Fter losing a substantial number of troops at Yarmuk in 636 the emperor Heraclius had sent word to his generals and governors not to engage the Arabs in battle in order to conserve precious manpower and to buy time to raise a new army and devise a fresh strategy. He may also have hoped that God would restrain the Arabs as He had done a few years before with the Persians. But as city after city capitulated, panic began to set in. This was intensified by the death of the emperor in February 641, which triggered a succession crisis: some backed Heraclius’s son by his second wife, his niece Martina, who favored accommodation with the Arabs, and others took the side of a grandson of Heraclius, the ten-year-old Constans, represented by a senior general named Valentine, who advocated a more hawkish policy toward the Arabs. Amid scenes of rioting, Valentine entered Constantinople in September 641; Martina and her son were deposed, and the young Constans was crowned. Using the latter’s tender age as a pretext, Valentine sought to usurp the de facto military and political powers of the imperial office for himself, but this offended popular opinion and he was arrested and brought before Constans. The young emperor magnanimously accepted his plea that he had
Only acted out of a desire to save the empire from the Arabs and appointed him head of the imperial guard. Only two years later, however, Valentine’s failure to achieve any significant military successes weakened him and he was hanged by an angry mob. Constans was now secure on the throne, but this meant that an adolescent was in charge of the Byzantine Empire at a moment when it faced an existential threat from the Arabs.1
In the Persian realm, the proverbial situation had come true: the head had been severed and consequently the body floundered. With Yazdgird on the run and the economic powerhouse of southern Iraq in Arab hands, the Persian Empire ceased to function as an integral entity. The local chiefs and nobles of Iran, wearied by three decades of warfare and civil strife and unnerved by the Arab successes, began to negotiate separate agreements with the conquerors that would preserve as much of their authority and wealth as possible. Families were often pitted against one another, sometimes victims of an Arab policy of divide and rule and sometimes using the Arabs to settle old scores. For example, in return for being left in power in Media (northwest Iran), Khurrazad offered to help the Arabs capture Rayy, now a suburb of modern Tehran, but once a proud and ancient city that served as the seat of the noble family of Mihran. The incumbent head of this family had connived in the murder of Khurrazad’s father. There was, therefore, bad blood between the two families, and Khurrazad got his revenge by showing Arab forces a secret way into Rayy, which allowed them to surprise the city’s defenders. They looted and ransacked the houses of the Mihranids, who were afforded no mercy, but gave safe passage to the family of Khurrazad, who was allowed a free hand to establish himself and his offspring in the city. For the Arabs, as for many conquerors before and after them, such pragmatic deals made good sense in lands difficult to access, the subjugation of which would demand substantial resources and manpower. In the mountainous regions around the Caspian Sea, for instance, numerous local arrangements were made. To the south the lord of Damavand signed a pact of non-aggression in return for the right to maintain his rule and ancestral title. And the prince of Gurgan and a Persian-appointed potentate in Darband, on the east and west side of the Caspian, respectively, were exempted from tax in exchange for providing military assistance against any potential enemies of the Arabs.2
Of the Arab command structure in this period we hear very little in our contemporary sources. The Armenian chronicler Sebeos does confirm to us the existence of some sort of overall ruler, for he distinguishes between the general or prince (ishkhan), who was based in Damascus, and the king (ark’ay or t’agawor), who resided in Arabia. The latter did not get involved in the fighting—when the Arabs marched out from the desert, “their king did not go with them”—but he does seem to have had responsibility for major decision making. Thus it was the king, says Sebeos, who ordered that ships be assembled and equipped to carry out naval raids against the southeast shores of Iran.3 These rulers in Medina are portrayed by later Muslim sources as the successors (caliphs) to Muhammad and as being in overall control of all worldly and religious matters. Responsibility for practical day-to-day planning was, however, borne by the commander-in-chief in Damascus, which for the period 640—60 was Mu'awiya, the son of Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, whose daughter the prophet Muhammad had married and whose cousin 'Uthman became the third caliph (644—56). Evidently, the clan of Abu Sufyan, the Umayyads, had managed to take firm hold of the reins of the conquest enterprise from a very early date, and Mu'awiya's very long term in office, twenty years as commander in Syria and twenty years as caliph (661—80), served to entrench their position.
World History
