August 20, 636. Battles that change history: the battle of Yarmuk, the fall of the two great empires of antiquity, Roman and Persian, and the rise of a new faith.

 August 20, 636. Battles that change history: the battle of Yarmuk, the fall of the two great empires of antiquity, Roman and Persian, and the rise of a new faith.

1º. The 7th century began badly for the Roman-Eastern Empire... and ended worse. Maurice was a competent emperor-general (the first in 200 years to personally put himself in charge of the legions), but he lacked "psychological empathy" for his troops: the reductions of the soldiers' pay, the refusal to pay ransoms for the prisoners, and the intention to force them to winter north of the Danube provoked the uprising (602) of the armies, which proclaimed emperor the centurion Phokas, and executed Maurice and his sons, putting an end to the dynasty of Justinian. By then, the Empire still controlled the Mediterranean and 2/3 of the old Empire. But **King Khosrow II of Persia**, who owed his throne to Mauritius, with the excuse of avenging him, **invaded the Empire**. Meanwhile, **in 608 a rebellion broke out in Carthage led by the general Heraclius against the unpopular Phokas, who was executed in 610**. But in the chaos, the **Persians continued to advance**, taking Egypt and Asia Minor, and their allies the Avars invaded the Balkans, plundering cities and fields. **Heraclius, instead of confronting directly, marched through Armenia and invaded the heart of the Persian Empir**e, and did not desist even when Avars and Persians besieged Constantinople (626): the Roman fleet saved the capital, Heraclius defeated the Persians in the battle of Nineveh (627) and Khosrow II was overthrown by his son (628) who signed peace with the Romans. **The long war (602-28) left both Empires exhausted, and in Persia a chaotic civil war broke out (628-32)** in which up to 8 kings succeeded each other; the final victor, Yazdergard III, was a child of 8 years old. None of the Empires was prepared for the great threat that came to them from the deserts.

2º. While the Empires were fighting, in Arabia, a prophet, **Mohammed, had unified the Arab tribes with a new faith: Islam**. It was h**is successors in the Caliphate who launched a first great expedition in Syria **in 633-5, taking the great cities of Damascus and Edessa. An aged **Heraclius organized from Antioch a counter-attack** in 636, while concluding an alliance with the Persians of Yazdergard III. Although the number of the Romano-Oriental forces is exaggerated, it does seem to have outnumbered the Arabs, and was composed of large multinational contingents: Germans, Franks and Lombards, Avars and Khazars horsemen, Slavs, Armenians, Christian Arabs. The commanding general was Theodore, the imperial treasurer, but the command rested with the veteran Armenian general Vahan, and there were **disputes between the commanders of the different contingents**, with mistrust between Greco-Romans, Armenians and Arab-Christians. For three months Vahan tried to weaken the enemy; but instead, it was the Romans who weakened, while the Arabs brought reinforcements, and Vahan decided to fight a great battle.

3º. **The battle of Yarmuk went on for 5 days (15-20 August 636) with continuous advances and retreats**. **On the 20th, the Muslim leader Khalid concentrated his cavalry in a flank attack** against the Roman left wing; at night, he had sent a group of **500 horsemen to block the bridge **where the Romans, in case of defeat, would retreat. The strategy worked: the Roman left wing collapsed, the Muslim cavalry charged against the Roman infantry, which fought a general retreat, and as the bridge was blocked, they were massacred. Although the numbers of troops and casualties are undoubtedly exaggerated, **the destruction of the imperial field army is clear**. In **November of the same year 636, the Muslim armies**, which had invaded the Persian Empire, won another resounding **victory at al-Qadisiyya over the Persians**. Although the initial use of elephants by the Persians frightened the Muslim horses, they managed to kill one, and the escape of the elephants overwhelmed the Persian troops themselves, which the Muslims took advantage of: the Persians were massacred,** the capital Ctesiphon was evacuated**; a second defeat at Nihavand **in 642 ended the collapse of the millenary Persian empire**.

4º. **The consequences of Yarmuk and al-Qadisiyya were remarkable**. The Roman Empire, ruined, was unable to organize a counter-attack: **Syria and Egypt, controlled for 700 years, fell in 637 and 642, and Africa in 697**. Although the big cities (Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage) were Romanized, in the countryside (where most of the population lived) they still spoke Aramaic, Coptic or Punic, professed local creeds of Christianity, opposed to the orthodoxy of Constantinople, so the local population accepted the change of masters, because the Muslims accepted religious freedom in exchange for a tribute that was also cheaper than that imposed by Constantinople. Thus, **the Empire lost three of its richest provinces and the control of the Mediterranean Sea that it had controlled for almost eight centuries,** being reduced to what today are Turkey, Greece, Albania and southern Italy. On the other hand, **the millenary Persian** empire (-550/642) that under Achaemenids, Seleucids, Parthians and Sassanids, had maintained in good part a cultural continuity, **was absorbed by the new conquerors,** although the Arabization was not complete, surviving the Fars or Persian language, which is still spoken in Iran (ancient Persia). The Caliphate continued to expand in the West and East, until it was stopped by the Romano-Orians in the siege of Constantinople (718) and the battle of Akroinon (740), by the Franks in Poitiers (732) and the Chinese in Talas (751). But in the territories dominated by them began a long process of Islamization and Arabization that completely changed the course of history.