Battle of Manzikert, AD 1071, Askeri Museum, in Istanbul, Turkey.
BYZANTINES AND SASSANIDS
Heraclius set sail from Carthage to the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) capital of Constantinople with a Christian icon affixed to the front of his ship. The son of a famed Byzantine general, he was bound to claim the imperial throne from the tyrant usurper Phocas. Upon his arrival in the city, Heraclius executed his well-laid plans against Phocas and his allies, putting the interloper to death with his own hand, before taking the throne as Emperor Heraclius I in AD 610. But the new king’s triumph would be short-lived, as he had ascended to rule an empire in crisis.
The Romans had been warring with the Persian Sassanids (modern Iran) since the third century, trading territory along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Even after Rome fell to the barbarian Visigoths in the West in AD 475, Constantinople remained as a seat of Roman power for centuries in modern Turkey, continuing the struggle against their ancient Persian foes. After Heraclius put Phocus to death and was crowned emperor in 610, that struggle was reignited when the Sassanid emperor Khosrow II marched his army into Byzantine territory before Heraclius had time to consolidate his rule. Khosrow took Mesopotamia and Syria from the Romans before moving into Anatolia (Central Turkey), the Byzantine heartland. Heraclius attempted a counteroffensive in 613, but was soundly defeated at Antioch in Syria. With Khosrow’s forces at the gates of Constantinople by 615, Heraclius agreed to pay tribute to the Persian king. Although the capital was saved, Khosrow would go on to take Jerusalem and then Egypt from the Romans by 618, placing the Byzantine Empire on the verge of collapse.
Rather than resolving himself to be a vassal of the Sassanids, Heraclius began preparations for an eventual campaign to reclaim lost Byzantine lands. He struck out with a massive expeditionary force in AD 622, an icon of Christ as his standard, in what was later described as an archetypal holy crusade. He routed the Sassanid forces repeatedly in Armenia, and then Mesopotamia, and was only stopped from marching on the Sassanid capital after the Persians sabotaged an access bridge. In a stunning turn of fortune, Khosrow was deposed and assassinated by his own son, who subsequently sued for peace, relinquishing all of the Byzantine territory captured by his father in AD 629. The Roman emperor returned to Constantinople victorious, but once again, his triumph would be short-lived. The conflict between Heraclius and Khosrow would prove to be the last of the Roman Sassanid wars, as a new power was arising in the deserts of Arabia which would transform the ancient rivalries of the Middle East forever.
A STORM FROM THE DESERT
The same year that Heraclius came to power in Constantinople (AD 610), a 40-year-old man from the tribe of Quraysh returned from a cave retreat in western Arabia, claiming to his wife to have encountered the Angel Gabriel, who commissioned him as the “messenger of Allah.” The man Muhammad began his career as Allah’s messenger in the commercial hub of Arabian Mecca, where he initially preached against idol worship. The same year that Heraclius left on his crusade to reclaim his lost territories from the Sassanids (AD 622), the self-styled Arab prophet retreated from hostile forces in Mecca with his followers to nearby Medina, in what became the seminal event of a new movement named Islam. And the same year that Heraclius finally subdued the Sassanid Empire once and for all (AD 629), the Arab preacher returned to Mecca as a warrior with an army, taking the city with minimal resistance. As the Sassanid Empire descended into chaos and the Byzantine Empire rested on its victories, a new force that neither power had anticipated was about to explode from the south as an existential threat to both kingdoms.
For the remainder of his career, Muhammad led his army across the Arabian Peninsula, consolidating the disparate tribes under the banner of Islam, and building the religion of an empire that would meld religious fervency, tribal loyalty, and warrior zeal. Christians and Jews were commanded to convert to Islam or submit to dhimmitude. Pagans were forced to choose between Islam or the sword. Although Muhammad would die just two years after his victory in Mecca, his successors, or caliphs, would continue his crusade to expand the House of Islam.
After subduing several rebel tribes in Arabia, the Muslim armies marched north into Sassanid-held territory in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), taking advantage of the Persian monarchy’s disarray to achieve a string of victories against the beleaguered empire. Led initially by the gifted field commander, Khalid ibn al-Walid, also known as the “Sword of Allah,” the Muslims wrested Mesopotamia from the Sassanids by AD 638. The Persians mounted a counter-offensive, setting the stage for a decisive battle at Nahavand in 642 which ended in a devastating defeat. After that, Caliph Umar began a campaign to claim the heartland of Persia for Islam, subduing the central province of Fars before branching out to the northern, southern and eastern provinces. By AD 651, the Sassanid Empire was no more, and the legacy of the ancient Persian kingdoms was brought to an end by the sword of Islam.
In the west, the Byzantine Empire also faced the brunt of the caliph’s armies. After initial success against the Persians in Mesopotamia, Khalid ibn al-Walid was commissioned to invade Syria in AD 634. Bypassing the usual travel routes that were lined with Roman garrisons, al-Walid marched his army straight through the Syrian desert. The risky strategy paid off, and Byzantine defenses were outflanked. Heraclius ordered the formation of a massive expeditionary force in order to push the Muslims back into the desert. Despite its size, the Roman force was outmatched by al-Walid’s army at Ajnadayn, leaving no obstacles between the Muslims and Damascus. After a short siege, Damascus fell in September, 634.
After the fall of Damascus, Muslim forces moved freely throughout the Levant, gobbling up Byzantine holdings in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Holy Land. Heraclius attempted another counter-offensive with another massive force, which once again met a decisive defeat at the Battle of Yarmouk, Syria in AD 636. Jerusalem was surrendered after a short siege the next year. The Roman king Heraclius had managed a stunning turnaround against his old Persian rivals, but he would not be able to repeat it against the armies of Muhammad. The Middle East was almost entirely consumed by the first Islamic Caliphate, and the Byzantine Empire was reduced to the territory of modern-day Turkey.
BYZANTINES AND SELJUKS
Within 20 years, the immediate successors (i.e. caliphs) of Muhammad had subdued the entire Middle East. The first great Muslim dynasty arose in Syria, expanding the caliphate even further across North Africa into Spain, and further east towards the Indus Valley and the Himalayas. A second dynasty arose in Baghdad, Iraq. And as the decades turned into centuries, the ancient character of the Middle East was thoroughly Islamized, leaving only pockets of Christian and Jewish communities. The Byzantines remained in Constantinople, after several failed Arab sieges by land and sea, reduced to the territory extending from the Bosporus Straits to the edges of Anatolia (modern central Turkey). By the eleventh century, a tenuous truce existed between the Romans and the Arabs, despite regular raids and counter-raids along their frontier. It seemed that the long-standing rivalry between the ancient powers of Turkey and Iran was dead, until a new actor appeared in the story.
Seljuk was a chieftain within the family of Oghuz Turks settled north of Persia in modern Turkmenistan. Breaking off from the Oghuz, he converted to Islam around AD 985 and moved his clan south into modern Iran, encountering the Ghaznavids, the Sunni Muslim rulers of the eastern Persian districts of the Caliphate. After Seljuk died, his sons ruled the clan, moving eventually to the far eastern district of Khorasan (modern Afghanistan), where they began challenging the weakened Ghaznavid state, eventually capturing several major cities in the province and defeating a Ghaznavid army in open battle. The caliph in Baghdad recognized the sons of Seljuk as the rightful rulers of Khorasan in AD 1046, but they were not satisfied with such a small title.
Two years after receiving a mandate to rule Khorasan, the Seljuk Turks raided the Byzantine frontier in modern Georgia, returning with up to 100,000 captives and spoil mounted on 10,000 camels. Burgeoning with newfound resources and an experienced army, the Seljuks deposed the Shi’a Muslim dynasty in Baghdad which ruled over most of Mesopotamia and Persia (modern Iraq and Iran). Taking the mantle of Persian imperial legacy and culture, the Seljuk rulers turned their attention to Byzantine Christian lands. In AD 1068, an army led by Seljuk’s grandson, Alp Arslan, crossed into Anatolia (modern central Turkey), the heartland of the Byzantine Empire for 700 years. Arslan pushed back the Roman defenses and annexed the province, granting his Turkish leadership the right to settle there. A modest Byzantine army attempted to retake the lost province, but were soundly defeated by the Seljuks at the Battle of Manzikert in AD 1071. The once-mighty Byzantine Empire was reduced to a rump state surrounding Constantinople, and the Turks who ruled Persia would soon rule the lands of the ancient Persian rivals, along with most of the Middle East.
Although the Seljuks managed to diminish the Byzantine Empire, they did not take Constantinople and extinguish it. Instead, the Byzantine emperor appealed to Pope Urban II in Rome for help in AD 1095, igniting the movement which would become the First Crusade. Weakened by dynastic disputes and the sudden influx of European Crusaders into the Middle East, the Seljuk state in Anatolia fractured into fiefdoms. However, it was from one of these fiefdoms two centuries later that a new Turkish power would rise, and this time Constantinople would not escape. Soon, the ancient rivalry between the rulers of modern Turkey and Iran would be fought between Muslim powers.