Through the reigns of Constans II (641-668), Constantine IV (668-685) and Justinian II (685-695) Asia Minor was subjected to constant raiding, with substantial tracts of territory devastated on a yearly basis from the early 640s well into the first half of the eighth century. This devastated the population, the economy of the regions affected, especially the border zones, and urban life, which was reduced effectively to fortified garrison towns. A series of sieges and attempts to break Constantinopolitan resistance between 674 and 678 was finally driven back; and a major siege in 717-718 was defeated with great losses on the Arab side. But the situation appeared desperate enough for Constans II to move the imperial court to Sicily in 662. His assassination in 668 brought the experiment to an end, but illustrates the nature of the situation. Justinian II was deposed in 695; a series of short-lived usurpers followed until Justinian II himself recovered his throne in 705. But he was again deposed and killed in 711, and the situation of internal political and military confusion lasted until the seizure of power by the general Leo, who became Leo III (717-741) and, having defeated the Arab besiegers in 717-718, finally re-established some political order. The wars were not entirely one-sided. Although the empire was largely on the defensive, being forced to give up attempts to face Muslim armies on the field and adopt a strategy of avoidance and hit-and-run raids, internecine strife within the Umayyad family or between different elements in the newly-established Arab Islamic empire helped the Byzantines to survive these most adverse of circumstances. A civil war over the succession to the Caliphate followed the death of the third Caliph, Uthman, in 656. Although his successor, Ali, was the son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed, this did not prevent the powerful Umayyad clan, to which Uthman had belonged, from challenging his authority. He was defeated in 661 and, under the new Caliph, Mu‘awiya, the Umayyad dynasty established itself firmly in power, where it remained until deposed in 750.
The changes that accompanied the enormous loss in territory and in revenue were considerable and sometimes drastic. In the period between the later years of Heraclius and the end of the century the whole fiscal apparatus began to be remodelled; the organisation of the imperial field armies underwent dramatic alterations to cope with the changed circumstances in which they had to operate, both in respect of strategic geography and in terms of resources (or lack of them). The political ideology of the empire regenerated itself in an increasingly exclusive orthodoxy that rejected heterodox belief and was suspicious of anything not ‘Roman’, even though at the same time that epithet applied to anyone who spoke Greek, was orthodox and accepted the emperor as God’s representative on earth - whether Armenian, Slav or Arab.
The eastern empire was fortunate in its strategic geographical situation. For although the new power of Islam was a major threat to the continued existence of the empire, the peoples to the north and west offered a far less systematic and organised, and thus much less effective, challenge. They could be destructive, and they certainly forced the empire onto the defensive in Italy, for example, or along the Balkan front, but they were unable or uninterested in challenging Constantinople, in part because the imperial capital and the Roman empire still attracted their admiration and envy in a way which was quite irrelevant to the Umayyad power in the east. The Khazars were sufficiently distant to serve as imperial allies (as they had done briefly during the Persian war in the time of Heraclius), acting as a threat to both the Bulgars and the more distant Avars. From the 680s the Bulgars along the eastern reaches of the Danube, while a potential threat to the empire, also acted as a buffer between the declining Avar power to their north and west; while in the southern and central Balkans the various Slav peoples and groups formed a series of competing and disunited groups - the autonomous Sklaviniai nominally under Byzantine authority, the Serbs and Croats in the west, and other more amorphous groups, some of whom soon intermingled with the indigenous population, elsewhere. In Italy the complicated territorial situation, with imperial, local and Lombard forces constantly at war, was not improved by direct imperial intervention in local politics when the emperors felt their interests or authority were challenged. Thus in the course of imperial efforts to banish discussion on the issue of the emperor’s monothelete policy (see page 65), for example, the pope, Martin, was arrested in the 650s and imprisoned on charges of treason.
For a while, the empire hung on to its North African territories - apart from Italy, the last Latin-speaking regions under its control. But the cities of Africa were already disenchanted with imperial rule as a result of the monothelete disputes of the middle of the century and imperial intervention in local politics. Early Arab raiders pushed in 642 into Tripolitania, and from the 650s and 660s onwards further westwards, and by the 680s Roman rule was seriously compromised. By the early 690s Carthage had fallen, never to be recovered, and by 696 Islamic rule - which, however, faced the same turbulent Berber clans as the Byzantines had had to contend with - was firmly established. By the end of the first decade of the eighth century Islamic raiders were on the Atlantic coast and in 711 Berber troops crossed over into Spain to challenge the Visigothic kingdom there.
In the west the Lombards had continued to put pressure on the fragmented imperial possessions, seizing Genoa, for example, in 640; while the Visigoths had defeated and absorbed the Suevi in 584 and by 631 had seized the last strip of Byzantine-controlled south-eastern Spain. The Frankish kingdom had expanded to become the dominant power, having
I—I The empire at the beginning of the reign of I—I Leo III, 717 CE
Map 5.1 The east Roman empire c. 650-717.
Driven the Visigoths out of southern Gaul before the middle of the sixth century and subjugated the majority of the remaining independent Germanic tribes along its eastern margins by the end of the sixth century. The Baiuvari (Bavarians) accepted Frankish overlordship, and Frankish authority extended as far east as the Elbe. Only the Saxons and Frisians in the north-east remained independent. But the kingdom was divided, initially by the sons of Clovis, then again in 561, and after a series of fierce internecine wars settled permanently into the two kingdoms of Neustria and Austrasia.
World History
