In many ways the initial success of the Arab conquests is not so surprising. With their mobility and manpower, steppe and desert tribes have frequently demonstrated their ability to strike hard and fast and make rapid gains. For instance, a fourth-century Saracen queen by the name of Mawiya led her troops into Phoenicia and Palestine as far as the regions of Egypt notching up victories wherever she went so that in the end the Romans found it necessary to send an embassy to her in order to solicit peace. And the Mongols were able to capture more landmass than any settled power in just seven decades (1206—79). But once the military machinery of empire has finally been put into motion, it is normally able to halt the invaders in their tracks by virtue of its superior organizational capability or to neutralize the threat by diplomacy and a range of incentives. So what went wrong for the empires in the seventh century or, to look at it the other way, what went right for the Arabs? The total collapse of the Persian Empire seems particularly shocking given that the Sasanian dynasty had managed it successfully for some 430 years.
Persia certainly did not give up without a fight—Christian and Muslim historians allude to uprisings across Iran at different times in different cities. Rayy, for example, reneged on its peace treaty with the Arabs on a number of occasions, and in 654-55 there was a widespread rebellion across northwest Iran, which involved the murder of the Arab agent responsible for tax collection.16 The insurgents of this rugged mountainous region made use of “the deep forested valleys, the precipices and the rocky peaks” to lead furtive guerrilla-style raids against their overlords. They assembled the surviving militia and organized into battalions initiating a resistance movement that they hoped would free them “from the teeth of the dragon.” Their grievance was in part high taxes and in part the abolition of the cavalry and the traditional office of prince of their country. Their tactics evidently bore fruit, at least for a while, for many Arabs perished in the rough terrain, and many were wounded from arrows in the impenetrable fens, which prompted them for a time to flee these lands. However, these and other revolts did not lead to a sustained reversal of Arab gains. The problem for Persia was that its extensive mountain ranges and deserts made large-scale coordinated action very difficult, and so the revolts remained local affairs rather than countrywide. It also meant that Iran was divided into numerous regions, each governed by different noble families and local lords. These had been bound together in a close alliance with the ruling Sasanian dynasty, but the disastrous defeat of Khusrau II in 628 and the ensuing years of civil war loosened that alliance, and the death of Yazdgird led to its complete dissolution.
The Byzantines were better placed than the Persians to withstand the Arab onslaught. In particular, whereas there was no natural barrier and very little distance between Arabia and the Persian capital, Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the steep Taurus Mountains and some 600 miles separated the Byzantine capital from even the northernmost tip of the Syrian desert. Every year the Arabs would send expeditions into Anatolia, but they would be forced to withdraw once the long, hard winter had set in, losing any gains they had made in the summer. On the downside, however, it was similarly problematic for the Byzantines to march an army all the way across Anatolia to Syria. All they could do was initiate sabotage operations along the southern and eastern Mediterranean littoral. The most successful of these missions was carried out in the late 670s and early 680s by the emperor Constantine IV in response to a series of Arab sorties against Constantinople. He dispatched a guerrilla force, dubbed the “insurgents” (mar-daites), which sailed to the coast of Tyre and Sidon. After disembarking they made their way up into the Lebanese mountain range. There they won over to their cause the Jarajima, who were longtime residents of the Mount Amanus region around Antioch, described by a near contemporary as “the armed men who from olden times had practised banditry in the mountains of Lebanon.” They had initially tried to stay out of the Arab-Byzantine wars, but when pressured by the Arabs they grudgingly agreed to act as spies and frontier guards for them as long as they paid no taxes. They had no love of Arab rule, though, and so when the mardaites encouraged them to revolt they willingly agreed. In addition, many runaway slaves and Aramaean peasants joined them so that in a short time their ranks swelled to many thousands. Once they had attained sufficient numbers they spread from the mountains around Antioch in the north to the peaks around Galilee in the south, and from these heights they launched raids against the settled lands all around them.
They were evidently very successful and a real thorn in the Arab side, for when 'Abd al-Malik, faced with a major civil war at home, sought to renew the peace agreement made by his predecessors with Byzantium, one of his key requests was that “the emperor should remove the host of the mardaites from Lebanon and prevent their incursions.”17 The Byzantines could therefore inflict losses on the Arab regime, especially on the settlements of the Mediterranean coast, but they could not translate this into a full-scale recovery of their former possessions. To march an army all the way from the coast across the mountains to Damascus was beyond their capacity, and once the Arabs had moved their capital to faraway Baghdad, the Byzantines' chances of a comeback were even slimmer.
World History
