Due to the largely accepted idea that `the Arab conquests
were made possible by the opponents’ weaknesses rather than by the power of the
nascent Muslim armies’, pre-conquest Arab forces have received very limited
attention. How such forces were brought together, organised and led have yet to
be studied in any real detail. The main reason for this is the state of the
source material. Unsurprisingly, aside from their deployments as scouts within
their own armies, the Romans and Persians are silent about the military
organisation of the Muslims, while the Arab accounts present their own
problems. Their religious nature often attributes victory to the convictions of
those involved and their submission to the Will of God rather than military
organisation, skill and bravery. Events can be distorted to further an agenda
or by the employing of literary topoi to bolster an otherwise unknown part of
the narrative. Later Islamic sources also tended to portray their predecessors
in anachronistic terms, projecting the social, political and military
organisation of their periods back onto that of early Islam, imposing `a false
sense of organisation and method on military manoeuvres, which were, in
reality, much more chaotic’. Such an abundance of potential problems makes any
attempt to reconstruct any aspect of the early Muslim military fraught with
danger and undermines any chances of firm conclusions.
The earliest Muslim military actions would have been a
combination of caravan looting and raids against neighbouring Bedouin tribes to
bolster resources, seek vengeance, discourage potential enemies, claim
strategic points or enforce religious conversion. Such raids reflected the
enemies that the fledgling Muslim army faced and how rare true pitched battle
was in Arab warfare. They also `contributed a great deal to the Muslim
community in terms of wealth, experience and the achievement of political and
strategic goals.’ How- ever, as the enemies of Islam grew in size and stature
such an unstructured army would not have been successful, forcing Muhammad and
his advisers to improvise and incorporate a more structured approach to
administration and organisation.
Perhaps the most immediate change brought about by the rise
of Islam came in the realm of army leadership. Aside from tribal leaders, who
owed their status to their ancestry and personal success, pre-Muslim Arab war
parties had little in the way of a command structure. Under Islam, ultimate
military authority, itself something of a novelty across much of the Arabian
Peninsula, lay with Muhammad and his caliphal successors; however, as campaigns
became further removed from Medina, it became necessary to appoint individuals
to military command. In choosing men of certain tribes for certain commands,
the Prophet and his caliphal successors demonstrated an under- standing of
tribal politics while the appointments of men like Khalid and Amr, later
converts to Islam, showed that Muhammad was willing to promote military talent
ahead of standing within the Muslim community. It should also be pointed out
that the repeated instances of rapid communication and dictation of military
movements attributed to the caliphs in Medina should be treated with
scepticism. Some major redeployments may have been ordered by the caliphs but
the majority of decisions will have been taken on the ground by those men the
caliph had entrusted to achieve the strategic objectives of the campaign.
The leadership of skilled individuals such as Khalid may
have encouraged the emergence of a more structured military beyond its tribal
make-up. The Muslim army does seem to have used similar formations to late
antique Roman and Persian armies with right and left wings and a centre.
Advance guards, vanguards and rearguards are also mentioned. An even more
organised structure is recorded at the Battle of Qadisiyyah, where the Muslim
commander, Sa’d b. Abi Waqqas, had divided his force into sub-groups of ten.
However, it is likely that such subdivisions were superimposed on the past by
later writers for, even with this interposing of a religio-political hierarchy
and the appearance of numerous independent corps during the Ridda Wars, there
was little sign of what would be described as a regular, even semi-permanent
army.
As with other antique forces, the early Islamic army was
largely divided into cavalry and infantry. However, a tentative warning must be
sounded regarding the blurring of the two as cavalrymen would often fight
dismounted and infantry could be transported on horse or camel. The vast
majority of Arab horse of the early period was light cavalry used as raiders
and skirmishers or as lancers, rather than horse archers or heavy cavalry such
as the cataphracts of the Roman and Persian armies. It is also worth noting
that horses were not abundant in Arabia; a fact that might explain why Arab
cavalry relied more on mobility and skirmishing to avoid costly casualties both
in terms of men and horses. It might also partly explain why it was infantry
that bore the brunt of the fighting in Arab warfare. The core of the Muslim
infantry was made up of swordsmen who carried a straight, hilted blade – the
sayf – that was used for thrusting and slashing. They also made use of
iron-tipped spears and javelins. Another sizeable part of the Muslim infantry
used the archery skills that hunting with a bow honed. The Arab bow seems to
have been a smaller variant than its Persian counterpart but it is possible
that the more rapid fire offered by the smaller bow allowed Muslim archers to
more effectively shield their infantry and cavalry.
Little physical material remains of early Muslim defensive
equipment, and that which does survive is difficult to date or source. Muslim
sources rarely speak of military equipment unless the articles themselves were
famous, such as the swords, shields, bows and lances of Muhammad, and it is
likely that most Muslim soldiers will have fought without the full military
panoply. Instances of Arab chainmail armour do survive, although how widespread
its use was in the Muslim army before the conquests is difficult to gauge. Mail
was expensive to buy or make, meaning that perhaps only the richest Arab
soldiers or those who had served in the Roman or Persian armies will have had
such armour. Helmets may have been less prevalent before the conquests with a
hood of mail called a coif being used instead to protect the head. Shields were
carried by both cavalry and infantry and, while they are not well described in
the sources, the few surviving descriptions suggest that the normal Arab shield
was wooden or leather made into a `small disk, certainly less than a metre in
diameter’.
A less significant section of the Muslim army was that given
over to siege engines. Most Arab settlements had some kind of fortifications but
few were prepared for a prolonged siege so the Muslims will have had little
experience of siege warfare. Siege equipment such as the swing-beam manjaniq,
similar to the trebuchet of Europe, is seen in later Muslim armies; however,
the extent to which such machines were used by the Arabs of the 630s is difficult
to say. A manjaniq was deployed during the siege of Ta’if in 630, although its
lack of success against modest defences is telling, which may explain why such
machines were more likely to be used as anti-personnel weapons rather than
against fortifications. There is also no evidence for the torsion-based
predecessors of such machines, which further suggests that Arab siege craft was
largely basic. However, while it is easy to downplay the siege abilities of
tribal societies such as the Arabs and the Avars, they proved themselves to be
quick learners and highly adaptive to such situations. The Arabs in particular
seem to have quickly realised that `victory often depended on preliminary
political success rather than sheer military power’. With this realisation,
Muhammad, his successors and their commanders proved themselves adept at
separating a settlement from its allies through negotiation or blockade and
then offering `protection and toleration in return for a fixed tribute’. Through
such a combination, even the most major of cities – Damascus, Ctesiphon,
Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria – would prove to be within the grasp of
Muslim forces.
With the advent of Islam’s temporal power, a vague outline
of a recruiting process begins to emerge. Volunteers or prescribed tribes
gathered at Medina or at a predetermined site, were formed into an army and
then sent into the field. Most of the muqatila – `fighting men’ – who served in
the Arab armies were of Bedouin origin, which is unsurprising given that
raiding, fighting and familiarity with riding, spears, swords and archery were
integral parts of their daily lives. However, the rapid expansion of the Muslim
community brought with it a wider spectrum of potential soldier. There is some
evidence that the Muslims equipped some of their more settled or poorer members
to fight. Alliances with Jewish, Christian and other non-Muslim tribes played
major roles in the military survival and successes of Muhammad and his `Umma in
its earliest years. Clients and slaves were also present in Muslim armies with
the likelihood being that not all of them were Arabic in origin. Defection also
added to the military strength of the Muslim armies while at the same time
undermining its opponents.
The recorded sizes of Muslim armies are often hard to accept
due to their seemingly formulaic nature. They are usually portrayed as being
particularly small in number throughout their earliest history, such as raiding
parties featuring forces numbering less than 100. However, the rapidity with
which Muhammad was able to field armies of up to and beyond 10,000 might be
cause for some suspicion – 300 at Badr; 700 at Uhud; 3,000 at Mu’ta, 10,000 at
Mecca and 12,000 at Hunayn. During the attacks on Roman and Persian territory,
the Muslim armies are also regarded as being on the small side with perhaps as
few as 6,000 fighting at Qadisiyyah and the garrisons in southern Mesopotamia
perhaps only numbering up to 4,000.
This seeming paucity of Arab soldiers must also be tempered
by the exaggerated reporting of the armies of their Roman and Persian foes. The
Great Powers probably maintained a numerical superiority over the Muslims but
it was almost certainly not as overwhelming as the suggestions of the Muslim
sources, which at times attempt to put armies in the order of hundreds of
thousands in the field. Many of the proposed numbers for Muslim armies need to
be viewed from a contemporary perspective. The previous two centuries or more
had seen a marked decline in the size of armies deployed by the Romans and
Persians; so much so that Mauricius considered an army of 5,000-15,000 to be
well proportioned and 15,000-20,000 to be large. The fact that the Muslims may
have been able to field a force of anything between 20,000 and 40,000 at Yarmuk
suggests that the numerical gradient they faced was not as severe as is usually
thought.
However, in spite of some advances compared to the
pre-Islamic period, the early Muslim military remained simplistic. Aside from
perhaps the greater desert mobility that camels provided, they were at a
technological disadvantage to their Roman and Persian adversaries and, while
perhaps not overly serious, they were at a numerical disadvantage too.
Organisationally, even after the successes of the Ridda Wars, the Muslim army
was still closer to a tribal war party than it was to the professional forces
that the Romans could field. They were not paid nor provided any benefits and
their enrolling in the army was not recorded in any way. However, these men
were fuelled by the prospect of booty, encouraged by the martial bonds of their
tribe and buoyed by the morale offered to them by their religion, and, once
they were brought together under the Muslim banner and led in battle by a cadre
of skillful practitioners of war, they were to prove an increasingly
irresistible force. And in the 630s, the Great Powers were about to find out
how devastating such a force could be.
