The Decisive Battles of World History

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offensive. His infantry forces surged forward along the length of

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Byzantine lines. Vahan attempted to counter with his own cavalry

but was too slow in deploying them.

x As the Byzantines began to retreat, they backed into a funnel-

shaped peninsula, and the constricted units began to panic and lose

cohesion. The defeat turned into a rout. The brilliant Khalid had

played the Byzantines perfectly, blunting their brute-force assaults

with his well-timed cavalry charges until they became exhausted,

then striking back with a single, powerful blow that won the battle.

Outcomes of Yarmouk
x Yarmouk was a truly decisive battle. After it, the Byzantines made
no further major attempts to oppose the Rashidun armies in Syria
and basically ceded the entire eastern Mediterranean to them. All
of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria easily fell to Muslim forces within a
few years.

x The Byzantines retreated into Anatolia and, later, to the walls of

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out for another 1,000 years, but their broader empire was gone.

x Yarmouk was the moment when the future of the Middle East was

determined. Until that point, the dominant culture had been Greco–

Roman. Today, all the countries in the region (with the exception of

Israel) are predominantly Arabic-speaking and Muslim.

The Battle of al-Qadisiyyah
x Shortly after Yarmouk, the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah in southern
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lasting effects.

x The Rashidun army was about 15,000 to 30,000 men, among them

5,000 veterans of Yarmouk.