The Stream

On August 20, 636, the most consequential battle in world history took place: the Battle of Yarmuk. Not only did it decide whether the Arabian creed would thrive or die, it became a source of inspiration and instruction for jihadists throughout the centuries — right down to the Islamic State, or “ISIS.”

Yet very few in the West are even aware of this battle, much less its influence on modern jihad.

The story begins with the prophet of Islam. In 632, Muhammad died, having united the Arabs under Islam. Afterward, some tribes refused to pay taxes, or zakat, to the caliph Abu Bakr. Branding them apostates, the caliph launched the Ridda (“apostasy”) Wars, in which tens of thousands were beheaded, crucified, or burned alive. By 633, these wars ended, and in 634, Abu Bakr died. It fell to the second caliph, Omar bin al-Khattab (r. 634–44), to direct the united Arabs against “the infidel.”

Thousands of Arabs quickly flooded into Christian Syria, slaughtering and plundering in the name of jihad. Emperor Heraclius, fresh from a decade of war with Persia, raised his legions. Roman forces clashed with the invaders at Ajnadayn in 634 and Marj al-Saffar in 635. Yet, as Muslim chronicler al-Baladhuri writes, “by Allah’s help, the enemies of Allah were routed and shattered into pieces, a great many being slaughtered.”

The Yarmuk River Valley

By spring 636, Heraclius had assembled a large multiethnic army, roughly 30,000 strong. Muslim forces, numbering around 24,000 — with women, children, slaves, camels, and tents in tow — gathered along the banks of the Yarmuk River in Syria. The battlefield was dominated by two ravines, each 100 to 200 feet deep — a deadly pitfall for anyone fleeing.

The Arabs sent an urgent message to Caliph Omar: “The dog of the Romans, Heraclius, has called on us all who bear the cross, and they have come against us like a swarm of locusts.” Reinforcements were dispatched.

Heraclius appointed Vahan, an Armenian veteran of the Persian Wars, as commander. The Arabs were led by Abu Ubaida, but Khalid bin al-Walid — better known as the “Sword of Allah” — commanded thousands of horsemen and influenced strategy.

Before battle, Vahan and Khalid met under a flag of truce. Vahan offered food and coin in exchange for an Arab withdrawal. Khalid responded: “It was not hunger that brought us here, but we Arabs are in the habit of drinking blood, and we are told the blood of the Romans is the sweetest of its kind, so we came to shed your blood and drink it.”

A Blunt Conversation

Vahan’s diplomatic mask dropped:

So, we thought you came seeking what your brethren always sought [money/extortion]… But, alas, we were wrong. You came killing men, enslaving women, plundering wealth, destroying buildings… Better people had tried to do the same but always ended up defeated… As for you, there is no lower and more despicable people — wretched, impoverished Bedouins… All we ask is that you leave our lands. But if you refuse, we will annihilate you!

Khalid responded by calling on Vahan to embrace Islam, warning:

“If you refuse, there can only be war between us… And you will face men who love death as you love life.” Vahan’s reply was simple: “Do what you like. We will never forsake our religion or pay you jizya.”

Negotiations were over.

War began with a grisly display: An additional 8,000 Muslim fighters appeared before the Roman camp carrying the severed heads of 4,000 Christians atop their spears, the remnants of 5,000 reinforcements ambushed en route. Then, as resounding cries of “Allahu akbar” filled the Muslim camp, those Muslims standing behind the remaining 1,000 Christian captives shoved them down and proceeded to carve off their heads before the eyes of their coreligionists, whom Arabic sources describe as looking on in “utter bewilderment.”

On the eve of battle, “the Muslims spent the night in prayer and recitation of the Quran,” writes historian A.I. Akram, “and reminded each other of the two blessings that awaited them: either victory and life or martyrdom and paradise.”

Women and Children

No such titillation awaited the Christians. They were fighting for life and limb, for family and faith. Thus, during his pre-battle speech, Vahan explained that “these Arabs who stand before you seek to . . . enslave your children and women.”

Another general warned the men to fight hard or else the Arabs “shall conquer your lands and ravish your women.” Such fears were not unwarranted. Even as the Romans were kneeling in pre-battle prayer, Arab general Abu Sufyan was prancing on his war steed, waving his spear, and exhorting the Muslims to “jihad in the way of Allah,” so that they might seize the Christians’ “lands and cities, and enslave their children and women.”

The battle lasted six days. Early on, Roman forces broke through Muslim lines. But Arab women, armed with stones and tent poles, chastised retreating men: “May Allah curse those who run from the enemy! Do you wish to give us to the Christians? … If you do not kill, then you are not our men.” Abu Sufyan’s wife Hind screamed: “Cut the extremities [i.e., phalluses] of the uncircumcised ones!” The men rallied.

On the final day, August 20, 636, a dust storm — something Arabs were accustomed to, their opponents less so — erupted and caused mass chaos, particularly for the Romans, whose large infantry numbers proved counterproductive. Night fell. Then, in the words of historian Antonio Santosuosso,

[T]he terrain echoed with the terrifying din of Muslim shouts and battle cries. Shadows suddenly changed into blades that penetrated flesh. The wind brought the cries of comrades as the enemy stealthily penetrated the ranks among the infernal noise of cymbals, drums, and battle cries. It must have been even more terrifying because they had not expected the Muslims to attack by dark.

A Rout

Muslim cavalrymen continued pressing on the crowded and blinded Roman infantry, using the hooves and knees of their steeds to knock down the wearied fighters. Pushed finally to the edge of the ravine, rank after rank of the remaining forces of the imperial army fell down the steep precipices to their death.

“The Byzantine army, which Heraclius had spent a year of immense exertion to collect, had entirely ceased to exist,” writes British lieutenant-general and historian John Bagot Glubb. “There was no withdrawal, no rearguard action, no nucleus of survivors. There was nothing left.”

As the moon filled the night sky and the victors stripped the slain, cries of “Allahu akbar!” and “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger!” echoed throughout the Yarmuk valley, as told by one Arabian chronicler.

Following this decisive Muslim victory, the way was left wide open for the domino-like Arab conquests of the seventh century. “Such a revolution had never

been,” remarks historian Hilaire Belloc. “No earlier attack had been so sudden, so violent, or so permanently successful. Within a score of years from the first assault in 634 [at the Battle of Ajnadayn], the Christian Levant had gone: Syria, the cradle of the Faith, and Egypt with Alexandria, the mighty Christian See.”

Massive Fall

Without the power of hindsight afforded to historians living more than a millennium after the fact, even Anastasius of Sinai, who witnessed Muslim forces overrun his Egyptian homeland four years after Yarmuk, testified to the decisiveness of the battle by referring to it as “the first terrible and incurable fall of the Roman army”:

I am speaking of the bloodshed at Yarmuk, . . . after which occurred the capture and burning of the cities of Palestine, even Caesarea and Jerusalem. After the destruction of Egypt there followed the enslavement and incurable devastation of the Mediterranean lands and islands.

Indeed, mere decades after Yarmuk, all ancient Christian lands between Greater Syria to the east and Mauretania (encompassing parts of present-day Algeria and Morocco) to the west — nearly 4,000 miles — had been conquered by Islam. Put differently: Two-thirds of Christendom’s original, older, and wealthier territory was permanently swallowed up by Islam. (Eventually, and thanks to the later Turks, “Muslim armies conquered three-quarters of the Christian world,” to quote historian Thomas Madden.)

But unlike the Germanic barbarians who invaded and conquered Europe in the preceding centuries, only to assimilate into the Christian religion, culture, and civilization and adopt its languages, especially Latin, the Arabs imposed their creed and language onto the conquered peoples so that, whereas the “Arabs” were once limited to the Arabian Peninsula, today the “Arab world” consists of some 22 nations across the Middle East and North Africa.

This would not be the case, and the world would have developed in a radically different way, had the Eastern Roman Empire defeated the invaders and sent them reeling back to Arabia.

Little wonder that historians such as Francesco Gabrieli hold that “the battle of the Yarmuk had, without doubt, more important consequences than almost any other in all world history.”

Patterned on History

It bears noting that if most Westerners today are ignorant of that encounter and its ramifications, they are even more oblivious about how Yarmuk continues to serve

as a model of inspiration for modern-day jihadists (who, we are regularly informed, are “psychotic criminals” who have “nothing to do with Islam”). As the alert reader may have noticed, the continuity between the words and deeds of the Islamic State (ISIS) and those of its predecessors from nearly 1,400 years ago are eerily similar. This of course is intentional.

When ISIS and other “radicals” proclaim that “American blood is best and we will taste it soon,” or “We love death as you love life,” or “We will break your crosses and enslave your women,” they are quoting verbatim — and thereby placing themselves in the footsteps of — Khalid bin al-Walid and his companions, the original Islamic conquerors of Christian Syria.

Indeed, the cultivated parallels are more prevalent than might be assumed. ISIS’s black flag is intentionally patterned after Khalid’s black flag. Its invocation of the houris, Islam’s celestial sex-slaves promised to martyrs, is based on anecdotes of Muslims dying by the Yarmuk River and being welcomed into paradise by the houris. And the choreographed ritual slaughter of “infidels,” most infamously of 21 Coptic Christians on the shores of Libya, is patterned after the ritual slaughter of 1,000 captured Roman soldiers on the eve of the Battle of Yarmuk.

Here, then, is a reminder that, when it comes to the military history of Islam and the West, the lessons imparted are far from academic and have relevance to this day — at least for the jihadists.

Note: In the following video, I summarize Yarmuk and its personal impact on me: