The origins ofIslam lie in the northern Arabian peninsula, where different forms of Christianity and Judaism had competed and co-existed for centuries with indigenous beliefs, in particular in the much-travelled trading and caravan communities of Mecca and Medina - Mohammed was himself a respected and established merchant who had several times accompanied the trade caravans north to Roman Syria. Syria and Palestine already had substantial populations of Arabs, both farmers and herdsmen, as well as mercenary soldiers serving the empire as a buffer against the Persians. Although Mohammed met initially with stiff resistance from his own clan, the Quraysh, who dominated Mecca and its trade (as well as the holy Ka’ba), by 628-629 he had established his authority over most of the peninsula. On his death in 632 there followed a brief period of warfare during which his immediate successors had to fight hard to reassert Islamic authority; and there is little doubt that both religious zeal combined with the desire for glory, booty and new lands motivated the attacks into both the Persian and Roman lands. A combination of incompetence and apathy, disaffected soldiers and inadequate defensive arrangements resulted in a series of disastrous Roman defeats and the loss of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Egypt within the short span of ten years, so that by 642 the empire was reduced to a rump of its former self. The Persian empire was completely overrun and destroyed. The Arab Islamic empire was born.
The most important loss for the Romans was Egypt. Already during Heraclius’ Persian wars Egypt had been lost to the Persians, albeit briefly, with serious results for the empire, since it was from Egypt that the grain for Constantinople and other cities was drawn. It was a rich source of revenue; and along with Syria and the other eastern provinces had provided the bulk of the empire’s tax revenue. Constantinople was forced radically to restructure its fiscal apparatus and its priorities, including the way the army was recruited and supported; and the result was, by the later seventh century, an administratively very different state from that which existed a century earlier. We will examine these changes in the following chapters.
The reduced and impoverished east Roman or Byzantine empire now had to contend not only with an aggressive and extremely successful new foe in the east; it had far fewer
Map 2.8 The rise of Islam and the beginnings of a ‘Byzantine’ empire. (After Kennedy, Historical Atlas of Islam.)
Resources at its disposal, it had lost effective control in the Balkans, and had no real power in Italy, where the military governor or exarch, based at Ravenna, struggled against increasingly difficult odds to maintain the imperial position. The insistence of the imperial government during the reign of Constans II on enforcing the official Monothelete policy reflected the government’s need to maintain imperial authority and the views of those in power that the Romans were being punished for their failure to deal with the divisions within the church. But it also brought the empire into conflict with the papacy and the western church, as well as provoking opposition within the empire, bringing a further degree of political and
Ideological isolation with it. In Italy the exarchs and the local duces in charge of the defence of the various east Roman enclaves fought a long-term war of raid and counter-raid with the Lombards, while the papacy did its best both to support this effort, to encourage the emperors to commit more resources to the struggle (largely without success), and to fight on the diplomatic level to maintain its own position and a degree of equilibrium. In the long term, the balance was slowly tilting against the imperial interest, in particular because ideological conflicts such as monotheletism could only damage the chances for a constructive co-operation between Constantinople and Rome.
Arab strategy can be followed through several phases - until the defeat of the siege of 717-718 Byzantine resistance was relatively passive, limited to defending fortified centres and avoiding open contact. On the few occasions when imperial troops did mark up successes, this was due to the appointment of particularly able commanders, but was unusual. During the Arab civil wars of the late 680s and early 690s the Emperor Justinian II was able to stabilise the situation for a short while; but it was only during the 720s that the empire was able effectively to begin meeting Arab armies in the field and reasserting imperial military control. In the meantime the Byzantine resistance, focused on fortified key points and a
Strategy of harassment and avoidance, had at least prevented a permanent Arab presence in Asia Minor, aided of course also by the geography of the region: the Taurus and Anti-Taurus ranges acted as an effective physical barrier, with only a few well-marked passes allowing access and egress; while the climate was in general unsuitable to the sort of economic activity preferred by the invaders.
The Balkan front was also a concern for Constantinople. Technically, the Danube remained the border even in the 660s and 670s, but in practice Constantinople exercised very little real control. In 679 the situation was transformed by the arrival of the Turkic Bulgars, a nomadic confederation made up of the Kutrigur and Utigur Huns and other groups who had been forced out of their homelands and pastures around the Volga by the encroachments of the Khazars from the east. Petitioning the Emperor Constantine IV for permission to seek refuge and protection south of the Danube, on ‘Roman’ territory (the Danube river itself remained in fact largely under Byzantine control because it was navigable, and the imperial fleet could patrol it), they were refused. They nevertheless did succeed in crossing over, where they were met by an imperial army under Constantine himself. But the imperial army fell into panic (poor discipline, misunderstood signals and a lack of cohesion all contributed), and was defeated by the Bulgars, who over the next 20 years consolidated their hold over the region and established a loose hegemony over the indigenous Slav and other peoples in the region. By 700 the Bulgar Khanate was an important political and military power threatening Byzantine Thrace, and was to remain so for the next three centuries.
World History
