Muslim Conquest of Persian Mesopotamia and the Occupation of Christian Syria, 635-642
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Transcript with footnotes:
By 639,
Islam's growing new caliphate included the
Arabian Peninsula,
Syria,
Palestine, and most of
Mesopotamia. The Muslims had delivered a devastating blow to the
Christian Byzantine Empire, and they were well on their way to completely conquering all of the Zoroastrian
Persian Empire.
For the time being the Byzantines had withdrawn from Syria and Palestine. The Muslims now had full control over the region, occupying crucial cities like
Jerusalem and
Damascus. They subjected the helpless common people of these regions to a long period of plunder and slave-raids (
Michel le Syrien, 2: 418).
Michael the Syrian, an
Armenian chronicler, recounts the events:
"
Umar (ibn al-Khattab) sent
Khalid (ibn Walid) with an army to the
Aleppo and
Antioch region. There, they murdered a large number of people. No one escaped them.
Whatever may be said of the evils that Syria suffered, they cannot be recounted because of their great number; for the Taiyaye (the
Arabs) were the great rod of God's wrath."
-Chronique de Michel le Syrien, trans. From
Syriac by
Jean-Baptiste Chabot (
Paris,
1901), 2: 421.
Congruent with their conquest of
Byzantine Syria, the Muslims attacked the Persian Empire, which greatly impacted not only the Zoroastrian Persians, but also the various Christian peoples settled within these territories (
Bat Ye'or,
The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, from
Jihad to Dhimmitude (
London,
1996), 46).
The attack on the Persians was first concentrated in the south, around Ubulla, and somewhat farther north on the Euphrates, close to
Hira.
Arab Christian tribes long settled in Mesopotamia collaborated with the Persians in the defense (
Fred McGraw Donner,
The Early Islamic Conquests (
Princeton,
1981),
117). However, other Arabs living in the area, attracted by the prospect of plunder, took up with the Muslims, acting as a valuable internal source to the invaders (
Francois Nau, Les
Arabes Chretians de Mesopotamie et de Syria du
VII au VIIIe siècle (Paris, 1933), 100-13). As an example, the
Banu Ijill tribe sent messages to the
Caliph Umar at
Medina about areas of weakness in the
Persian territories ripe for assault (Bat Ye'or, 46).
Overwhelming the Persian forces with raids on a mass scale, the Arabs were able to expand their pillaging into the southcentral villages of
Iraq, around Mada'in. In November of 636 the Arabs faced the main
Persian army at the
Battle of al-Qadisiyya. It was a decisive victory for the Arabs which broke Persian power in Iraq.
Once again, the Arabs now had free access to the farms and countryside, pillaging and grabbing slaves everywhere (
Donner, 210).
Umar sent reinforcements from Medina to maximize the capturing of booty (Bat Ye'or, 46).
A Muslim source, Ibn al-Balkhi, writing during the fourteenth century, documented these events:
"In the early days of Islam, after
Fars (
Persia) had been conquered (by the Arabs), for a time there was nothing but massacre and pillage and all things were taken by force, but at length matters quieted down, and the ruin and the disorder that had overspread the land began to be amended."
-Ibn al
Balkhi, in
Guy Le Strange,
Description of the
Province of the Fars in Persia at the beginning of the fourteenth century
A.D. (London, 1912), 83.
The Arabs pillaged the local monasteries, slaughtering the monks, while they massacred, enslaved, or forcibly Islamized the
Monophysite Christian Arabs (Michel le Syrien, 403-4, 413). In
Elam the population was decimated, the upper classes put to the sword (Bat Ye'or, Decline of
Christianity Under Islam, 46).
By 642 the
Arab conquest of Mesopotamia was complete.