by Ted Stewart
And it’s significant to note that jihad was not limited in geography or to ancient times: “The Muslim jihad . . . was perceived as unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule.”18
3. Islamic armies considered their efforts to liberate conquered people from their evil religions as a noble cause, for once they were liberated, the conquered people could then convert to Islam. As Lewis says, “The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic law. It is not to convert by force, but to remove obstacles to conversion.”19
4. Arab armies took great pride in the success of their tribes, which pride quickly evolved into a sense of loyalty to their Arab identity.
5. The incredible wealth accumulated by the early leaders of the Islamic crusade was well chronicled by Arab historians. Throughout their campaigns, those leaders captured an enormous amount of gold and silver, as well as an astonishing number of slaves. This wealth was certainly an additional motivation for their conquest.
War Against the Empires
Once the rebellion among the apostate Arabs had been crushed, the Arab army moved to their first conquest, Syria and Palestine, the very home of Christianity.
The Syrian invasion began in 632. The beautiful city of Damascus soon fell and ultimately was to become the center of the entire Muslim world. Jerusalem fell sometime in 637 or 638. By 640, all of Syria and Palestine were under the rule of the caliph in Medina. After one thousand years of Greek and Roman rule and six hundred years of Christian influence, the area fell under the realm of Islam, and it remains primarily Muslim and Arabic-speaking to this day.20
The Byzantine and Persian Empires were next. Both had been greatly weakened by their ongoing wars. Further, the bubonic plague had decimated the region, killing as many as one-third of the population, leaving eerily deserted streets in some locations, making them easily conquered.
To the east, in the area of modern-day Iraq, the Persian Empire came under attack. Known for its wealth, prosperity, and power, the Persian Empire was a broad mix of those following the Zoroastrian, Christian, and Jewish religions. The invading Arab army conquered the last of the Persian lands by 640. As with Syria and Palestine, once the Persian army had been disposed of, if the people pledged to pay tribute to Medina and not to aid the enemies of the Muslims, they were generally left alone.21
Next came Egypt. Unlike Syria and Iraq, the ancient and venerable kingdom of Egypt had no Arab populations either on its borders or living in its midst. Indeed, the Muslims knew almost nothing about Egypt, other than that it was a place of great wealth.
Egypt generally, and Alexandria specifically, was the center of Christianity in the entire Roman Byzantine Empire. Unfortunately, it was torn by violent internal strife between independent groups of Christians (known as the Coptic Church, which still survives in Egypt today) and the emperor in Constantinople.
This discord, plus the fact that Egypt had also been afflicted by the bubonic plague (its total population may have been as few as three million), made the nation an easy target. The Arab invasion started in 639. Alexandria, one of the greatest cities in the world, surrendered after a brief siege. All of Egypt fell within two years.
In more than one Egyptian city, the Arabs slaughtered every man, woman, and child. Why they chose to abandon their habit of focusing only on enemy soldiers as targets of wholesale slaughter is not clear. As with Palestine and Syria, a thousand years of Greek and Roman rule came to a decisive end. Egypt became both Muslim and Arabic, and remains so to this day.22
And still it continued.
Modern-day Iran was conquered by 651.23 Further north and east, the Arabs pressed into what are known today as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. To the south, they pushed into modern-day Pakistan where, interestingly, they defeated an army of Chinese soldiers led by a Korean officer. In all of these distant eastern lands, far from the center of Medina, their religion and influence remains to this day.24
West of Egypt, the armies of Islam forged toward the Atlantic Ocean. But conquering all of North Africa proved to be no small task. It is over two thousand miles from Alexandria to the Strait of Gibraltar, and the conquest of this enormous sweep of land would take more than seventy years.
Formerly a rich and prosperous part of the Roman Empire, the population of North Africa had grown sparse. The cities contained great buildings and ruins of some grandeur, but many of the people had left. Those who remained, mostly tribal and nomadic Berbers, proved to be more difficult to conquer than the Romans, who had developed a reputation for abandoning their territory as soon as the Arabs drew close. As the war across the territories of North Africa commenced, the Berbers fought bravely, for they were a proud and independent people fighting to be free. Highly motivated, if not well equipped or highly trained, they accomplished something that had never been done before: the defeat of a Muslim army.
Their victory would be only temporary, however, for the Arabs, sobered and angered by this first defeat in Islamic history, soon gathered a force of forty thousand soldiers (the largest army the Muslims would assemble until their assault of France) and quickly retook the Berber lands.
Two aspects of the North African conquest are particularly noteworthy.
First, the Arab armies took a massive number of slaves. The young Berber girls were deemed to be incomparable and highly prized in the markets of Middle Eastern cities. Hundreds of thousands of slaves were taken, with tens of thousands being sent back to Medina.25
The second significant aspect of this conquest was that the initial loss at the hands of the Berbers proved alarming to the Muslims. Having experienced their first stinging defeat, they resolved never to let it happen again.
The Arab Armies Enter Europe
After decades of war, the Arab army finally reached the Strait of Gibraltar. It is reported that when the first Arab military leader had reached the Atlantic Ocean, he rode his horse up to its belly in the water and, with his eyes aimed at heaven, shouted:
“Great God! if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on, to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any other gods than thee.”26
The Arab conquerors were not, as this leader feared, to be stopped by this sea, however.
Once the whole of North Africa had been subdued and an Arab settlement established at Tangier, the Arab armies cast their eyes across the waters. They knew their work in the name of Allah was not complete. It was inevitable. Spain had to be taken next.
In 711, the first of the invaders made the easy sail across the Strait of Gibraltar. Shortly after making landfall, they realized that they had arrived at a fortuitous moment, for rebellion was in the works.
Three hundred years had passed since the Visigoth kingdom had driven the Romans from Spain. These had been relatively stable years. However, just the year before, a usurper to the throne had appeared. Upon the death of the Visigoth king, a bitter fight for power had ensued, leaving the kingdom in turmoil.
Seizing the opportunity, and likely aided by the sons of the former king, the Muslims moved quickly to confront the army of the new ruler. Many of those in the area apparently thought it was nothing more than a one-time raiding party. Indeed, many of the local noblemen quickly agreed to peace settlements based upon their belief that the Muslims would not stay.
Such was not to be the case. The armies of Islam were to remain in Spain and Portugal for the next eight hundred years!
By 716, almost all of the Iberian Peninsula was under Islamic control.27 Within the next two to three hundred years, the vast majority of the people in these conquered lands would become part of the Muslim faithful.
This leads to a very important question: Why did the Islamic conquest around the world prove
to be so permanent?
Why were the Muslims able to have such long-lasting impact on the people and the cultures of the areas they brought under their control? The Assyrians couldn’t do it. Neither did the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, or the Romans. None of these great empires remained in the areas they conquered for so many centuries. And none of them changed so dramatically the values and religious habits of the people that they ruled.
There are a number of obvious explanations:
The poll tax hefted upon the nonbelievers provided a solid motivation for nonbelievers to convert, as did the reality that all nonbelievers were held to a second-class status. If one had any desire to become a part of the ruling elite, one had to become a member of the faith.
But there was another explanation.
There were great similarities between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. All of these religions shared a belief in prophets, the writings of the Old Testament, prescribed prayers, and other tenets. If one’s faith in Christianity or Judaism was not well founded (keep in mind that in this era, there were no copies of the Bible available to the people), devoid of much foundation in doctrine, inherited rather than personally obtained, it was not much of a leap to convert to a new religion that asserted that it was simply a more perfected form of the old religion, especially if that meant an end of punitive taxation and social inequality.28
Regardless of the various motivations for accepting the faith, it is irrefutable that the influence of the Muslim armies on the people that they conquered was unparalleled and permanent.
• • •
Having taken possession of the Iberian Peninsula, a very substantial foothold in Europe, the question then had to be, “Where next?”
Classical historian Edward Gibbon surmised the goal of the Muslim military leader in Spain:
With a powerful armament by sea and land, he was preparing to repass the Pyrenees, to extinguish in Gaul and Italy the declining kingdoms of the Franks and Lombards, and to preach the unity of God on the altar of the Vatican. From thence, subduing the Barbarians of Germany, he proposed to follow the course of the Danube from its source to the Euxine Sea, to overthrow the Greek or Roman empire of Constantinople, and, returning from Europe to Asia, to unite his new acquisitions with Antioch and the provinces of Syria.29
If, as Gibbon suggests here, the Muslim armies had been able to continue their European conquests through France and then move east across the continent, circling through Europe from the Strait of Gibraltar, the caliphs would have controlled almost the entire civilized world.
Was it just a matter of time until this dream of conquering all of Europe was to be fulfilled?
The Arab Army Marches North
Having taken the Iberian Peninsula, the Muslims looked north, knowing they first had to cross the Pyrenees Mountains before they could begin their long march through Europe.
Over the next several decades, raiding parties ventured into what is now southern France. These advance warring parties followed a trail on the east side of the Pyrenees, for the mass of snow-covered peaks to the west made the eastern approach the only practical way into France.
The main assault began in May or June of 732. Christian chronicles say the invading army was in the hundreds of thousands. Arab reports state that the army consisted of eighty thousand Arab and Berber soldiers. More likely, the Arab reports are closer to the truth, but either way, the invading army was enormous. In addition, the Arabs possessed all of the siege equipment they would need to destroy the walled cities and fortresses of anyone foolish enough to stand in their way.
It’s also important to note that the Arabs came with their wives, children, and belongings, making it clear that, as with everyplace else they had conquered, they intended to stay in France.
Once they had crossed through the mountain pass, the Muslims found the condition of the French monarchy much to their liking. Although they were all Christians, in the three hundred years since the various Germanic tribes had driven the Roman armies out of Gaul, with a very few exceptions they had never united in language, habits, or government. This left the French kingdoms fragmented, weak, and generally unwilling to join in defense of one another. They were forever engaged in civil wars, as well as constantly forced to defend themselves from the marauding pagan hordes that ventured forth from the other side of the Rhine.
In fact, the political and military condition of the Christian French was eerily similar to what the Muslim armies had encountered in many of their previous military campaigns.
Seeing the obvious opportunity, they marched quickly, following the pattern they had relied upon before: raid and probe the enemy’s front lines, take a little territory here and there, loot and burn and destroy in order to determine the military might and will of the enemy, all as a preamble to the major assault.
The Muslims had all of the advantages that had resulted in mighty victories in each of their previous campaigns. Their entire empire was united under one caliph, giving them an enormous infrastructure to support their invading armies. They were commanded by Abd al-Rahman, a brilliant and experienced commander. They had the advantage of momentum and high morale, having experienced a hundred years of unbroken success overrunning the entire Persian Empire and one-half of the Roman Empire. Their soldiers were battle hardened and anxious to avenge their brothers who had fallen. Most important, they sincerely believed that they had the truth on their side. Surely their God meant them to prevail against the unbelievers in Gaul and beyond!
It appeared as if the weakened kingdoms on the north side of the Pyrenees had no hope to resist the army of Islam.
As Gibbon saw it, the French kings had
lost the inheritance of . . . martial and ferocious spirit; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet of lazy to the last kings of the Merovingian race. They ascended the throne without power and sunk into the grave without a name . . . ; and the south of France, from the mouth of the Garonne to that of the Rhone, assumed the manners and religion of Arabia.30
The armies of Abd al-Rahman ventured forth in all directions. They destroyed cities and looted and pillaged churches and abbeys. They roamed unmolested until they reached the River Garonne, which starts in the center of the Pyrenees Mountains and runs toward the heart of France before turning west to the Atlantic Ocean.
And though the Muslims did suffer an occasional defeat, it wasn’t long before they controlled all of the significant cities and a vast amount of the territory in southern and eastern Gaul.
Prince Eudes, the count of Aquitaine, came forth with an army to confront them. He was quickly defeated. He withdrew to the great port city of Bordeaux, but it was overrun and sacked, the churches burned, citizens killed, a treasure of booty and slaves taken. An Arab historian describes the great victory:
The men of Abderrahman were puffed up in spirit by their repeated successes, and they were full of trust in the valour and the practice in war of their Emir. So the Moslems smote their enemies, and passed the river Garonne, and laid waste the country, and took captives without number. And that army went through all places like a desolating storm. Prosperity made those warriors insatiable. . . . Everything gave way to their scimetars, which were the robbers of lives. All the nations of the Franks trembled at that terrible army.31
All of Europe teetered on the edge. Had it fallen under the hands of the Muslim armies, the future development of freedom and democracy would have taken a decisive turn for the worst.
But to understand the critical turn of events that followed, we need, as Gibbon wrote, to “unfold the events that rescued our ancestors of Britain and our neighbors of Gaul from the civil and religious yoke of the Koran.”32
The Battlefield of Poitiers Western France
The two brothers didn’t see each other as they stood on opposite sides of the battlefield. But how could they? The mass o
f men around them were dressed for battle, helmets and mud covering their faces, fear of pain or death clouding their eyes. It would have been hard to recognize some of them if they were standing right before a man, let alone looking across a crowded battlefield.
After days of sparring, the two armies finally faced each other. No one knew how many men there were. Tens of thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands. It was impossible to know, with the rolling hills and trees. More, realizing that there was no hope of avoiding all-out battle by casting fear of defeat upon their enemy, both commanders had chosen to hide some of their forces, wanting to retain at least a portion of the element of surprise.
The older brother, having brought almost two thousand of his own men to the battle, had a position of honor beside Abd al-Rahman, the commander of the Arab army. He sat on a large horse in front of the mighty army, the other royal commanders at his side.
As he watched, the horde of Christians massed before them. Some of them looked hungry. But they appeared to be prepared for battle. He could see that in their manner. He could hear it in their battle cries. These were men defending their homes and honor. Defending their religion.
That made them dangerous, he was sure.
He wasn’t frightened, but he was concerned. The enemy was motivated, and he knew what a difference that could make. Motives could be the tipping point between success and defeat, and there wasn’t any secret as to what motivated the two armies that had gathered on this field. One fought for the pride of the victory, for the pure joy of battle, for the riches and glory that only war could bring.
Yes, once they had defeated the inhabitants of Gaul, they would impose their God, for in the end, that was the only thing that really mattered: pleasing Allah, becoming a martyr for his cause, subduing the unbelievers. Such pleasurable thoughts were always in his mind.