Battle of Yarmouk Part II
Some helmets used gold similar to the silver helmets of the Persian Empire's army. The use of shields was common to protect faces and neck. The use of thick leather armor was typical of early Muslim soldiers as in the Byzantine army. The shielding included thick leather sheets or the lamellar armor - a shield made of thick leather sheets attached to each other - and a mail armor - a shield made of small metal rings connected in a particular pattern to form a mesh - pedestrians were much better shielded than cavalry. . Large wooden curtains were used. Muslims used the long spears, providing the infantry with a spear of 2.5 m and knights with a spear of 5.5 m. Pedestrians used short swords similar to Byzantine swords of Cladius; cavalry usually used long Persian swords. The arm of the arches was 2 meters in prosperity, similar in size to the famous English bow Longbow, the maximum effective range of the arch reached 150 m. The nobility was a Muslim infantry who demonstrated their effective influence against enemy cavalry.
Byzantine army
Days after the Muslim camping in the Yarmouk plain, the Byzantine army began the light-armed Jeblah ibn al-Ayham army, which advanced tentatively north of Wadi al-Raqqad. The right wing of the Byzantine army was at the southern end of the plain near the Yarmouk River and about a mile before the valleys of the Valley of the Overland. The left wing in the north, within walking distance of the beginning of the Jabia hills, where it was relatively exposed; Mahan deployed his imperial army facing east, with a 13-kilometer front line, where he wanted to cover all the distance between the Yarmouk depression in the south and the Roman route to Egypt in North, large distances were left between the Byzantine army battalions. The right wing was led by Gregory and left to Qanatir. The center is made up of the army of Dirjan and the Armenian army of Mahan. Both are under the command of Dirjan. The Romans brought in heavy armor divisions, the Armor Division, which were evenly distributed among the four Roman armies, placing each infantry army in the foreground, and the cavalry as a back-up force. Mahan deployed the Arab Christian Army, which rides horses and camels as a force for skirmishes, which obscures the main army until its arrival. According to ancient Islamic sources, Gregory's army used chains to tie the feet of soldiers who had pledged to die. The chains were ten men long and were used as a sign of unshakable courage, a feature of men, who thus demonstrated their desire to die and never withdraw. These chains also served as a guarantee that no loopholes could occur from enemy knights. However, contemporary historians have stated that the Byzantine army adopted the military form called the Roman Testudo, where soldiers stand shoulder to shoulder and armor is held upward and coordinated from 10 to 20 men so that they are protected from all sides of enemy projectiles, and each soldier provides cover for the soldier Next to him.
Reinforcement
The Byzantine cavalry was armed with long swords known as spathion. In addition to a light wooden shaft called Kontarion and a Toxarion arch with forty arrows in the shelf, hanging either from the saddle or from the soldier's belt. Heavy infantry known as Skoutatoi armed with swords and short spears. The Byzantine coat of arms carried a light armament and small armor, and the arch hangs from shoulder to back with a handful of arrows. Cavalry shielding included an armor mail, a helmet, a pendant, and protruding cilia from the helmet to protect parts of the face. The infantry had a similar shielding with a helmet and a chest and leg shield. Thick lamellar armor and scale armor - armor made up of many small plates attached to each other - were also used as support materials for leather armor or clothing.
Tension in the Byzantine army
The strategy of Khalid ibn al-Walid forced the withdrawal from the occupied territories and brought all the soldiers together for one decisive battle that forced the Byzantines to assemble all their armies into one army as a natural reaction. The Byzantines avoided decades of engagement in decisive, large-scale battles, and the combination of their forces created logistical tension for which the empire was unwilling. Damascus was the closest logistics base, but the prince of Damascus Mansour could not support the massive Byzantine army gathered in the Yarmouk plain. Therefore, several clashes were said to have taken place between the Byzantine army and the local population, where the summer was at the end and the inevitable care of cattle to support the army. Sources at the Byzantine Palace accused Mahan of treason as disobeying Heraclius' orders not to fight the battle on a large scale with the Arabs. Given the distant impact of the Muslim armies in Yarmouk, however, Vahan had little choice but to respond gently. Relations between Byzantine leaders were also tense. There was a power struggle between Truthorius, Vahan, Garagis and Qantar. Jebla ibn al-Ayham, the leader of the Arab Christian community, was largely ignored, which damaged the course of the battle because of the ignorance of the Byzantines in the nature of the local land. An atmosphere of mistrust prevailed between Greece, Armenians and Christian Arabs.
Alliance of the armies of the Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine army consisted of five armies, where Mahan (or Vahan) king of Armenia led his Armenian army, and the Slavic or Russian Prince Buqinator led his army of Slavic peoples. (All riders of horses and camels), and the entire European armies under the leadership of Gregory and Dragan, where Dragan took the command of the armies combined. Theodorus, the brother of Tsar Heraclius, also participated in the battle, an "adulteration" of Arab references, as well as a "dargus or scalab," a eunuch of Heraclius who led thousands of Roman fighters.
Gregory's soldiers were dominated by the Roman armies and tied their legs to chains to express their determination to withstand under all circumstances, a symbol of courage, and chains could be used against Muslim horses in the event of a breach in the Gregory army. This is what made the movement of soldiers slow in any case.
The battlefield and the Muslim army
Khaled reorganized the army after assuming the command of the army, making a quarter of the Muslim army of cavalry, and they were about 10 thousand cavalry, and the army was divided into 36-40 (Cordosa), a battalion of infantry (Cordosa) distributed to four infantry brigades and the leaders of the quarters (Abu Obeida bin Surgeon and Sharhbeel bin Hasna, and more bin Abi Sufyan and Amr ibn al-Aas). And on the starboard Maaz bin Jabal, and on the facilitator jet bin Osama Kanani, and on the men Hashem bin Ataba bin Abi Waqas, and on the cavalry Khalid bin Walid, and each brigade consists of nine brigades were organized on the basis of tribal or tribal grouping, so that each one fights alongside His Muslim brother from his tribe or tribe, and the princes of the Crradis that day:
Paranoid bin Udai calf Bakri.
Ayadh bin Ghanam Fihri Qurashi.
Kabbath bin Ashim Laith Kanani.
Hashem bin threshold syphilis Qurashi.
Suhail bin Amr al - Ameri Qurashi.
Ikrima bin Abi ignorance Makhzoumi Qurashi.
Abdul Rahman bin Khalid bin Walid Makhzoumi Qurashi.
Habib bin Muslim Fahri Qurashi.
Safwan bin illiterate Jamhi Qurashi.
Saeed bin Khalid bin Aas Umayyad Qurashi.
Khalid bin Saeed bin Aas Umayyad Qurashi.
Abdullah bin Qais.
Muawiyah bin Hadeej Al-Tjaibi Al-Kindi.
Zubair bin Awam Asadi Qurashi.
Each brigade was assigned a reconnaissance group to monitor the entire battlefield. The front line was 18 kilometers, with Muslims heading west against the Romans and south to the right of the Rumi.
Qais bin Hubira was assigned to lead the cavalry teams, which act as reserve units to intervene in the event of any possible retreat of Islamic brigades.
Dirar ibn al-Azwar was acting on behalf of Khalid ibn al-Walid to lead the mobile unit in case of Khalid's involvement in combat in the battle.
The battle lasted for six days, during which the Muslims responded with rum attacks every day. Khalid bin Al Waleed used his "fast moving cavalry company", which he himself led to move lightly from one place to another where the Muslim army was retreating under pressure from the Romans. The two sides at the end of the day to his initial ranks before the fighting or to his camps.
This was the case during the first four days when the losses of the Romans in numbers were greater than the losses of the Muslim army, and on the fifth day did not happen much after Khalid rejected the "three-day truce", which was presented by the famous Roman saying "We are in a hurry to finish this work"
On the sixth day, Khalid's strategy shifted from defense to attack.
The battle began on August 15, 636. By dawn, both armies lined up to fight separated by less than a mile. It was recorded in the Muslim diary that before the battle began, George, the commander of the right center in the Byzantine army, turned to the Muslim army and entered Islam, killing a martyr on the same day as a warrior alongside the Muslims. The Byzantines first began sending their heroes with Muslim swordsmen in bilateral fighting. Muslim swordsmen were particularly trained in swords and spears to kill as many enemy leaders as possible in order to discourage them. In the middle of the day, after losing a number of commanders in bilateral fighting, Vahan ordered a limited attack by a third of his infantry to test the strength of the Muslim Army's strategy, and if he could make a hole in any weakened area of the battle. However, the Byzantine attack lacked insistence; many Imperial Army soldiers were not used to fighting and were unable to put pressure on seasoned Muslim soldiers. The fighting was generally moderate, although in some places it was intense. Vahan did not support his advanced infantry, as by sunset both armies had broken a petition and both returned to his camp.
Mahan decided to launch the surprise attack at dawn, when the Muslim army was unprepared, but Khalid had secretly put forward strong defense points during the night, losing the element of surprise planned by the Byzantines, and the battle and retreated both sides of the Muslim army, starboard and soft, where intervention Khalid, with his fast band, moved once in the starboard to stop the advance of the Romans, and then in the facilitator, Khalid here divided his rapid mobile unit to send part of it led by Dirar ibn al-Azwar to the heart of the Roman army from the right side of it, where in this attack Dirar managed to kill the Byzantine commander Dragan Two thousand Byzantine Roman cavalry Yen were to guard him.
The killing of Dragan and the failure of the Mahan plan left a devastating impact on the psyche of the Romanian fighters, while Khaled's success in repelling the attack had the strongest effect on boosting the morale of Muslim soldiers.
After the events of the previous day and the killing of a senior Roman commander, Dragan, the Roman attack focused on a specific point of separation of the Islamic Army, the point between the starboard under the leadership of Amr ibn al-Aas, offset by the "slave" commander of the Slavs, and the heart of the Islamic army from the right side under Sharhabeel meets Mahan, and the attack on the Amr ibn al-Aas brigade, which initially managed to hold out before the numerical supremacy of the Roma played its part, began to retreat Amr ibn al-As's soldiers back towards their camp, as Sharhabeel's soldiers in the next brigade began to retreat. The Muslim Cavalry Brigades intervened to repel the attack by turning around the left of the Roman, from the northern end of each brigade, and then Khalid again intervened with his fast-moving group to attack Jund Mahan's applicants against the Sharhabeel Brigade. The attack was repulsed and the Romans retreated to their original positions as they were before the battle began. The evening came to end this day.
A similar attack on the same side was repulsed because of the exhaustion of the previous day, as Mahan thought and plans. Sharhabil retreated in front of the Armenian army heavily backed by Jeblah's Arab Christian cavalry, and Amr ibn al-Aas retreated before the Slavic army. Sharhabeel was under intense pressure and the signs of exhaustion began.
Before Khaled intervened with his fast-moving squad to take part in the response of the Roman advance, Abu Obeida ordered Ibn Al-Jarrah and Yazid to begin the attack on the army to occupy the two sectors opposite to them, the right part of the heart and the Roman corridor and not enable them to carry out the comprehensive attack. Khalid bin Al Waleed was able to carry out clever maneuvers that led to the decline of the Armenians.
On the other hand, the fighting rum with the army of Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah and increased the exposure of the Muslim soldiers to violent throwing teeters led to the loss of much of their sight as a result of their injuries in their eyes, including: Abu Sufyan and Mughira bin Division Qais ibn Makshouh and al-Ashtar al-Nakha'i, the day of the loss of the eyes, and the retreat of the Muslim armies, the army of Obeida and the army of Yazid back.
The signs of defeat loomed, but Ikrima bin Abi Jahl club Mujahideen to the oath to victory or martyrdom, he answered his call 400 Mujahideen fighters and fought trying to stop the rum, and stopped the encroachment of the rum after all killed, but they killed many more than 400 Byzantine fighters, Akrama and his son Amr were fatally injured In this incident, Ikrima knew the success of the Muslims to repel the attack and praise God before he died of his wounds, to come dark and end that day.
On this day Khalid refused an offer to "Mahan" to stop the fighting a few days, and Khalid bin Walid knew that the determination of the Romans to fight is no longer the same and the Muslims have so far taken a defensive strategy in the hostilities, so now Khalid decided to switch to attack, and made changes to the Cavalry divides into a unified combat brigade, making his rapid unit in its heart, and Khaled plans to use this new secret to attack the Roman cavalry with the aim of isolating them from the Roman infantry, so that the infantry who form the nucleus of the Byzantine armies without any protection from the cavalry protect them from side and rear attacks, and at the same time Plan an attack on The soft Byzantine response towards the shelf to the west.
While the facilitator of the Muslim Army led by Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan and the left section of the heart led by Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah began to fight on their foreheads, Khalid attacked the company of the Byzantine-dominated united cavalry, and at the same time split a section of the cavalry group to attack the left side of the Byzantine facilitator (as pictured). At the same time, Amr ibn al-Aas, the leader of al-Maimana, launched an attack on the Byzantine-Roman facilitator of the Slavic majority, led by archways.
The Byzantine facilitator led by Qantar survived both front and left attacks, but with the loss of support from Byzantine cavalry teams, who were preoccupied with repelling the Muslim cavalry, Qantar's forces retreated to the left side of the heart of the Roman army where the Armenians were fighting Mahan.
After seeing this transformation, Amr ibn al-Aas, the leader of the Muslim domination, used these moments to launch an attack on the left side of the heart of the Roman army from his left side. Meanwhile, Sharhabil bin Hasna, commander of the right section of the Islamic Army's heartland, stressed his attack on the Byzantine heart from the front.
Now, the left wing of the Byzantine army retreated and the Muslims took advantage of this and continued their progress.Here, Khalid instructed the Knights to leave the main fighting going on and to return to the main unit to isolate the Byzantine cavalry from their infantry and keep them completely away from the Byzantine army towards the north. When Mahan saw this, he invited all the Roman cavalry to assemble behind the heart of the Byzantine army to organize a counterattack against the Muslim cavalry, but Mahan was not fast enough; Khaled quickly advanced to attack the cavalry during their gathering, both from the front and side while they were in maneuvers to prepare for the opposite attack. The lightly armed Muslims were more qualified and even superior in terms of speed of maneuver and maneuver, where they could attack and retreat quickly and return to attack again, and the Byzantine cavalry rushed to the north in the midst of chaos and randomness, leaving the infantry to their fate, Among them was Jibla's passenger forces, scattering toward Damascus.
After the dispersal of the Byzantine cavalry divisions, Khaled became the nucleus of the Byzantine Roman army, led by Mahan, to attack them from behind. The Armenians were strong fighters who were on the verge of victory over the Muslims two days ago when they penetrated the Muslim army, but under attacks from three directions at the same time, the Cavalry Division led by Khalid from the back, Amr soldiers from the left and Sharhabil soldiers from the front and without the support of the cavalry. In addition to the imbalance created by the Slavs, led by the retreating barrages, the Armenians had no chance of steadfastness and were defeated.
After the defeat of the Armenians, all Byzantine armies were now defeated.
But when the Byzantine forces arrived at the narrow crossing on the river, a group of Muslim cavalry led by Dirar ibn al-Azwar awaited them. As part of Khaled's plan, the night before, a 500-man company of cavalry was sent to fill the narrow crossing, which is only 500 meters wide. In fact, it was this path that Khalid Ibn Al Walid wanted the Rom to follow in his retreat if his plan worked.
Now Muslim infantrymen from the east and Khalid bin al-Waleed knights from the north are advancing to the Muslim cavalry unit that monitors the narrow crossing on its western side. To the south there was the deep cliff of the Yarmouk River, to which Byzantine forces retreated and the blockade began.
The final phase of the battle began when most of the Byzantine forces defeated the shelf under the influence of fighting from the front.
By then, the Byzantine army had lost all the information and connections, and reached the point that all military commanders avoided. Find a way to escape through the cliff and without success, some fell in the cliff, while others fell dead or captured, ending the battle of Yarmouk.
Khaled bin Al-Walid was not present on the sixth evening after the victory and the end of the battle in the Muslim camp. God has killed Mahan. It was customary at the time that the battle ended with the escape of the broken army, so the last thing Mahan and his defeated soldiers expected was to follow Khaled.
The aftermath of the battle
Khaled ibn al-Walid moved north as soon as the operation ended, chasing the retreating Byzantine soldiers; he met them near Damascus and attacked them. The Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Army Mahan, who had fled the inevitable fate of the rest of his soldiers during the battle, was killed. Khaled Ibn al-Walid then opened the city of Damascus and its residents are said to have welcomed him. When news of the tragic defeat reached Heraclius in the city of Antioch, he became shattered and was blamed for the bad of his actions as the marriage of his niece Martina, who was forced to lose him. Had Hercules had the necessary resources, he might have made another attempt to reopen the lost provinces. But he still has neither men nor enough money to defend his regions. Instead, he withdrew to Antioch Cathedral asking for intercession. He summoned his advisers in the cathedral to look at the causes of defeat. He was unanimously informed that loss was a decision of the Lord and as a result of the sins of the people, including them, and he accepted this interpretation. Heraclius was then taken aboard a ship to Constantinople at night, and was said to have made a final farewell to Syria when his ship sailed. You will have them "abandoned Hercules Syria taking with him the sacred relic - the True Cross - with other relics for the preservation of the Arab invaders, all of which were preserved in Jerusalem. Parthia secretly transported Jerusalem by sea. The emperor was said to have feared the sea, so they built a floating bridge across the Bosphorus to reach Constantinople. After abandoning the Levant, he began to assemble his remaining forces to defend Anatolia and Egypt instead. Muslims made little effort to occupy Anatolia, but continued to be subjected to annual raids, destroying socio-economic activities in the eastern Anatolia region. Byzantine Armenia fell to the Muslims in 638-39, after which Heraclius built the Sadd region in central Anatolia after ordering the evacuation of all forts east of Tartus. Finally, in 639-642, Muslims conquered and conquered Byzantine Egypt, led by Amr ibn al-Aas, commander of the right wing of the Muslim army at the Battle of Yarmouk.
After the battle
The Battle of Yarmouk was one of the greatest Islamic battles, and the most far-reaching impact on the Islamic conquest movement. Sadness breaks, and this great victory resulted in the Muslims settling in the Levant, completing the conquest of all its cities, and then continuing the conquest march to North Africa.
The Battle of Yarmouk can be seen as an example in military history when a small military force under wise leadership can overcome a military force that outnumbers it. The leaders of the Imperial Army allowed their enemy to choose the battlefield they wanted. Even then they had no significant tactical weakness. Khalid Bin Al Waleed knew from the outset that before a very large force until the last day of the battle he ran an effective defense plan appropriate to his relatively limited resources. When he decided to attack on the last day of the battle, he did so with imagination, foresight and courage, which none of the Byzantine leaders had imagined. Though he led a small force numerically and desperately needed all the men to be gathered, he had the audacity and farsightedness to split a squad of his imagination the night before his attack to secure the vital path for his enemy to withdraw.
Khalid ibn al-Walid was one of the finest cavalry commanders in history, and his use of installed power throughout the battle demonstrated his understanding of the potential and power of cavalry soldiers. His moving imagination squad made quick moves from one point to another, always shifting the course of events where he was ahead, and then quickly rushed to another place on the battlefield to effectively change the course the battle was going on. Mahan and his military commanders never dealt effectively with the cavalry, as their horses' squads played no important role in the battle but were kept as a static reserve force for most of the battle. The Byzantines never pushed a decisive attack even when they achieved what could have been a decisive breakthrough on the fourth day, failing to exploit it. All Byzantine leaders lacked the capacity to find solutions, due to internal disagreements that created difficulties in the ability to lead the army. Moreover, many of the soldiers of the Arab Christian support forces in the Byzantine army were recruited as an alternative to paying taxes, while the Arab Islamic Army was composed mostly of experienced fighters.
Heracles' original strategy of eliminating Muslim soldiers in the Levant needed speedy implementation and deployment, but commanders on the ground never committed themselves to these elements. Ironically, Khaleda fought with a small tactical force, the unimplemented Hercules plan, in order to gain rapid deployment and speedy maneuver. Khaled was able to temporarily gather enough force in specific places on the battlefield to defeat the Byzantine army separately. Mahan has never been able to benefit from his numerical superiority, in part because of inappropriate terrain that prevented the large scale in the deployment of soldiers. However, Mahan did not try at any stage in the battle to gather a large force to achieve a decisive breakthrough in the ranks of the Muslim army. Although he was in attack for the first five days, his soldiers' line remained largely stable. This happened in complete comparison with Khaled's very successful plan on the last day of the battle. When he regrouped practically all his imagination and led them through a great maneuver that led to victory. In his book Islam in War, George F. Nafziger described the battle: "Although the Battle of Yarmouk is not very popular today, it is one of the most decisive battles in the history of mankind. The modern world would have been very different and unspecified.
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