was further refined in an effort to explain why the Sassanian Empire of Iran, whose people were largely Zoroastrian in religion, was totally defeated whereas the Rumi (Roman) Byzantines, who were Christians, lost huge swathes of territory yet survived until the end of the medieval period. It was suggested that this was because Zoroastrians were not initially regarded as a ‘People of the Book,’ meaning that they were not adherents of a ‘true’ albeit ‘corrupted’ religion. Christians, on the other hand, were, like the Jews, a ‘People of the Book’ who shared the same God as Muslims. This commonality supposedly allowed the Byzantine Empire to survive for several centuries — despite the Arab armies’ continued attacks — until the final collapse of Constantinople in 1453. However, theological accounts do little justice to the huge internal debates, power struggles, military triumphs and civil war that characterised much of the early development of Islam and the greater Islamic empire. Indeed, these divisions and how they were ultimately overcome are as much a part of the story as are the huge swathes of territory that were conquered. Nevertheless, however one seeks to explain these early Islamic conquests, they remain extraordinary and truly heroic. The following account will attempt to shed light on the rise of the new faith, the men who fought in its great campaigns, and the world upon which it sprung.
Pre-Islamic Arabia
Arabia was the fountainhead of the Semitic peoples who, throughout recorded history, spread northwards through the Arabian peninsula into what is known as the Fertile Crescent and — to a lesser degree — westward into Africa. Here they and their descendants, speaking a variety of related Semitic languages, developed various ancient civilisations. From the 6th century BC, however, it seemed that Semitic energies were temporarily exhausted and other peoples came to dominate the region. Empires rose and fell, but the Fertile Crescent was always ruled by non-Semitic peoples, including Persians from the east and Greeks or Romans from the west.
By the lst century AD the region was almost entirely under the control of two such empires. The eastern half formed part of the Parthian Empire, centred upon modern-day Iran, but with its economic and cultural heartland in Semitic Iraq, while the western
half had long been incorporated into a Graeco-Roman world now represented by the Roman Empire. This, although its main centres were in Italy and Greece, had a
third economic, cultural and more recently religious powerhouse in Semitic Syria — or Bilad al-Sham as it came to be known by Arabic speakers — which then included much of present-day Syria plus Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and part of southern Turkey. Further south, Nubia, the Sudan and Ethiopia also lay within the sphere of influence of the Late Roman or Byzantine Empire.
Two late Sassanian or early Islamic helmets found in the ruins of Nineveh, next to what became the medieval city of Mosul in northern Iraq. They almost certainly date from the early years of the 7th century when Nineveh saw fighting, first between Sassanians and Byzantines and
then a few years later between Sassanians and Muslim Arabs. (British Museum, inv. 22495 and 22497, London, UK; David Nicolle photographs)
A millennium of Graeco-Roman influence had left a profound imprint upon Syria, Egypt, Turkey and the many other lands which subsequently became Muslim or Arabic-speaking. Graeco-Roman civilisation had also deeply influenced neighbouring Iran and the Arabian peninsula despite the fact that, apart from some disastrous Roman attempts at conquest, Arabia had never been ruled by Alexander the Great, his Hellenistic Greek successors, or the Romans. Instead it was trade, culture, art and religion that had drawn Arabia into the orbit of Graeco-Roman civilisation — not Rome’s legions.
A parallel process could be seen in Arabia’s relationship with its other mighty neighbour, Iran. Here the Parthian Empire, which had emerged on Iran’s Central Asian frontiers in the 3rd century BC, was replaced by the
Muslim Arab warriors from the time of the Prophet Muhammad, based upon a small amount
of archaeological and illustrative evidence, plus an abundance of detailed written recollections dating from only a few decades later The military equipment ranges from armour and helmets of equal quality to those used by neighbouring Byzantine and Sassanian armies, to simple weapons including arrows tipped with stone rather than metal heads. (Angus McBride © Osprey Publishing Ltd)
empire of the Sassanians in the 3rd century AD. They dominated not only modern Iran, plus parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, but also Iraq, most of the Caucasus region and at times the east of what is now Turkey. The Sassanian Empire survived as a
great power — one of the two powers that mattered in Arabia — until, to the astonishment of both contemporaries and many modern historians, it collapsed when challenged by remarkably small Muslim armies in the 7th century.
However, Western historians have tended to be preoccupied with the relationship between the Graeco-Roman world and pre-Islamic Arabia, while neglecting the influence of the Sassanian Empire.
In fact, the relationship between Arabia and Sassanian-ruled territories was just as important as that between Arabia and the Mediterranean world; so much so that Iran eventually provided the model for most secular and non-literary aspects of medieval Islamic civilisation.
Contrary to popular perception, the indigenous inhabitants of pre-Islamic Arabia were not exclusively camel-riding, sheep- or goat-raising nomads who raided their settled
neighbours whenever an opportunity arose. In reality the regions south of the Fertile Crescent were home to a remarkable variety of cultures based upon differing ways of life, economic and socio-political systems
and, even as late as the 6th century AD, different languages.
Its tribal organisation was based upon families or clans, which grew or dwindled according to political, economic, ecological and other circumstances. Similar changes characterised the relationships between tribes, many of which had, or claimed, kinship with one another. The powerful supported the weak to build alliances, while the weak sought protection from the strong. The volatile relationships between the pre-Islamic Arabic tribes were largely the result of interference by the Roman or Sassanian Empires. Both intended to extend their imperial influence over the strategically and economically important region of Arabia, which stood at the hub of international trade. In return the Arab tribes tried to use great-power rivalry to further their own local interests. Over the years these political manoeuvrings led to the emergence of two major but internally quarrelsome associations of Arab tribes. One group, the Yemeni tribes, was widely regarded as being ‘southerners’, though several of the tribes actually dominated territory in the centre and north of Arabia. The other group was considered ‘northern’, though again they were found in other parts of the peninsula.
Northern Arabia, including the desert and steppe of what is now Syria, Iraq and Jordan, was neighbour to the ‘great powers’ which dominated coastal Syria, Anatolia and Iraq. Here it was only the harshness of the landscape which enabled the inhabitants to maintain their independence. Occasionally they were conquered but more often they survived as ‘clients’ or allies of the Roman and Sassanian empires. In return the peoples of northern Arabia kept trade routes open, were respectful to whichever empire was their patron, and confined themselves to raiding each other, or the rival empire and its clients. As the northern Arabian states maintained their precarious independence, many of them developed sophisticated societies which boasted wealthy merchants and farmers.
The most powerful of the Sassanians’ Arab client states was the Lakhmid tribal kingdom, which enjoyed a relatively large degree of autonomy and a close relationship with its Sassanian nominal rulers. In fact, the Lakhmid capital at al-Hira lay within Sassanian territory in Iraq, but by the 6th century the Lakhmids had grown strong enough to pose a very real threat to Sassanian control of Iraq. Pre-empting a feared challenge of the part of the Lakhmids, the Sassanians abolished their autonomous dynasty and took direct control
One of the best illustrations of a fully armoured cavalryman from the early Islamic period was painted on
a shield. It was found in the castle of Mug and dates from the early 8th century when this part of Central Asia
was an autonomous frontier province of the Umayyad Caliphate. (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia)
of the desert frontier. It would prove to be
a monumental strategic error, as Sassanian Iranian forces were less capable of operating in the desert beyond their cultivated, irrigated zone than their indigenous clients were. As a result of the loss of control of their frontier, the subsequent Arab-Islamic invasion was made much easier. Moreover, the abolition
of the Lakhmid sub-kingdom also led the militarily significant Arab peoples living in Iraq to no longer feel that they had much
of a stake in the preservation of the Sassanian Empire, and consequently, a large majority transferred their allegiance to the new Arab-Islamic Caliphate almost as soon
as the Islamic invasion began.
The camel-riding, nomadic bedouin warriors of popular imagination who ranged through the entire northern region were neither well enough armed, nor had the social organisation, to form strong enough armies to dominate these tribal associations. Nevertheless the bedouin did enjoy a special place in pre-Islamic Arab culture, and were widely regarded as the embodiment of Arab virtues; especially in contrast to the inhabitants of the neighbouring empires, who enjoyed a rather more luxurious existence. Consequently Arab pride in their real or adopted tribal identity would survive long after the coming of Islam, despite the fact that the tribal structure upon which it was theoretically based underwent fundamental changes during the first two centuries of Islamic history.
Southern Arabia was distinct from the rest of the peninsula. It had seen the rise and fall of several sophisticated urban civilisations, most of which thrived upon long-distance trade through Yemen or along its coasts, ranging from India and Africa to the mighty empires of the ancient Middle East. Its dominant languages were Semitic, though there were significant communities whose languages belonged to the Hamitic or African linguistic family. At the same time the civilisations of Yemen fell into two distinct categories. Those of the coast were well known to merchants from Egypt, Greece, India and even China, yet they were not necessarily the wealthiest. Some of the most remarkable
southern Arabian states were, in fact, on the other side of the mountains, centred upon cultivated valleys whose seasonal streams ran not into the sea but into the desert. These rivers sustained sophisticated irrigated or terraced systems of agriculture, and in several places their waters were harnessed by great dams. One of these, the Marib Dam, was so important that its supposed collapse around AD 450 was alleged to have helped cause the decline of southern Arabian civilisation. However, another contributing factor to the decline of this ancient society was the collapse of the spice market. For thousands of years, southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa had earned considerable revenues by cultivating frankincense and myrrh. These two aromatic ‘spices’ were essential for religious observances in the classical civilisations of the Mediterranean and Middle East, but with the triumph of Christianity the market for them slumped, which struck a grave blow to the economy of southern Arabia. Trade routes shifted elsewhere, taking with them the wealth they spread.
As a result southern Arabia in the 6th and 7th centuries, immediately prior to the coming of Islam, was a pale shadow of its former glory. This no doubt helped propagate the myth that pre-Islamic Arabia was a cultural backwater. Throughout the pre-Islamic centuries there had been several attempts to unify the peoples of the Arabian peninsula, usually encouraged by one of the neighbouring great empires which envisaged Arabia becoming a strong but subordinate ally. However, the unification of Arabia by the Prophet Muhammad and his immediate successor — the first Caliph Abu Bakr — was something different, something far more important. Out of these disparate peoples of Arabia, with contrasting ways of life and different languages, would emerge a religious revolution; and for the first time in their recorded history, the Arabs would be united by an indigenous leader, inspired by their own ideology. With the coming of Muhammad, a unifying religious force was created for the region, which fuelled the conquest of not only Arabia itself but lands and hearts far beyond.
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