The Arabs were much more familiar with Syria than with Mesopotamia. They had interacted a great deal with the Ghassanids, whose capital city was in the Golan Mountains. They stopped often at cities like Bos(t)ra. Some of the men of Mecca had bought land around cities like Damascus and Jerusalem, installing relatives as branch offices of their trading businesses. It was a no-brainer to begin probing the weak defenses of this “Roman” region that they already knew so well.
While Khalid captured southern Mesopotamia, four Arab commanders set out to raid at the borders of Arabia. Two were old-time converts who had known Muhammad well. Shurahbil ibn Hasana and Abu Ubaydah ibn Jarrah were such early converts that they had been part of the Abyssinian migration. Abu Ubaydah had been considered as a possible successor to Muhammad at that crucial all-night meeting in Medina. The other two commanders were more controversial, as they were recent Meccan converts, like Khalid. Amr ibn al-As had converted around when Khalid did, before the Fall of Mecca, and Muhammad had appointed him to collect taxes between Medina and Syria. He went on to lead raids in the region. He may have been a recent convert, but he had made his place in the Muslim command structure already.
But Yazid, the fourth commander, was the son of Abu Sufyan and Hind. That family had only converted when Mecca fell, so their faith was suspect. Were they truly Mu’min, believers? Yazid’s younger brother Mu’awiya came along. He had served as a scribe to Muhammad in the short time between Mecca’s fall and the Prophet’s death. The promotions of Yazid and Mu’awiya were part of the campaign to have Mecca’s old leadership become part of Islam seamlessly. They were raised to rule and to fight, and apparently they were pretty intelligent. Their family owned property around Damascus, so they had personal reasons to see through the conquest of this weakly “Roman” area.
Amr led the smallest army, about 3000, up the caravan road to Aqaba, across the Negev Desert to Gaza. He met only disorganized Roman garrisons and won the Battle of Dathin near Gaza. Abu Ubaydah led a larger army, about 7000, into the Golan Mountains to challenge the Ghassanid capital at al-Jabiyah. He captured the Roman town of Areopolis. Yazid and Shurahbil were sent into the middle zone between Amr’s southern march and Abu Ubaydah’s northern one. Shurahbil’s campaign did not leave much news behind so the records kind of forget about him after this.
Abu Bakr commanded Khalid to leave Mesopotamia and go as quickly as possible to Bosra, where Abu Ubaydah and Yazid were to meet him. Khalid’s forced march to Syria in spring 634 is his most famous exploit because it’s both clever and disgusting. The zone between Iraq and Bosra, Syria was extremely dry. The roads around the arid zone took longer, and everyone assumed Khalid would use these. If the local Romans were gathering themselves to defend cities, and heard Khalid was coming, they’d have calculated a certain number of weeks before he could possibly arrive. But Khalid had seen the advantage of speed in Mesopotamia. He decided to cut straight through the desert, even if he would lose some men and horses on the way.
Khalid realized that they had one tool that the Romans never had. They traveled with a large herd of camels for bearing burdens that always included water. But the camels themselves famously tanked up on water and retained it for long periods. Khalid ordered his men to tank up the camels with as much water as they could drink, then tie their mouths shut so they could not chew their cud. They became walking water tanks. When the other water supplies ran out in the middle of the arid lands, they slaughtered the water-camels carefully so that their stomachs could be emptied. I guess if you are very, very thirsty, you don’t mind drinking water mixed with camel stomach-acid and a bit of blood.
Once Khalid arrived, the Muslims quickly conquered Bosra. Then they fought a pitched battle in the south of modern Israel against a regular Roman army. This army was not large, but it was led by the Emperor’s brother, a professional soldier. Its core was made up of Armenians, and it had been stationed at Emessa, now Homs. This area had many Armenians; we’ll meet them again a few centuries later in the Crusades. And Emperor Heraclius himself was at Emessa to watch from a distance.
The Battle of Ajnadayn went on for two days of fierce fighting, with high casualties. The Roman style of fighting was nothing like the traditional Arab battle style. From this time on, the Arab Muslim armies had to adapt to pitched battles with high losses. But the Roman army lost the Battle of Ajnadayn, with survivors scattering toward Gaza or Jerusalem. Emperor Heraclius himself retreated from Emessa/Homs to Antioch, a walled city that could be defended. They presumed that the Arab raiders would loot and then go home.
The Emperor and his brother quarreled about whose fault was the loss. It was obviously the brother’s, since he had led the army; but he blamed Heraclius for marrying their niece, an incestuous union. (Crawford, 115) This quarrel was not good for the Empire; it led to a coup attempt that failed, but various high officers and aristocrats were mutilated or exiled. The Emperor was weaker than ever.
The Muslim armies could range all over the area now; they held the rural areas and many small fortresses. They had only one major city, so far. But while they were soon to besiege and take Damascus, there was a political interruption. In the summer of 634, Abu Bakr died.
- The War of the Three Gods, by Peter Crawford.
- The Great Arab Conquests, by Hugh Kennedy