The Initial Conquests • 55THE INITIAL CONQUESTSThe caliphs' brilliant answer was to turn the bedouin's combative energies
away from one another and toward conquering the settled lands to the
north, the territories of the Byzantine (Roman) and Sasanid (Persian) em¬
pires. Abu-Bakr's successor, Umar (r. 634-644), forgave the tribal rebels and
enlisted them in the service of the caliphate, in a jihad to expand the
umma\ lands. This momentous decision would lead to the capture of
Rome's Middle Eastern possessions (Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Cyrenaica)
in little more than a decade. It took a generation to absorb the whole
Sasanid Empire. Within a century Muslim soldiers would be stationed
from Spain in the west, across North Africa and the Middle East, to the
borders of China in the east. Western historians once viewed the Arab vic¬
tories as the main events separating the ancient world from the Middle
Ages. Europeans were almost cut off from the rest of the world. Christian¬
ity was set back, notably in the lands of its origin. But we must add that
those conquests brought together the diverse cultures of North Africa,
Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Persia. Out of this combination would grow a new
civilization matching those of Greece and Rome.
If you had asked someone in the streets of Damascus (or any place else)
around 625 to predict who would be ruling the Middle East a generation
later, he or she might have named the Byzantine emperor, the Sasanid
shah, or perhaps some new Roman or Persian dynasty. No one would have
expected the rulers to be Meccan Arabs. The speed of the Arab conquests
amazed everyone, then and now. People still ask why they succeeded. As
you try to come up with an answer, here are some points to keep in mind.
- The Arab armies were small, usually under a thousand men, thus
fewer in number and less well equipped—but more cohesive—
than their Roman or Persian foes. They fought few engagements
and chose them carefully. Their decisive victories enabled them to
gain vast expanses of territory. Their horses were the essential in¬
gredient in their speed, but their camels gave them endurance and
mobility in the desert. Arab victories took place in the desert, or
sufficiently nearby, to enable the troops to get away from Roman
or Persian legions if they needed to. A common Arab tactic was to
draw enemy forces into a wadi (valley) and then use the terrain
to trap them. One of the Arabs' triumphs, the Battle of the Yarmuk
River in 636, resulted from a dust storm that enabled Khalid to
conceal his men from the Romans. This victory gave the Arabs