A History of the Crusades-Vol 1 (3 page)

Three years later the Persians advanced into
Egypt. Within a year they were its masters. Meanwhile, to the north, their
armies had reached the Bosphorus.

The fall of Jerusalem had been a terrible shock
to Christendom. The part played by the Jews was never forgotten nor forgiven;
and the war against the Persians assumed the nature of a holy war. When at last
Heraclius was able, in 622, to take the offensive against the enemy, he
solemnly dedicated himself and his army to God and set out as a Christian
warrior fighting the powers of darkness. To subsequent generations he figured
as the first of the Crusaders. William of Tyre, writing his history of the
Crusades five centuries later, includes the story of the Persian war; and the
old French translation of his book was known as the
Livre d’Eracles.

The Crusade was successful. After many
vicissitudes, many moments of anxiety and despair, Heraclius at last defeated
the Persians at Nineveh, in December 627. Early in 628 King Chosroes was
murdered and his successor sued for peace; though it was not till 629 that the
peace was established and the conquered provinces restored to the Empire. In
August Heraclius celebrated his triumph in Constantinople. Next spring he
journeyed south again, to receive back the Holy Cross and to carry it in pomp
to Jerusalem.

It was a moving scene. Yet the Christians of
the East had not fared badly under Persian rule. Chosroes had soon withdrawn
his favour from the Jews and had even expelled them from Jerusalem. While his
court favoured the Nestorians, he was, officially, equally benevolent towards
the Monophysites and the Orthodox. Their churches were restored to them and
rebuilt; and a council was held under his patronage at Ctesiphon, his capital,
to discuss the reunion of the sects. The return of the imperial administration,
once the first enthusiasm died down, was seen to benefit the Orthodox alone.
Heraclius had inherited an empty treasury. He had only been able to finance his
wars by a great loan from the Church. The booty taken from Persia was not
enough to repay it. The Syrians and Egyptians found themselves once again
obliged to pay high taxes and to see their money go to swell the coffers of the
Orthodox hierarchy.

Nor did Heraclius help matters by his religious
policy. First, he took action against the Jews. He had not felt any animosity
towards them; but, whilst he was actually staying with a hospitable Jew at
Tiberias on his way to Jerusalem, he learnt full details of the part that they
had played during the Persian invasions. Moved too, perhaps, by a vague
prophecy that a circumcised race would ruin the Empire, he ordered the
compulsory baptism of all Jews within the Empire, and he wrote to the kings of
the West to urge them to follow suit. The order was impossible to execute; but
it gave zealous Christians a fine opportunity for the massacring of the hated
race. The only ultimate result was to make the Jews even more resentful of
imperial rule. Next, the Emperor plunged into the dangerous waters of Christian
theology. The Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople, himself a Syrian Monophysite
by birth, had gradually evolved a doctrine that, he thought, would reconcile
Monophysites and Orthodox. Heraclius gave it his approval; and the new
doctrine, known in history as Monoenergism, was promulgated throughout the
Empire as soon as the Persian wars were over. But despite the advocacy of the
Emperor and the Patriarch and the cautious approval of the Roman pontiff
Honorius, it was universally unpopular. The Monophysite hierarchy rejected it
at once. The majority of the Orthodox, led by the great mystic, Maximus the
Confessor, in Constantinople, and by Sophronius in the East, found it equally
unacceptable. Heraclius, with more enthusiasm than tact, tried hard to force it
on all his subjects. Apart from his courtiers and a few Armenians and Lebanese,
known later as Maronites, it won no supporters. Heraclius later amended the
doctrine; his
Ekthesis
, published in 638, advocated Monotheletism
equally fruitlessly. The whole episode, which was not finally cleared up till
after the sixth Oecumenical Council in 680, merely added to the bitterness and
confusion that were mining the Christians of the East.

Pre-Moslem
Arabia

When Heraclius was in Constantinople in 629,
receiving congratulatory embassies from as far afield as France and India, it
is said that there arrived for him a letter addressed by an Arabian chieftain,
who announced himself as the Prophet of God and bade the Emperor join his
faith. Similar letters were sent to the kings of Persia and Abyssinia and to
the governor of Egypt. The story is probably apocryphal. It is unlikely that
Heraclius had any idea as yet of the great events that were revolutionizing the
Arabian peninsula. At the beginning of the seventh century Arabia was occupied
by a number of unruly, independent tribes, some of them nomadic, some
agricultural, and a few living in the merchant cities strung out along the
caravan routes. It was an idolatrous country. Each district had its special
idols; but the most sacred of all was the
kaabah
at Mecca, the leading
merchant city. Idolatry was, however, on the wane; for Jewish, Christian and
Zoroastrian missionaries had long been working in the country. The Zoroastrians
had only been successful in the districts under Persian political influence, in
the north-east and later in the south. The Jews had their colonies in many
Arabian cities, notably in Medina, and had made a certain number of Arab
converts. The Christians had achieved the most widespread results. Orthodox
Christianity had its followers in Sinai and Petraea. The Nestorians, like the
Zoroastrians, were to be found where there was Persian protection. But the
Monophysites had congregations down the great caravan routes as far as Yemen
and the Hadramaut; while many important tribes on the edge of the desert, such
as the Banu Ghassan and the Banu Taghlib, were wholly Monophysite. Arab
merchants, frequently travelling to the cities of Syria and Palestine and Iraq,
had many further occasions for studying the religions of the civilized world;
while in Arabia itself there was an old tradition of monotheism, that of the
hanif.
At the same time there was in Arabia a need for expansion. The slender
resources of the peninsula, grown slenderer since the destruction of the
irrigation works of the Himyarites, were insufficient for the growing
population. Throughout recorded history the desert populations had constantly
overflowed into the cultivated lands around; and now the pressure was
particularly strong.

The peculiar and tremendous genius of Mahomet
was exactly suited to these circumstances. He came from the holy city of Mecca,
a poor relation of its great clan, the Qoraishites. He had travelled and seen
the world, and he had studied its religions. In particular he was attracted by
Monophysite Christianity; but the doctrine of the Trinity seemed to him
inconsistent with the pure monotheism that he admired in the
hanif
tradition. The doctrine that he himself evolved, while it did not utterly
reject Christianity, was an amended and simplified form far more easily
acceptable to his people. His success as a religious leader was mainly due to
his complete understanding of the Arabs. Though far the ablest of them he
genuinely shared their feelings and their prejudices. In addition he possessed
extraordinary political skill. This combination of qualities enabled him in ten
years to build up out of nothing an empire that was ready to conquer the world.
In 622, the year of the Hegira, his only following was his household and a
small group of friends. In 632, when he died, he was lord of Arabia, and his
armies were crossing the frontiers. The sudden rise of adventurers is not
uncommon in the East but their fall is usually equally sudden. Mahomet,
however, left an enduring organization whose permanence was guaranteed by the
Koran. This remarkable work, compiled by the Prophet as the Word of God,
contains not only uplifting maxims and stories but also rules for the conduct
of life and for the governance of an empire and a complete code of laws. It was
simple enough to be accepted by his Arabian contemporaries and universal enough
to suit the needs of the great dominion that his successors were to build.
Indeed, the strength of Islam lay in its simplicity. There was one God in
Heaven, one Commander of the Faithful to rule on earth, and one law, the Koran,
by which he should rule. Unlike Christianity, which preached a peace that it
never achieved, Islam unashamedly came with a sword.

The First Arab
Invasion

The sword struck at the provinces of the Roman
Empire even during the lifetime of the Prophet, with some small and not very
successful raids into Palestine. Under Mahomet’s successor Abu Bakr, the policy
of expansion became manifest. The conquest of Arabia was completed by the
expulsion of the Persians from their dependency of Bahrein, while an Arab army
crossed through Petraea along the trade route to the south Palestine coast,
defeated the local governor, Sergius, somewhere near the Dead Sea, and advanced
to Gaza which it captured after a short siege. The citizens were treated
kindly, but the soldiers of the garrison became the first Christian martyrs to
the sword of Islam.

In 634 Abu Bakr was succeeded by Omar, who
inherited likewise his determination to extend Moslem power. Meanwhile the
Emperor Heraclius, who was still in northern Syria, realized that the Arab
invasions must be taken seriously. He was short of man-power. The losses during
the Persian war had been heavy. Since the end of the war he had disbanded many
regiments for economy’s sake; and there was no enthusiasm to join the army. All
over his Empire there had fallen that atmosphere of lassitude and pessimism
that so often after a long bitter war assails the victors no less than the
conquered. Nevertheless he sent his brother Theodore at the head of the troops
of the Syrian province to restore order in Palestine. Theodore met the two main
Arab armies together at Gabatha, or Ajnadain, south-west of Jerusalem and was
decisively defeated. The Arabs, secure in southern Palestine, next advanced up
the trade route that went east of the Jordan to Damascus and the Orontes
valley. Tiberias, Baalbek, and Homs fell into their hands without a struggle,
and Damascus capitulated after a short siege in August 635. Heraclius was now
seriously alarmed. With some difficulty he sent two armies southward. One was
formed of Armenian levies, under the Armenian prince Vahan, and of a large
number of Christian Arabs, headed by a sheikh of the Banu Ghassan. The other
was commanded by Theodore Trithyrius and consisted of mixed troops. On the news
of their approach the Moslems evacuated the Orontes valley and Damascus and
retired towards the Jordan. Trithyrius caught up with them at Jabbia in the
Hauran but was defeated. He managed, however, to hold a position on the river
Yarmuk, just south-east of the Sea of Galilee, till Vahan’s army could join
him. There, on 20 August 636, in a blinding sandstorm the decisive battle was
fought. The Christians had the larger army; but they were outmanoeuvred; and in
the midst of the fighting the Ghassanid prince and twelve thousand Christian
Arabs went over to the enemy. They were Monophysites and hated Heraclius; and
their pay was many months overdue. The treason had been easy to arrange. It
settled the issue. The Moslem victory was complete. Trithyrius and Vahan
perished with almost all their men. Palestine and Syria lay open to the
conquerors.

The Arab
Conquest of Syria

Heraclius was at Antioch when the news of the
battle reached him. He was utterly despondent; it was the hand of God
stretching out to punish him for his incestuous marriage with his niece
Martina. He had neither the men nor the money to defend the province further.
After a solemn service of intercession in the cathedral of Antioch he went down
to the sea and took ship to Constantinople, crying bitterly as he left the
shore: ‘Farewell, a long farewell to Syria.’

The Arabs quickly overran the country. The
heretic Christians submitted to them without demur. The Jews gave them active
help, serving as their guides. Only in the two great cities of Palestine,
Caesarea and Jerusalem, was there organized opposition, and at the fortresses
of Pella and Dara on the Persian frontier. At Jerusalem on the news of the
Yarmuk Sophronius had repaired the defences of the city. Then, hearing that the
enemy had reached Jericho, he collected together the holy relics of Christ and
sent them by night down to the coast to be taken to Constantinople. They should
not again fall into the hands of the infidel. Jerusalem withstood a siege of
over a year. Caesarea and Dara held out till 639. But by then they were lonely
outposts. The metropolis of the East, Antioch, had fallen the year before; and
the whole country, from the isthmus of Suez to the Anatolian mountains, was in
the hands of the Moslems.

They had meanwhile destroyed Rome’s ancient
rival, Persia. Their victory at Kadesiah in 637 gave them Iraq and a second
victory next year at Nekhavend gave them the Iranian plateau. King Yazdegerd
III, the last of the Sassanids, lingered on in Khorassan till 651. By then the
Arabs had reached his eastern frontiers, on the Oxus and the Afghan hills.

The Conquest of
Egypt

In December 639 the Moslem general ‘Amr, with
four thousand men, invaded Egypt. The administration of the province had been
chaotic since the end of the Persian occupation; and the present governor, the
Patriarch Cyrus of Alexandria, was both unwise and corrupt. He had been a
convert from Nestorianism and was the Emperor’s chief supporter in his
Monothelete doctrines, which he determined to force on the unwilling Copts. So
hated was his rule that ‘Amr had no difficulty in finding allies amongst his
subjects. Early in 640 ‘Amr entered the great frontier fortress of Pelusium,
after a two months’ siege. There he received reinforcements from the Caliph.
Next he advanced on Babylon (Old Cairo), where the imperial garrison was
concentrated. A battle at Heliopolis in August 640 forced the Romans to retire
to the citadel of Babylon, which held out till April 641. Meanwhile the Arabs
took over Upper Egypt. On the fall of Babylon, ‘Amr marched through the Fayyum,
its governor and garrison fleeing before him, to Alexandria. Cyrus had already
been recalled to Constantinople on the justified suspicion of having entered
into a treasonable pact with ‘Amr. But Heraclius died in February, and his
widow, the Empress-Regent Martina, was too insecure herself in Constantinople
to defend Egypt. Cyrus was sent back to Egypt to make what terms he could. In
November he went to ‘Amr at Babylon and signed the capitulation of Alexandria.
But meanwhile Martina had fallen and the new government repudiated Cyrus and
his treaty. ‘Amr had already broken his part in it by invading the Pentapolis
and Tripolitania. It seemed, however, impossible to maintain Alexandria, with
all the rest of Egypt now in Arab hands. The city capitulated in November 642.
But all hope was not yet lost. In 644 news came of ‘Amr’s disgrace and recall
to Medina. A new army was sent by sea from Constantinople, which easily
reoccupied Alexandria, early in 645, and which then marched on Fostat, the
capital that ‘Amr had founded near Babylon. ‘Amr returned to Egypt and routed
the imperial forces near Fostat. Their general, the Armenian Manuel, fell back
on Alexandria. Struck by the utter indifference of the Christian population
towards this attempt to recover the land for Christianity, he made no effort to
defend the city but re-embarked for Constantinople. The Coptic Patriarch
Benjamin restored Alexandria to the hands of ‘Amr.