Battle of Yarmuk

Battle of Yarmuk

Part of: Islamic Expansion

The Former Battlefield in Modern Times (2008)

date	August 20, 636 (?)
location	On the Yarmuk river
exit	Victory of the Muslim Arabs

Parties to the conflict
Rashidun Caliphate	Byzantine Empire Ghassanids Tanukhid Foederati
Commander
Chālid ibn al-Walīd	Herakleios Vahan † Jabalah ibn al-Aiham

The Battle of Yarmuk , traditionally dated August 20, 636 , was an important event in the context of the Islamic expansion of that time . The Muslim Arabs prepared the eastern Roman troops of the emperor Herakleios a decisive defeat, as a result of which East and Byzantium lost their possessions in Syria and Palestine and a little later also in Egypt .

prehistory

After the death of the Prophet Mohammed and the settlement of internal Arab conflicts ( Ridda Wars ), his followers began increasingly in the year 632 with the martial expansion of their territory by subjugating the neighboring peoples. It is true that the Arabs in the north faced the two late ancient great powers of the Eastern Romans and the Persians , but in the decades before the Islamic expansion they had weakened each other very much in a long-lasting conflict (→ Roman-Persian Wars ), so that they could resist the attacks of the second caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Chattāb could not face with full force. This was particularly true of the Eastern Roman Empire, which the war had brought to the brink of decline and whose Oriental provinces, now threatened by the Arabs, had only been evacuated by the Persians in 630.

After all, after the loss of Damascus to the Arabs , Emperor Herakleios set an army in motion. How big this army was is unclear. Information in the later Arabic sources of up to 200,000 men is completely untrustworthy (as is the claim that the imperial soldiers were chained together with chains; a motive that also appears in reports on the battles against the Persians). The Eastern Roman army was probably no more than 40,000 strong and was therefore only slightly superior to the Arabs in terms of men. Researchers such as Hugh Kennedy (2007) are now even assuming an imperial army of just over 20,000 men, which was confronted by an Arab army of roughly the same size.

The aim of the Byzantines had to be to stop further attacks by the Muslims. Thereupon the Arabs under their general Chālid ibn al-Walīd settled southwards towards Jordan and posted themselves on its tributary Jarmuk (today's border river between Jordan and Syria and partly also between Jordan and Israel ). In the course of July 636 there was a series of small skirmishes here, until both sides finally dared a major battle. Arab sources report that dust blown up by strong southerly winds severely hindered the eastern rivers in the battle (some researchers doubt this statement). This had a positive effect on the army of the Arabs, which, however, fought much more closely than the imperial army, which was composed of many peoples who spoke Greek, Arabic, Syrian and Armenian and was commanded by rival commanders.

Course and consequences

The hostile armies set up camp in the Jordan plain. The actual battle, the course of which cannot be reconstructed with certainty, was preceded by weeks of skirmishes until the Arabs apparently succeeded in luring part of the Eastern Roman cavalry into an ambush by feigning retreat. Decisive for the outcome of the developing battle were apparently disputes in the Roman high command between the generals Trithurius , Niketas (a son of the Persian general and short-term great king Shahrbaraz ) and Vahan . The nominal commander in chief Theodorus, who was either the brother of the emperor or the governor of the province of Osrhoene of the same name , apparently did not succeed in overcoming these tensions, on the contrary: According to some sources, there was ultimately a rift between Theodorus and Vahan, who was then proclaimed emperor by the Armenian soldiers in the army. It was at this moment of confusion that the Muslims attacked, and although the surprised Eastern Romans were still trying to defend themselves, they were decisively defeated after a bitter struggle after the Arabs cut their route of retreat. The tactical superiority of the innovatively formed Arab cavalry, which was able to develop better due to the topographical conditions, was possibly significant. She managed to attack surprisingly and to separate the heavy armored riders of the Eastern Romans from the infantry, among whom the Arabs wreaked a bloodbath, while their own foot troops initially also suffered considerable losses from the imperial cavalry.

The Arab Ghassanids may also have played a role, who were actually Roman foederati , but with their perhaps 12,000 men during the battle, according to Eastern Roman sources, often defected to the Muslim troops and thus outnumbered the imperial troops. On the other hand, it is reported in the Muslim tradition that some of the Ghassanid Arabs were so loyal to the emperor that after the defeat they withdrew to Syria and Asia Minor together with the remnants of the defeated army and gave up their homeland. What is certain is that a desperate Roman counterattack ultimately remained unsuccessful while the Arab counterattack broke through the opposing ranks. The imperial troops were pushed to the banks of the Yarmuk, where they were stabbed in the back by Muslim horsemen who had crossed the river on an old bridge. According to the sources, the now completely disoriented and demoralized Eastern Romans did not even seek their salvation in flight, but many soldiers are said to have sat desperately on the ground and expected death. The Arabs took almost no prisoners.

It is not without reason that the Arab tradition characterizes the battle as the decisive skirmish in the struggle with Ostrom; However, there are indications that the last resistance of the Eastern Roman troops in Syria, now commanded directly by Theodorus, was broken a little later in another field battle between Emesa and Damascus (Howard-Johnston 2010). These battles were largely ignored by the later Arab historians who concentrated entirely on the significance of the Battle of Yarmuk.

First Jerusalem and then some bases by the sea (such as Caesarea Maritima ), which were supplied by the imperial fleet, could be held for a few years. However, the battle was a decisive turning point, which forced Eastern Current to give up his rule on the Levant . In the medium term, the Arab victory on Yarmuk marked the end of the Roman Orient, which had been part of the Imperium Romanum for 700 years , and thus the definitive end of antiquity .

literature

• James Howard-Johnston : Witnesses to a World Crisis. Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-920859-3 .
• Walter E. Kaegi: Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992, ISBN 0-521-41172-6 .
• Hugh Kennedy: The Great Arab Conquests. How the Spread of Islam changed the World we live in. Da Capo Press, Philadelphia PA 2008, ISBN 978-0-306-81740-3 .
• David Nicolle : Yarmuk 636 AD. The Muslim conquest of Syria. Osprey, London 1994, ISBN 1-85532-414-8 ( Osprey military Campaign Series 31).

Web links

Commons : Battle of Yarmuk  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Source extract the battle (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Robert G. Hoyland: In God's Path. Oxford 2015, p. 46.