Caucasia

The emperor Constans also had to worry about Byzantium’s eastern flank because of the pact that had been concluded in 653 between the Armenian commander Theodore Rshtuni and the Arabs. Not only was Armenia a long-standing and close ally, but also it was an important source of military manpower and a crucial bulwark against any attack from the east. Constans had written a number of letters to Theodore urging him to reinstate the long-standing alliance between their realms, but received no answer.9 He decided then to go in person, and in the summer of 653 he set off with a huge military escort, a display of strength evidently intended to impress, heading for Karin, now called Erzerum in modern eastern Turkey. On the way, an Arab delegation brought Constans a message from Mu'awiya warning him: “Armenia is mine, do not go there; but if you do go, I shall attack you and shall make sure that you cannot escape.” However, Constans dismissed it contemptuously, saying that it was for God to judge such matters. Once at Karin, he stayed for a few days to meet and talk with those Armenian princes still loyal to him, who explained the intentions of Theodore and “the frequent coming and going to him of envoys from the Arabs.” Constans then sent back the majority of the army and continued with a smaller retinue to Dvin, where he stayed with the head of the Armenian church, celebrating the liturgy with him so as to emphasize the closeness of the Byzantine-Armenian relationship.

At this point news came from Constantinople that the Arabs were planning an attack on the capital itself and Constans was obliged to cut short his trip and return in haste. He gave command of the Byzantine army in Armenia to the patrician Maurianus with orders that he keep nudging the Armenian princes back into allegiance with Byzantium. However, Theodore Rshtuni received reinforcements of 7,000 Arab soldiers and was easily able, once the winter had passed, to put the Byzantine troops to flight, driving them back to the Black Sea coast. This, plus the rumors circulating about the huge assault being unleashed upon Constantinople, impelled the rest of the Armenian princes to submit to the Arabs. Theodore now went in honor to Damascus to offer Mu'awiya presents and to receive from him robes of gold and a banner of his own colors and, most important, the rank of prince of Armenia along with oversight of Georgia, Albania, and Siunik. These three principalities had been allied to the Persian Empire, but with the latter now defunct, Theodore could hope to bring them back into the fold of the Greater Armenian Kingdom that had existed before ad 428.

News of the devastating defeat of the Arab expeditionary force to Constantinople began to filter through to Caucasia in the autumn of 654 and it had the double effect of weakening the morale of the Arabs campaigning there and stiffening the resolve of those opposing them. The Arab unit stationed by Dvin, headed by the general Habib ibn Maslama, “a merciless executioner,” thought to attack Georgia, whose inhabitants were warned that “they should either submit or abandon their country.” The Georgians ignored these threats and vowed to fight to the last man, but in the end they were spared the trouble, for the Arab advance was beset by heavy snow and forced to retreat. The patrician Maurianus and his men, who had spent much of 654 lying low in Trebizond, now felt confident enough to attempt once more to carry out the instructions imparted to them by the emperor Constans, namely, to recapture Armenia for Byzantium. First they harried the retreating Arabs, who were unaccustomed to the extreme cold and unwilling to fight; rather than return to their previous quarters at Dvin, they crossed the Araxes River and kept going south to the plains around Lake Urmiah. Maurianus took the opportunity to sack the fortress of Dvin and to attack the stronghold of Nakhchawan some seventy miles to the southeast. On top of all this the inhabitants of Media, northwest Iran, threw off their submission to the Arabs and “killed the chief of the tax-collectors.” Seeking to further his northern alliance against the Arabs, Constans at once sent an emissary “to the prince of the Medes and made peace proposals to him,” and received many gifts from him in return.

In order to regain at least some of their prestige and avoid an all-out rebellion on many fronts, the Arabs now needed to make a show of strength, and so two regiments were hurriedly dispatched to the north from Iraq. One contingent, headed by Habib ibn Maslama, had the objective of regaining control of Armenia. In the spring of 655 they moved against the Byzantines, who were besieging Nakhchawan. With relative ease they defeated them, slaying many while the rest fled, including Maurianus himself. The Arabs continued on to Karin. Its inhabitants, ill equipped to offer military resistance, opened the gates of the city, submitted, and yielded up a substantial quantity of gold and silver and other precious goods. Thereafter the Arabs “ravaged all the land of Armenia, Albania and Siunik, and stripped all the churches; they seized as hostages the leading princes of the country, and the wives, sons and daughters of many people.” A second Arab contingent was charged with the job of taming the eastern side of Caucasia; according to Muslim sources it was captained by the veteran soldier Salman ibn Rabi'a al-Bahili and their goal was the Khazar forward base of Balanjar, in modern Dagestan. They headed for the coastal region of the Caspian Sea and then marched northward “towards the people by the Caspian Gates.” They passed the fortress city of Darband, called by the Arabs the “Gate of Gates” (Bab al-Abwab), a reference to its location at the start of the east-west wall constructed by the Sasanians as part of a trans-Caucasian barrier to keep out the barbarians to the north (Figure 4.2). At first they encountered only a local defensive force, “the guards of that place,” but

FIGURE 4.2 Walls of Darband (Bab al-Abwab) in Dagestan (Russia), by the Caspian Sea (ca. 1890). Photo from ca. 1890 by Dmitry Yermakov.

Then a large army of nomads appeared on the scene and they caught the Arabs in a classic pincer movement. One branch attacked them from the front, while another came up behind them cutting off their retreat. The only escape was up through the difficult terrain of the Caucasus Mountains and only a very few, “naked and unshod, on foot and wounded, reached the area of Ctesiphon, their own homeland.” These nomads were almost certainly the Khazars, who were at this time establishing themselves in the southern Russian steppe and northern Caucasia and beginning to flex their muscles.

Theodore Rshtuni died in 655 and he was succeeded as prince of Armenia by his son-in-law Hamazasp Mamikonean, “a virtuous man in all respects. . . but he was not trained and experienced in the details of military skill.” The major Arab defeat plus the outbreak of civil war among the Arabs in 656 emboldened Hamazasp, who sought to live up to “the valiant character of his ancestral house,” to abandon submission to the Arabs and resume ties once more with the Byzantine Empire. This change of allegiance was warmly welcomed by Constans, who gave him silver cushions and the rank of prince of Armenia. There was a high price to pay for this policy, though, for a furious Mu'awiya rounded up all the hostages that had been brought from that region and had them all put to death, “about 1775 people.” All the princes of Siunik and Albania followed suit with the Armenians and pledged allegiance to Emperor Constans. This meant that there was a Christian pro-Byzantine coalition across Caucasia, and Constans took full advantage of the respite granted him by the Arab civil war to try to strengthen this bulwark against the Arabs. In his nineteenth regnal year (659—60) he set off on a grand procession through the region, meeting local lords and handing out gifts and titles. Juansher, prince of Albania, came to meet him in Media, which Constans hoped also to wrest from Arab control. He took the Holy Cross and cut off a piece in Juansher's presence and gave it to him, saying: “Let this be a tower of strength for yourself and your sons against the enemy.”

By 661, however, the Arab civil war was at an end and Mu'awiya was reasserting his authority over the conquered lands. Juansher observed how the emperor of Byzantium had been rendered powerless and weak by the Arabs, “who had consumed the former's populous markets and cities like a flame,” and he became worried that they might do the same to his lands. He therefore determined to switch sides and join the Arabs. In the year 664 he prepared magnificent presents and took them “to salute the conqueror of the world.” Mu'awiya received him with great pomp and ceremony and set his seal to a treaty of sincere and perpetual friendship between them. On his return, Juansher met with a number of Armenian nobles who apparently received him with honor, and so it is likely that they had made a similar decision and that Byzantium’s Caucasian bulwark had already crumbled. To reinforce his writ Mu'awiya had appointed Gregory Mamikonean, who had been a hostage in Damascus, to be the prince of Armenia and returned him to his country with great honors. During all the time that he served in this capacity, 662-85, Gregory was able to maintain Armenia free from all marauding and attack, and this perhaps explains the many churches that were constructed there in his time. For the moment then, though they had “to submit to the yoke of vassalage of the king of the South,” these Caucasian princes did at least retain their status and exercised a free hand within their realms. And the second Arab civil war (683-92) gave them further respite, for during this time the Armenians, the Georgians, and the Albanians ceased to pay tribute to the Arabs. In some ways things had not changed so much for the lords of Caucasia: as before they were torn between two empires; it was just that now the Arabs had taken the place of the Persians.