The people of Homs replied [to the Muslims], We like your rule and justice far better than the state of oppression and tyranny in which we were. The army of Heraclius we shall indeed, with your amils help, repulse from the city. The Jews rose and said, We swear by the Torah, no governor of Heraclius shall enter the city of Homs unless we are first vanquished and exhausted! [...] The inhabitants of the other cities—Christian and Jews—that had capitulated to the Muslims, did the same [...] When by Allahs help the unbelievers were defeated and the Muslims won, they opened the gates of their cities, went out with the singers and music players who began to play, and paid the kharaj. Al-Baladhuri[21] – According to the Muslim historians of the 9th century, local populations regarded Byzantine rule as oppressive, and preferred Muslim conquest instead.a[›] In 647, an Arab army led by Abdallah ibn al-Sa’ad invaded the Byzantine Exarchate of Africa. Tripolitania was conquered, followed by Sufetula, 150 miles (240 km) south of Carthage, and the governor and self-proclaimed Emperor of Africa Gregory was killed. Abdallahs booty-laden force returned to Egypt in 648 after Gregorys successor, Gennadius, promised them an annual tribute of some 300,000 nomismata.[22] Following a civil war in the Arab Empire the Umayyads came to power under Muawiyah I. Under the Umayyads the conquest of the remaining Byzantine territories in North Africa was completed and the Arabs were able to move across large parts of Maghreb, invading Visigothic Spain through the Strait of Gibraltar,[19] under the command of the Berber general Tariq ibn-Ziyad. But this happened only after they developed a naval power of their own,e[›] and they conquered and destroyed the Byzantine stronghold of Carthage between 695–698.[23] The loss of Africa meant that soon, Byzantine control of the Western Mediterranean was challenged by a new and expanding Arab fleet, operating from Tunisia.[24] Muawiyah began consolidating the Arab territory from the Aral Sea to the western border of Egypt. He put a governor in place in Egypt at al-Fustat, and launched raids into Anatolia in 663. Then from 665 to 689 a new North African campaign was launched to protect Egypt from flank attack by Byzantine Cyrene. An Arab army of 40,000 took Barca, defeating 30,000 Byzantines.[25] A vanguard of 10,000 Arabs under Uqba ibn Nafi followed from Damascus. In 670, Kairouan in modern Tunisia was established as a base for further invasions; Kairouan would become the capital of the Islamic province of Ifriqiya, and one of the main Arabo-Islamic cultural centers in the Middle Ages.[26] Then ibn Nafi plunged into the heart of the country, traversed the wilderness in which his successors erected the splendid capitals of Fes and Morocco, and at length penetrated to the verge of the Atlantic and the great desert.[27] In his conquest of the Maghreb, he took the coastal cities of Bugia and Tingi, overwhelming what had once been the Roman province of Mauretania Tingitana where he was finally halted.[28] As the historian Luis Garcia de Valdeavellano explains:[29] In their struggle against the Byzantines and the Berbers, the Arab chieftains had greatly extended their African dominions, and as early as the year 682 Uqba had reached the shores of the Atlantic, but he was unable to occupy Tangier, for he was forced to turn back toward the Atlas Mountains by a man who became known to history and legend as Count Julian. — Luis Garcia de Valdeavellano Arab attacks on Anatolia and sieges of Constantinople[edit] As the first tide of the Muslim conquests in the Near East ebbed off, and a semi-permanent border between the two powers was established, a wide zone, unclaimed by either Byzantines or Arabs and virtually deserted (known in Arabic as al-Ḍawāḥī, the outer lands and in Greek as τὰ ἄκρα, ta akra, the extremities) emerged in Cilicia, along the southern approaches of the Taurus and Anti-Taurus mountain ranges, leaving Syria in Muslim and the Anatolian plateau in Byzantine hands. Both Emperor Heraclius and the Caliph Umar (r. 634–644) pursued a strategy of destruction within this zone, trying to transform it into an effective barrier between the two realms.[30] Nevertheless, the Umayyads still considered the complete subjugation of Byzantium as its ultimate objective. Their thinking was dominated by Islamic teaching, which placed the infidel Byzantines firmly in the Dār al-Ḥarb, the House of War, which, in the words of Islamic scholar Hugh N. Kennedy, the Muslims should attack whenever possible; rather than peace interrupted by occasional conflict, the normal pattern was seen to be conflict interrupted by occasional, temporary truce (hudna). True peace (ṣulḥ) could only come when the enemy accepted Islam or tributary status.[31] Both as governor of Syria and later as caliph, Muawiyah I (r. 661–680) was the driving force of the Muslim effort against Byzantium, especially by his creation of a fleet, which challenged the Byzantine navy and raided the Byzantine islands and coasts. The shocking defeat of the imperial fleet by the young Muslim navy at the Battle of the Masts in 655 was of critical importance: it opened up the Mediterranean, hitherto a Roman lake, to Arab expansion, and began a centuries-long series of naval conflicts over the control of the Mediterranean waterways.[32][33] Trade between the Muslim eastern and southern shores and the Christian northern shores almost ceased during this period, isolating Western Europe from developments in the Muslim world: In antiquity, and again in the high Middle Ages, the voyage from Italy to Alexandria was a commonplace; in early Islamic times the two countries were so remote that even the most basic information was unknown (Kennedy).[34] Muawiyah also initiated the first large-scale raids into Anatolia from 641 on. These expeditions, aiming both at plunder and at weakening and keeping the Byzantines at bay, as well as the corresponding retaliatory Byzantine raids, eventually became established as a fixture of Byzantine–Arab warfare for the next three centuriesThe outbreak of the Muslim Civil War in 656 bought a precious breathing pause for Byzantium, which Emperor Constans II (r. 641–668) used to shore up his defences, extend and consolidate his control over Armenia and most importantly, initiate a major army reform with lasting effect: the establishment of the themata, the large territorial commands into which Anatolia, the major contiguous territory remaining to the Empire, was divided. The remains of the old field armies were settled in each of them, and soldiers were allocated land there in payment of their service. The themata would form the backbone of the Byzantine defensive system for centuries to come.[37] Attacks against Byzantine holdings in Africa, Sicily and the East[edit] After his victory in the civil war, Muawiyah launched a series of attacks against Byzantine holdings in Africa, Sicily and the East.[38] By 670, the Muslim fleet had penetrated into the Sea of Marmara and stayed at Cyzicus during the winter. Four years later, a massive Muslim fleet reappeared in the Marmara and re-established a base at Cyzicus, from there they raided the Byzantine coasts almost at will. Finally in 676, Muawiyah sent an army to invest Constantinople from land as well, beginning the First Arab Siege of the city. Constantine IV (r. 661–685) however used a devastating new weapon that came to be known as Greek fire, invented by a Christian refugee from Syria named Kallinikos of Heliopolis, to decisively defeat the attacking Umayyad navy in the Sea of Marmara, resulting in the lifting of the siege in 678. The returning Muslim fleet suffered further losses due to storms, while the army lost many men to the thematic armies who attacked them on their route back.[39] Among those killed in the siege was Eyup, the standard bearer of Muhammed and the last of his companions; to Muslims today, his tomb is considered one of the holiest sites in Istanbul.[40] The Byzantine victory over the invading Umayyads halted the Islamic expansion into Europe for almost thirty years.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 12:11:14 +0000
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