28 ISLAM AT WAR
at Deraa. They were easily broken and streamed away toward the great
city of Syria in September 634, just a few weeks after Ajnadain. The single
important Arab loss was Khalid. The enemy did not hurt the great leader,
but the new Caliph Umar demoted the army commander to lead a single
division. However Khalid’s personal reputation was such that he was able
to remain with the army. Abu Ubaida became the commander in chief.
With the enemy in retreat, the Arabs reached out for Damascus, the
strategic prize of the whole campaign. However, they were to have the
same problems with this fortified city that they had at Hira on the Iraqi
front. Damascus held out for six months, a time the Emperor Heraclius
put to good use assembling a new army. Had Muslim siege techniques
been perfected, they might have taken the city much earlier and might
have broken up the emperor’s new forces. As it was, Damascus fell in
almost comical fashion. Abu Ubaida had carefully and honorably nego-
tiated a surrender with the governor of the city to take place on a certain
day in the summer of 635. He did not, however, inform his subordinates,
and thus it was that on the very night prior to the surrender, Khalid con-
trived to mount the wall near the east gate, overcome the guards, and
storm into the city with his men. Khalid the great warrior, be it noted, was
not much of a soldier. He failed to notify his superior. As dawn broke,
Khalid’s division was storming into the city at the east gate, while the
governor was surrendering to Abu Ubaida at the west. All was made well,
but it was a good example of Abu Ubaida’s quiet methods and Khalid’s
warrior skills. They complemented each other nicely.
While the Arab forces, perhaps 20,000 strong, sat in front of Damascus,
Emperor Heraclius was forming a new army around Antioch. It was a
large one, but not a particularly good one. One large contingent was Ar-
menian, recruited in the heart of the Anatolian province renowned for its
good soldiers. But the Armenians insisted upon fighting under their own
Prince Gargas in their own formations. This was, perhaps, the fruit of the
long Persian occupation and recent imperial defeats. Another contingent
was of Christian Arab tribesmen of the northern part of Arabia led by
Sheikh Jabala. These might well have found themselves in the Muslim
army, for they were the tribe that had formed the traditional buffer between
the empire and the Arabs. During the long Persian wars they had not been
subsidized by the Byzantines and were thus quite ready to join the Mus-
lims out of pique. However, their leader had been insulted in Medina when
he, a desert prince, was treated to a Koranic display of equality with a
low-born townsman. As a result, Jabala and his men found themselves
once more in the Byzantine camp. The third portion of the new army was
of regular regiments drawn from the capital. These were probably few,