The Eastern Frontier c. 700-950

The Arab-Byzantine frontier settled down into almost routine warfare from the late eighth century until the line of the frontier was overrun by the Byzantine advance in the 960s and afterwards. From the 770s and 780s the Islamic side of the frontier was structured in two broad zones, the province of al-‘Awasim, a belt of fortified cities stretching from Antioch eastwards along the border provinces, intended to provide both supplies and manpower for the defence of the Caliphate; and the frontier, or al-Thughur, a line of heavily-fortified strongholds intended to deny access to invaders and to serve as advanced warning posts for enemy incursions or as forward bases for Islamic raids into Byzantine lands. Whereas al-'Awasim covered heavily-populated agricultural regions, well able to support themselves, however, the Thughur were often in the ‘no-man’s-land’ zone which both sides seem to have deliberately cultivated from the later seventh or early eighth century onwards. The pattern of warfare this structure reflects dominated the fighting and the cultural relations of both sides for over two centuries and, not surprisingly, encouraged the

Development of a particular frontier culture very different from the metropolitan worlds of Constantinople or Baghdad.

The fundamental principles of Byzantine strategy in the east, as it evolved out of the disasters of the early Arab conquests and raids into Asia Minor, were twofold: where possible, raiding forces should be held and turned back at the passes, before they could do any harm. Where this policy of meeting and repulsing hostile attacks at the frontier did not work, the local forces should harass and dog the invading forces, making sure to follow their every movement so that the location of each party or group was known. A key aspect of this strategy was the garrisoning of numerous small forts and fortresses along the major routes, on crossroads and locations where supplies might be stored, and above and behind the frontier passes through which enemy forces had to pass to gain access to the Byzantine hinterland. As long as these were held, they served to hinder any longer-term Arab presence on Byzantine soil, since they posed a constant threat to the invaders’ communications, to the smaller raiding or foraging parties they might send out, and to their logistical arrangements in general. They were a constant threat to any invading force; yet to stop and lay siege to them was more trouble than it was worth for most raiding parties. Although both small and large fortified places frequently changed hands, the Byzantines clearly understood the importance of maintaining their control as a means of preventing efforts at permanent settlement and of minimising the extent and effect of the raids.

From the later eighth and early ninth century the themata were complemented by a series of special frontier districts which constituted independent commands. These were known as kleisourarchies (kleisourarchiai), created from sub-divisions of the themata from which they were detached, which seem to

Map 8.6 The Islamic world c. 1071-1100. (After Kennedy, Historical Atlas of Islam.)

Represent the crystallisation out of the previous strategy of a new policy: a locally-focused defence, involving a ‘guerrilla’ strategy of harassing, ambushing and dogging invading raiders, designed to stymie all but the largest forces and to prevent both the pillaging of the countryside and the economic dislocation which followed, as well as to make raiding expeditions riskier and less certain, in terms of easy booty, than before.

For the Byzantines, their most intractable foes during the tenth century were the Emirate of Aleppo, and the other independent emirates stretching along the borderlands from Cilicia east into the Caucasus and north-eastern Mesopotamia. Although the frontier had been stabilised by the middle of the eighth century, the dynamic leaders of some of these frontier commands proved to be a constant threat to the security of Byzantine Anatolia, and from the 930s for a period of over 20 years the most significant of these was personified in the figure of Sayf ad-Daulah, the Hamdanid emir of Aleppo. Eventually checked in his depredations by the campaigning emperors of the second half of the tenth century, Aleppo nevertheless remained a key point on the Byzantine frontier, and played an important role in the 980s and afterwards as a semi-independent buffer state between Byzantine and Fatimid lands, obligated by treaty to support the emperor in his wars with the encroaching Fatimid power.