In my earlier essays on Islam, I only included passing
references to Islam’s attempt to conquer Europe during the 7th and 8th
centuries. This essay is an attempt to
correct that oversight.
After the end of the First Muslim Civil War in 661, the
Umayyad family from Mecca, in what is now Saudi Arabia, joined forces with the
powerful and long standing governor of Syria to form the second major Islamic
caliphate after the death of Muhammad and made Damascus their capital. Over the next decade with Syria as their
power base, the Umayyad Caliphate continued the Muslim conquests adding the
Caucuses Transoxiana, Sindh, the Maghreb and the Iberian Peninsula to the
Muslim World, but not without a couple of bumps in the road.
Off to the West of Persia and the Islamic caliphate was a
vast land called the Byzantine Empire.
The Byzantine Empire straddled the continents of Europe and Asia where
they join at the Bosporus, a body of water connecting the Marmara Sea and the
Black Sea and extending across Europe to Spain.
Con-stantinople, located on the Bosporus, was its capital. Istanbul, the former Constantinople, is now
the capital of modern day Turkey. The
conquest hungry Caliphate looked west and only saw new lands to conquer.
The Byzantine army was part of the Byzantine Empire with
headquarters in Constantinople, but with the Roman Emperor as
Commander-in-Chief. “It was the primary
military body serving alongside the Byzantine navy and was among the most
effective armies of western Eurasia for much of the Middle Ages. . . .” The structure of the army changed over the
years as the Roman Legion concept shifted to a cavalry structure early in the 7th
century. During the 7th to 9th
centuries the Byzantine army role began to shift to a more defensive posture as
they developed the thematic system of defense where individual armies under the
command of the theme governors provided for the country’s defense. This concept fragmented the central defense
and because of inter-thematic rivalries among the governor-command-ers, the
defense of the country suffered.
The
Byzantine was surrounded by the Lombards, the Slavs, the Bulgars and the Umayyad Caliphate, all eager to destroy the empire. Eventually, their spies brought them information on a new defense concept of the empire called Themes. It quickly became obvious to all, and especially the Caliphate, that the new defenses could only bring two Themes at a time to the defense of the empire in the event they chose to attack. With this limited means of defense, an attack was more likely to succeed because of the fragmented defenses. The individual or pairs of Themes would fall and in a domino effect, Byzantine would fall. And so it was that the Caliphate decided to attack
The First Byzantine War: 674-678
During the first siege of Constantinople “. . . the nations
of the west were non-existent. Had
Constantinople fallen there would have been nothing to stand in the way of an
Arab sweep through the Balkans into Central Europe because of the fragmented
defense.”
Before the Caliphate opened hostilities, the Arab fleets in 672-673 methodically “. . . secured bases along the coasts of Asia Minor and then proceeded to install a loose blockade around Constantinople.
They used the peninsula of Cyzicus near the city as a base to spend the winter, and returned every spring to launch attacks against the city’s fortifications.” Tiring of the constant nipping at their heels
by the Caliphate navy, Byzantine, using Greek Fire, a new liquid incendiary device mounted on the prow of their attacking vessels, to destroy the Arab navy. Concurrently, in an unexpected offensive act, the empire attacked the Caliphate’s land army in Asia Minor forcing the Arabs to lift the siege and flee the field. Shortly after their defeat, the Arabs suffered another Muslim Civil War. A peace treaty was signed and the Arab threat receded for a time, a fact noticed by Byzantine’s other neighbors.
The Second Byzantine War: 717-718
Seething from their terrible defeat of 678, the Caliphate continued to harass Byzantine out-posts and outlying towns capturing some and, over a three-year period, stocking locations in Anatolia with war supplies and food and rebuilding their navy in preparation for a new war against Byzantine. The empire made little or no effort to interfere with the Caliphate’s actions, but continued to strengthen their defenses while maintaining a defensive posture. Unknown to the Arab forces, Byzantine had approached the Bulgars and had proposed a common defense against the Caliphate. The Bulgars, while having no love for the Byzantines, did not wish Constantinople to fall and place an aggressive Caliphate on its doorstep and while not willing to form an alliance, they did reach an understanding on the defense of Constantinople. The Lombards and Slavs were advised of this arrangement, thus relieving Byzantine of much pressure..jpg)
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The Second Siege of Constantinople occurred in 717-718 when a
Caliphate army of 80,000 troops crossed the Bosporus from Anatolia and attacked
Constantinople by land from the north while a second force of 1,800 war galleys
entered the Sea of Marmara from the Aegean Sea and approached the city from the
south in an effort to cut the city off from food supplies and starve the
inhabitants into submission.
The records show that the Caliphate learned nothing from
the first war on how to breach the famed walls of Constantinople and sent their
forces to battle without a plan. The
walls could not be breached by the Arab army and the galleys were unable to
sail up the Bosporus due to a Greek fleet who kept them under constant attack
and did much damage with Greek fire. The
Arab’s were left with a single option:
Lay siege and starve the city into submission.
Constantinople was supplied via the Black Sea and the Sea
of Marmara. The presence of the large
Caliphate navy in the sea of Marmara eliminated it as a source of supply which
left the Byzantines de-pendent on the
Black Sea or an overland route through Anatolia, but the latter was occupied by
the attacking Arabs. While
Constantinople was well supplied through their Black Sea routes, the Arabs besiegers
on land “. . . suffered immense losses due to disease and starvation during [an
unusually
severe] winter, and were forced to eat their camels,
horses, and donkeys. An Egyptian fleet
arrived in the spring with fresh reinforcements [and supplies], but successive
assaults on the city were unable to cause a breach in its defenses.”
The Bulgars had taken note of the condition of the Arab
forces after spring arrived and decided to honor their agreement made with the
empire. In July they mounted an immense
cavalry charge of about 50,000 horsemen killing about 30,000 Arabs in the first
assault. Devastated by the Bulgar attack
and their lack of success in assaulting the city, the Arabs abandoned the field
in August. Part of the army withdrew
through Anatolia and the remaining forces boarded the navy galleys and withdrew
through the Aegean Sea. Unfortunately, the
fleet encountered a devastating storm that destroyed all but five galleys,
drowning all on board.
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North Africa
There’s an old
saying about the three-time charm which the Caliphate apparently believed in.
Between the terrible defeat in 678 and a worst defeat in 718, the Arab armies
shifted their attention from Constantinople to the Byzantine lands in North
Africa and had taken a series of military actions in North Africa so that by
698, in separate actions, most of Byzantine North Africa had been conquered by
the Arabs, including Egypt, Ifriqyia and the Maghreb (now modern Morocco). To protect their forces from the Byzantine
navy, a Caliphate navy was formed which went on to capture the islands of Ibiza,
Majorca and Minorca, all Christian at the time.
Following their invasion of the Maghreb, the Arabs took Algiers in
700. By 709 all of North Africa was
controlled by the Caliphate except for Ceuta which was possessed by Spain at
the Pillar of Hercules (now the Strait of Gibraltar
Overwhelming
force caused Ceuta to fall and the Islam forces swarmed into the Iberian
Peninsula in 711 conquering Hispania (now Spain and Portugal) and in so doing
completed the Islamic conquest of North Africa effectively ending Catholicism
in Africa for several centuries, although this conclusion is disputed by some
scholars.
The Muslim army
of 80,000, primarily mounted Moors, crossed the Pyrenees Mountains and entered
the land of the Franks (now France).
Tours
Once the Muslims
were on European soil, the depredations continued unabated, destroying palaces
and burning churches, they went so far as to imagine that they could pillage
the basilica of St. Martin of Tours.
Enter the scene, Charles, lord of Austrasia. “. . . [Unknown] to the Muslims
. . . the Frankish ruler Charles was aware of their intensions, [and] had begun
rallying his liegemen to his standard.”
The invaders were intercepted somewhere between Poitiers and Tours with
a Frankish army of 30,000. The Muslim
force was mainly Berber cavalry wearing little armor and geared for fast
offensive attacks with sword and lance.
The Franks were primarily an infantry force relying on deep formations
and heavy armor. Their weapons were many
and varied. The Franks took up defensive
positions between forested areas where cavalry operations were limited and
placed their formations in depth to protect against flanking cavalry attacks.
After many days
of maneuvering and fencing, the Muslim cavalry launched a series of charges
against the fixed formations of the Franks in 832.
The Muslim
cavalry relied solely on multiple, mounted frontal assaults against the Franks
who presented a solid wall of interlocking shields bristling with spears and
lances.
The horses, faced
with running into a solid wall, broke and the cavalry charges were limited to
charging the wall of steel and before impact running parallel to the wall while
attacking the Frank’s front line of defense. The Franks were not limited in their
defensive measures and from their fixed positions successfully defended against
the charges causing many casualties in the Muslim ranks. Each successive cavalry charge left behind
mounds of dead and wounded men and horses which interfered with later
charges. Combat continued to nightfall
when both sides retired to their respective camps.
The following
morning, the Franks returned to the field of combat, only to find that the
Berber cavalry had left the field during the night. Fearing that the Umayyad forces were
attempting to draw the Franks from their defensive positions into a trap, Charles
permitted a limited number of Franks to conduct an extensive reconnaissance of
the former Umayyad camp which appeared abandoned with tents, food and weapons left
behind, an indication that the flight of the Berbers had been hasty and
uncontrolled. Ultimately, the search
uncovered evidence that the leader of the Muslims, abd ar-rahman, had been
killed during the previous day’s charges and without their leader, the Umayyad
army had fled in panic during the night and had fled southward to Iberia.
The head of the
snake had been cut off and the writhing body was trying to escape.
The
Muslim forces crossed the Pyrenees and returned to Spain, but elements of their
forces remained in Southern Gaul for 27 years apparently with the concurrence
of the Christian population. Muslim raids
continued north of the Pyrenees for many years, but by 759 the Umayyad dynasty
was expelled, eventually to Al-Andalus where an emirate was established in
Cordoba in competition with the Caliph in Baghdad.
The new emirate was gradually reduced in size as Spain recovered lost territory. The last of the Muslim invaders was confined to the community of Andalusia, the most southerly of communities in Spain, bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, where they were forced out in 1492 by the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella to North Africa leaving behind 800 years of beautiful architecture and artifacts which still exist. The departure from Andalusia was the beginning of massive decline in the Muslim world which continues to this day.
-O-
September 2014
LFC
Illustrations
1 Map of the
Byzantine Empire, 8th century.
2 The walls of Constantinople:
a. Reconstructed.
b. Diagram of wall.
c. Ruins.
a. Reconstructed.
b. Diagram of wall.
c. Ruins.
3,4 Typical Caliphate warriors.
5 Typical warrior of the 8th century.
6 Battle of Tours 732.
7 abd ar-rahman,
killed at Battle of Tours, 732.
Bibliography
Encyclopaedia Britannica Multimedia Edition, DVD.
Wikipedia, several.
Byzantinemilitary.com/the-birth-of-the-eastern-roman-army.
Byzantinemilitary.com/siege-of-constantinople.html.
Firedirectioncenter.com/decisive-battles-constantinople-717-718.html
Foram.paradoxplaza,com
National Review
Weaponsandwarfare.com
www.libyana.org/maps/atlas/6-byzant.htm
www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/constantinoplesiege.html
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