Did you not see us victorious upon the Yarmuk,
The way we prevailed in the campaigns of Iraq?
The virgin cities we conquered, as well as
The Yellow Meadow, on our galloping steeds.
We conquered before that Busra, which was
Impenetrable even to the flying crows.
We killed those who stood against us
With flashing swords, and we have their spoils.
Al-Qa’qa’ bin Amr, Muslim commander
This post was inspired by Dan, in his post “Islamic Persecution of Christianity,” about the Pope’s (fairly reasonable, IMHO) statements on jihad and Islam. I have also included sections from an essay I wrote earlier this year about Islam and the Arab conquests (632-732 AD). If there’s any demand for it, I’ll post more from that essay.
Anyway, Dan points out that not only is Islam on the offensive again after hundreds of years of defense, but world political conditions have become far more similar to the time of the great conquests. Says Dan:
Islam is designed for a chaotic, post-superpower world. Mohammed’s words were particularly effective because the Romans had previously destroyed the Persian Empire, and much of the world was lawless and disoriented. Islam provided a grand unifying ideal where none existed and spread this through violence that none could resist…”
The conquests
From the death of Muhammad in 632 to the defeat at Tours in 732, Muslim armies conquered and occupied lands from Spain to Central Asia, from India to the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the Muslim warriors were illiterate, nomadic camel-herders, yet they managed to defeat some of the largest, richest and most advanced empires of the age.
Arab strategies of warfare were based on tribal militarism, and the regaining of honour through intertribal raids and plunder. It was a culture which glorified war – all it needed was someone to unify the warring tribes, and the decrepit and decadent – yet technologically advanced – empires to the East and West would face an irresistible threat. The unifying force was provided by Muhammad, with his new religion, who brought the Arabs under central control for the first time. Muhammad was a skilled general who adapted to new techniques, for example siege weapons and defensive ditches, and skilfully used tactics such as deploying so that the sun would shine in the eyes of his enemies.
The Arab experience of nomadic desert life enabled them to defeat the Byzantines and the Sasanians. Before Islam, Arabs had made regular raids on the two empires. These had been guarded against by buying off local Arabs and propping up Arab kings in the border areas. Fortunately for the Muslims, both empires had discontinued this practice a few years before the conquests began. Glubb compared the initial attacks to pirate raids:
The Muslims were like a sea-power, cruising off shore in their ships, whereas the Persians and Byzantines alike could only take up positions on the shore (that is, the cultivated area) unable to launch out to ‘sea’ and engage the enemy in his own desert element.
Camels could travel where horses would die. Like early guerrillas, the Arab forces would travel beyond the reach of their imperial enemies, then reappear where they were least expected. It was a demoralising and devastating tactic which eventually exposed the weakness of the Byzantine and Sassanid empires, causing their collapse. (Note: I have focused on military tactics in this analysis. There is a lot more on political and religious factors in the essay I have adapted this from).
The present day
I think Dan correctly points out that the political environment facilitating Islam’s incredible rise is echoed in todays “chaotic, post-superpower world.” Consider the essential role of the collapse of the Soviet empire in the rise of radical Islam. Afghanistan, where they defeated an empire already in its death throes, and Chechnya, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and so on where they honed their tactics, continued to weaken Russia, and trained a new generation of militants in bloody Central Asian and Caucasian battlefields. Now those militants and terrorists have turned their attention to the empire of Western culture. Have we become soft and decadent, like the Byzantines? Have we lost the loyalty of our peoples, like the Sassanids? Like both empires, have we only delayed the threat by “buying off local Arabs and propping up Arab kings,” rather than attempting to integrate them?
It is surprising how closely the parallels go, and how little Islamic/Arab military culture has changed. Glubb compared the initial raids by Arabs to those of pirates, striking quickly and withdrawing into the sea (desert) on their ships (camels). This also applies to terrorists, though. And very similar raiding and ambush tactics worked against Israeli tanks in Lebanon recently. It seems like technology and globalization have finally made Arab military culture effective again. However, not yet has a leader emerged to unify the warring tribes. If history is our guide, then such unification will happen only if there is an external enemy to attack. And the unification will last only as long as expansion does, giving the new conquests an ominous internal momentum…
My only conclusion is that we must study Arab military culture and its various weaknesses. And politically we must try to avoid causing the warring groups of Islam to form a “united front.” If we don’t want to return to the medieval conquests, our attacks must cause and exploit divisions within the Islamic world. Ultimately, though, we will only be safe through cultural change and economic integration.
Further reading on the Arab conquests
- Donner, Fred McGraw. The Early Islamic Conquests, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
- Glubb, John Bagot. The Great Arab Conquests, (London: JBG, 1963).
- Santosuosso, Antonio. Barbarians, Marauders and Infidels: The Ways of Medieval Warfare, (Boulder: Westview Press, 2004).
