Vahan (general)

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Vahan (also Baanes ; † probably at the end of August 636 near Damascus ) was an Eastern Roman general of Armenian origin who was instrumental in the Battle of Yarmuk .

Life

Vahan initially served under Emperor Herakleios as a stratelate in the war against the Persians . In 627 he defeated a large Sassanid army .

In the late summer of 635, the Islamic Arabs invading the Levant under Chālid ibn al-Walīd conquered the Syrian city ​​of Damascus and attacked Emesa and Apamea from there . In May 636, Emperor Herakleios sent the magister militum per Orientem Vahan, previously governor of Emesa, together with Niketas , the son of the Persian general and short-term great king Shahrbaraz , to Damascus to stop the further advance of the Muslims. They began a tactical retreat towards the south on the east bank of the Jordan, accompanied by several small skirmishes . In August 636 there was the momentous battle of Yarmuk .

Before the battle, Vahan had received supreme command as strategos over the imperial army from the sakellarios Theodoros Trithyrios . The Eastern Roman armed forces consisted of five contingents of various ethnic and religious origins (including Greeks , Slavs , Armenians, Ghassanids ), with Vahan having his Armenian compatriots under direct command. Contrary to Herakleios' instructions to first exhaust all diplomatic channels, he sought open confrontation with the Muslims. The rivalry between Vahan, whom his troops allegedly proclaimed emperor before the battle, and the other generals Theodoros, Nicetas, Bukinator and Jabalah resulted in serious strategic and tactical errors that undermined the numerical superiority of the Romans and were one of the decisive factors for the catastrophic defeat .

What became of Vahan after the battle is uncertain. According to Theophanes , Michael the Syrian and the Chronicle of 1234 , he is said to have been killed, and according to Arab sources, although he fled the battlefield, he was caught and killed in front of Damascus by persecuting Muslims; after Eutychios of Alexandria he is said to have retired to a monastery on Sinai . (Pseudo-) Sebeos mentions a Vahan Korkhoruni who was involved in the conspiracy of John Athalaric against Herakleios in 637 .

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literature

  • Agha Ibrahim Akram: The Sword of Allah. Khalid bin al-Waleed - His Life and Campaigns. New edition. National Publishing House, Rawalpindi 2004, ISBN 0-19-597714-9 .
  • Walter E. Kaegi: Heraclius. Emperor of Byzantium. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, ISBN 0-521-81459-6 .
  • Hugh Kennedy: The Great Arab Conquests. How the Spread of Islam changed the World we live in. Da Capo Press, Philadelphia PA 2007, ISBN 978-0-306-81585-0 , p. 82.
  • John Robert Martindale: Baanes. In: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE). Volume 3A, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992, ISBN 0-521-20160-8 , p. 161.
  • Mikael Nichanian: Le maître des milices d'Orient, Vahan, et la bataille de Yarmouk (636) au complot d'Athalaric (637). In: Barlow Der Mugrdechian (ed.): Between Paris and Fresno. Armenian Studies in Honor of Dickran Kouymjian (= Armenian Studies Series. Vol. 13). Mazda Publishers, Costa Mesa CA 2008, ISBN 978-1-56859-168-1 , pp. 321-337.
  • David Nicolle : Yarmuk 636 AD. The Muslim conquest of Syria (= Osprey military Campaign Series. Vol. 31). Osprey, London 1994, ISBN 1-85532-414-8 , pp. 61 f. and passim ( full text in the Google book search).
  • Alexios G. Savvides, Benjamin Hendrickx (Eds.): Encyclopaedic Prosopographical Lexicon of Byzantine History and Civilization . Vol. 2: Baanes-Eznik of Kolb . Brepols Publishers, Turnhout 2008, ISBN 978-2-503-52377-4 , p. 1.

Remarks

  1. The exact chronology of these events is uncertain because of the contradicting sources.
  2. The usurpation reported by Theophanes could also be an imperial piece of propaganda in order to discredit Vahan and to blame him for the defeat; see. Kaegi, Heraclius , p. 244.
  3. Nichanian, Le maître des milices d′Orient Vahan , considers both to be identical. Strikingly, only Theophanes reports of a rebellion of Vahan on Yarmuk, while on the other hand he knows nothing about the Athalaric conspiracy in the following year, known from several other sources. See p. 324.