Byzantium: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Peter Sarris

Author:Peter Sarris [Sarris, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780199236114
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2015-07-22T22:00:00+00:00

A frontier society

For much of this period, the nature of the warfare fought by the Byzantines against the Arabs was rearguard and defensive. Once the Arabs had established effective suzerainty over the lands of the Caucasus by the late 7th century, there was little the Byzantines could do to prevent large-scale incursions. Via their control of Armenia in particular, the Arabs established mastery of the vital east–west passes that gave them open access to the Anatolian plateau. The Byzantines were effectively obliged to fall back on techniques of guerrilla warfare that had first been honed by Heraclius against the Persians.

The eastern frontier between Byzantium and Islam was dominated by mountains. With the exception of the soft, lowland underbelly of Asia Minor, often taken advantage of by the Arab raiders of Tarsus, the undulating plains of Anatolia and the prosperous Arab-held cities which followed the course of the Euphrates were separated by a vast range of mountains, extending from the volcanic highlands of Armenia southwards. Stretches of this mountainous terrain stood more than 4,000 metres above sea level, while the bulk of the range loomed at between 150 and 2,000 metres.

Controlling access across these mountains was thus the first military priority. This could be secured, the Byzantines realized, by relatively small numbers of troops, and mountain passes termed kleisourai were fortified to ambush an invading foe, although the Byzantines eventually realized that it was easier to strike at the Arabs as they attempted to return back to the caliphate from imperial territory laden with booty and encumbered by captives than it was to attempt to contain them in the early phases of an attack.

On either side of the mountains lay the plains. These were arid and dusty in the summer and bitterly cold in winter, meaning that the campaigning season was essentially limited to the spring. The relatively narrow campaigning season meant that the Arab armies tended to consist primarily of light cavalry, which the Byzantines attempted to contain with largely locally raised infantry units of the thematic armies. During periods of Arab invasion the civilian population was evacuated to mountain strongholds as well as vast subterranean citadels. Thus the treatise ‘On Skirmishing Warfare’ attributed to the Emperor Nicephorus II Phocas (963–9) advises that one should ‘Evacuate the area well and find refuge for the inhabitants and their flocks on high and rugged mountains.’ Likewise, the 10th-century Arab poet Muttanabi describes Byzantine civilians ‘Hidden in the rocks and their caves, like serpents in the heart of the earth.’

The scale of the Arab attacks could be massive. In the 8th and 9th centuries, caliphs such as Harun al-Rashid, who could draw upon the resources of the entire Muslim world, would enter Byzantine territory with up to 100,000 men. The Byzantines at this time might have had about that many troops in total in the entirety of their empire. For the Byzantines in this period, to be able to summon 20,000 soldiers for the purpose of a single campaign was pretty exceptional. Direct confrontation with this united Islamic world thus could be of little avail.

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