Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, page 7
Chapter 2
The Enemies of the Empire
‘Enemies of the Imperium, hear me. You have come here to die. The Immortal Emperor is with us and we are invincible. His soldiers will strike you down. His war machines will crush you under their treads. His mighty guns will bring the very sky crashing down upon you. You cannot win. The Emperor has given us his greatest weapon to wield. So make yourselves ready…’
Governor-Militant Lukas Alexander (Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade)
External and Internal ‘Struggles’ – The Umayyad Caliphate
While the Roman Empire might have survived the seventh century, it was still faced with dangerous opposition. Indeed, perhaps the most significant reasons behind its survival took place not within the empire itself, but beyond its frontiers within the Arab caliphate. On two separate occasions, when it looked to be about to deliver the decisive hammer blow to the Roman Empire, the caliphate had almost torn itself apart with internal conflicts – the First Fitna (656–661) and the Second Fitna (680–692). The main spark of complaint behind these two Muslim civil wars was the succession to the Prophet Muhammad as the temporal and spiritual leader of the Arab caliphate.1 The death of each of the first four caliphs had revealed the lack of consensus on how the next ruler was to be chosen – Abu Bakr’s appointment faced opposition from those who had expected Muhammad’s nephew and son-in-law, Ali b. Abi Talib, would become caliph; Umar was merely appointed caliph by Abu Bakr; Uthman was chosen by a somewhat contrived six-man committee appointed by Umar, while Ali was elected by the people of Medina and those responsible for the assassination of Uthman. This lack of a clear succession process led to deep divisions within Islam between those who favoured election by representatives of the community and those who championed the hereditary succession of Ali and his descendants.
For all this internal strife, the Arab caliphate had continued to make spectacular territorial gains – Abu Bakr had overseen the conquest of Arabia and initiated the attacks on the Roman and Persian empires, while the lands claimed under Umar had enabled him to divide the caliphate into 13 provinces stretching from the Eastern Sahara to the mountains of Afghanistan. Umar also made great strides in providing good governance to the nascent Arab caliphate through provincial subdivision and appointment of officials to oversee the collecting of taxes and the dispensing of justice. Under Uthman came the final defeat of the Persian Empire, the suppression of several revolts, repelling of Roman counterattacks and the pressing on into Pakistan, Anatolia and the Mediterranean.
While Uthman used his background as a merchant and the administrative achievements of Umar to bring economic prosperity to the caliphate, which in turn expanded its military capabilities, he also sowed the seeds of his own demise. This was because, despite the beautifying of holy sites and centralising of Muslim worship through the production of hundreds of Qur’ans, the most immediate impact of Uthman’s reign came in his empowering of his own relatives of the Banu Umayya as provincial governors, planting the seeds of dynastic succession. By 649, Egypt, Kufa, Basra and Syria were under the control of Umayyads, with the most important of these being the governor of Syria, Muawiyah b. Abi Sufyan. The empowering of Muawiyah by Uthman had some basis in necessity as Arab Syria was the vanguard in the war with the Romans, defending Arab territory, striking into Anatolia and launching the first Arab naval campaigns. The problem going forward for the caliphate was that however necessary it was deemed, Muawiyah’s prolonged Syrian tenure allowed him to build a strong, disciplined Syrian army that owed its loyalty more to him than the caliphate. When Uthman’s increasing acquisitiveness and ‘doting love for a corrupt and rapacious kin’2 saw him assassinated in 656, it sparked a contest – the First Fitna – that was to change the face of caliphal rule.
The subsequent election of Ali should have been an opportunity to unify the elective and Alid views of caliphal succession, but Uthman’s nepotism saw to it that Muawiyah could refuse to step down as Syrian governor when Ali demanded it. And when Ali doubled down by threatening Muawiyah with military force, civil war erupted. The divisions caused by this eruption were so significant that they were to become schisms within the Muslim faith, forming the Sunni, Shia and Kharijite denominations. Despite essentially winning the three major battles of the war, Ali and his officials were outmanoeuvred by Muawiyah politically, while the sheer fact that Ali had entered negotiations with the Syrian rebel saw the hardliners in his camp form their own rebel cause as the Kharijites. And in early 661, Ali was assassinated by one of their number. The Alids attempted to fight on but Muawiyah was now militarily supreme, and their caliphal candidate, Ali’s son al-Hasan, was soon capitulating on the promise that Muawiyah would not attempt to establish an Umayyad dynasty. It was not a promise that Muawiyah kept. While his near 20-year reign may have maintained caliphal integrity through diplomatic decentralisation rather than military might and saw the continued advance of the armies of Islam in Africa and Anatolia, it only kept a lid on the factionalism revealed by the First Fitna rather than doing away with it. And once he selected his son, Yazid, as his successor,3 instead of the promised election, another civil war was inevitable.
When it erupted in 680,4 opposition to the Umayyads centred on Abd Allah b. al-Zubayr, son of a companion of Muhammad, and Husayn b. Ali, the younger son of caliph Ali, while the Kharijites remained a threat. Husayn was quickly dealt with at the Battle of Karbala on 10 October 680, but the massacre of him and his supporters only galvanised opposition to Yazid’s regime. Another Umayyad victory in 685 over an Alid remnant, calling themselves the Tawwabin, meaning ‘penitents’, focused Alid support on Mukhtar al-Thaqafi, who took control of Kufa in late 685.5 Meanwhile, al-Zubayr established himself in Mecca, taking control of much of the Hejaz, only for Umayyad forces to seize Medina in late 683 and lay siege to Mecca. It was perhaps only the sudden death of Yazid before the year was out that saved the Zubayrid cause. The succession of Yazid’s inexperienced teenage son, Muawiyah II, further undermined Umayyad authority in Arab lands, reducing Umayyad territory to just parts of Syria. Much of the rest of the Arab world transferred its loyalty to al-Zubayr.
Fortunately for the Umayyads, disease carried off Muawiyah II within months of his accession. Not wanting to trust in the dead caliph’s younger brothers, the Umayyads turned to an experienced cavalry commander, a cousin of Uthman and Muawiyah I, Marwan b. al-Hakam. Together with the loyal Iraqi governor, Marwan rallied enough support to forestall a pro-Zubayrid takeover of Syria at the Battle of Marj Rahit in August 684. While there were some setbacks in Iraq and the Hejaz, Marwan was then able to reclaim Egypt and thwart another Zubayrid invasion of Palestine in early 685.
But before Marwan could capitalise on these successes, he too was carried off by disease after a reign of just nine months. This saw Marwan’s eldest son, Abd al-Malik, become Umayyad caliph in early summer 685. He was able to build on the stability established by his father, using the resources of Syria and Egypt to take the fight to al-Zubayr and Mukhtar, although success was far from assured. Abd al-Malik’s first two attacks on Alid Kufa came to grief; however, Mukhtar’s violent dealing with internal opposition sparked a much more successful attack on Kufa from Zubayrid Basra. By April 687, the Second Fitna was a straight fight between the Umayyads and Zubayrids.
Both sides showed some reticence to initiate a final confrontation in the late 680s due to disorder within their own ranks,6 with two abortive Umayyad campaigns in Iraq. It was not until autumn 691 that Abd al-Malik made the decisive breakthrough. Taking advantage of dissension in the Zubayrid ranks and their distraction with the Kharijites, the caliph squared up to the Zubayrid army at Maskin. The resultant battle was in the balance, with the Zubayrids in a position to launch a potentially decisive cavalry strike. However, it was here that Umayyad machinations and Zubayrid dissension came into play – right when it should have launched a battle-winning attack on Abd al-Malik’s flank, the Zubayrid cavalry deserted. And when the Zubayrid reserve followed suit, refusing to throw away their lives in a futile gesture,7 the Umayyads seized a victory that brought them control of Iraq, Kufa, Basra and all the Arab eastern provinces.
Abd al-Malik could now turn to deal with al-Zubayr himself in Mecca, who had spent most of the 680s having considerable trouble with a Kharijite statelet in Yamama. Things had gotten so bad that al-Zubayr’s territory had been limited to the Hejaz and sometimes not even there, as the Kharijites proved able to approach Medina, capture Ta’if and make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Therefore, when the Umayyads arrived to contest the region, they found that the Zubayrids offered little in the way of battlefield opposition, while Abd al-Malik made judicious use of diplomatic contact to undermine the Kharijites. This did not mean that resistance collapsed immediately. It required a damaging eight-month siege of Mecca to finally defeat al-Zubayr, while the combined armies of Basra and Kufa were needed to defeat the Kharijites;8 however, this was all achieved by 693 – the whole Arab caliphate was back under the command of the Umayyads.
Abd al-Malik was now able to reform aspects of the caliphate – he oversaw the recentralisation of caliphal government, the professionalising of the army and the Arabization of the administration, which included the introduction of Islamic coinage. However, while the end of the Second Fitna ushered in something of a Golden Age for the Umayyads, Abd al-Malik and his immediate successors did not fix all of the caliphate’s woes – the sectarian divisions within Islam were now well on their way to becoming denominational, while intertribal tensions were on the rise and would play a significant role in the Third Fitna and the Abbasid Revolution (744–750).
While in the two decades between these two Islamic civil wars Muawiyah had been able to raid into Roman territory on an annual basis, have his navy penetrate into the Aegean and undertake whatever constituted the ‘First’ Siege of Constantinople,9 the two periods of Muslim ‘Struggle’ presented an opportunity for the Roman Empire. Muawiyah himself had agreed a truce with Constans II in 657/658, which allowed the emperor to bring some organisation to the administrative chaos that was Roman Anatolia, re-establish Armenia in the imperial fold, and conduct his own raids on Umayyad territory. It also allowed Constans to inflict some sort of defeat on the Slavs and plan his extended Italian campaign.
Had the Roman Empire been in slightly better shape in the early 680s and not faced the emergent Bulgar khanate along the Danube and Slav trouble in Greece, it could well have made more significant use of the Second Fitna. Even as it was, Constantine IV launched counteroffensives into Cilicia, reclaimed cities like Germanikeia and Pisidian Antioch, and raided the Umayyad Levant with the imperial fleet and the Mardaites, while Justinian II’s forces struck deeply into Umayyad territory, possibly reaching northern Iran. This demonstrated that the empire was still capable of dealing damage to the caliphate. A Roman Empire unencumbered by other external distractions might well have established a more secure position in Armenia and Caucasia, reclaimed some of the lost islands and further undermined Arab control of Syria.
That said, the caliphal ability to survive two such ructions should have put paid to any continued Roman thought that the Arab conquests were merely ephemeral. With the reforms of Umar, Uthman, Muawiyah I and then Abd al-Malik, the caliphate became less a collection of conquered territories and more a well-organised state that would not dissolve in the face of a single defeat. Therefore, while on the surface, the campaigns of Constantine IV and Justinian II were successful in re-establishing the imperial presence in the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia, once the Arabs were able to turn their attention back to their northern frontier, ‘the region tended to revert to … the caliphate.’10 Much as the Roman Empire itself had proven its resilience in the seventh century, so had the caliphate.
Internal Barbarians – the Slavs
While the Arabs had replaced the Persians as Constantinople’s most dangerous enemy, another imperial enemy fell by the wayside as the seventh century progressed. At the beginning of the century, the main European threat to the empire’s interests came in the form of the Avar khanate,11 a polyethnic, but largely Asiatic, group that had established themselves along the Danube in the mid-sixth century. At the nadir of Roman fortunes, the Avar army was camped before the walls of Constantinople, while its underlings were spreading out across the Balkans. However, the complete collapse of the Roman Danube frontier in the face of Avar aggression proved as devastating to the Avars as it did to Roman Europe. It is somewhat hyperbolic to suggest that Avar power broke against the walls of Constantinople in 626 – Mauricius’ invasions of Avar territory a generation previous had done significant damage to the already under-developed Avar infrastructure, but in the aftermath of their failed siege, the Avars lost control of many of the constituent tribes of their coalition. The combination of the loss of manpower and various territories shaking off their suzerainty geographically detached the Avars from the Romans. So, while it was not until the turn of the eighth century that the Avars were completely wiped from the map, they disappear from the Roman source record and from their political and military considerations.
While the Romans might have been happy to see the back of the Avars, it was their misfortune that their northern threat was replaced by two different ones. The underlings that the Avars lost control of in the aftermath of the siege of Constantinople were one of these different threats: these were the Slavs. Unfortunately, we are reliant on very scant non-Slavic sources for their early history and much of their initial southern movement is obscured by Avar overlordship. There was an attempt by the sixth-century Gothic historian, Jordanes, to link the Slavs back to Baltic peoples recorded by the likes of Tacitus, Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy, which is far from clear.12 Indeed, the lack of historiographic clarity on who these people were increases the difficulty in identifying proto-Slavs in the archaeological record. And due to the significant area they expanded into and their ability to assimilate with various cultures, it is very difficult to connect them with any one cultural origin archaeologically.13 Although not necessarily those recorded by Tacitus,14 there may be some linguistic connection between the Slavs and earlier Balts, possibly a shared ancestor.15
This lack of clarity on their origins has enabled ‘nationalist rivalries … rooted in the demands of contemporary politics’16 to greatly expand the proposed homeland of the Slavs and attempt to give them much deeper roots as a hidden majority than was the case.17 However, attempts to suggest that the proto-Slavs were a creation of contact with the Roman world of the Lower Danube seems to go too far the other way.18 A middle ground between these two might be in order – a centuries-long migration through various regions, being influenced by them so as to somewhat hide their presence, with limited Romanisation along the Danube sparking a population growth that allowed the Slavs to roam so far after escaping Avar suzerainty.19
It must be noted that whoever these Slavs were, they were not one large group. There were a considerable number of tribes that came under the Slav umbrella, which is perhaps demonstrated in the different names recorded for them in the sources. Some Western sources called them ‘Venethi/Veneti,’ or ‘Sclavi/Sclavus’; others record certain groups as ‘Wenden/Winden’ or ‘Windische.’20 By the late-seventh century, eastern Roman sources have moved beyond the more generic ‘Sclaveni’ or ‘Antae’ to record specific subtribes, some of which reflect where these Slavs had settled such as the ‘Strymonitai’ around the river Strymon in Macedonia.21
The Romans knew enough about the Slavs by the late-sixth century to make some generalisations about them and their military capabilities. Despite being ‘undisciplined and disorganised,’22 the Strategikon considered Slavs to be ‘populous and hardy, bearing readily heat, cold, rain, nakedness, and scarcity of provisions.’23 This made them well-suited to raiding and guerrilla warfare,24 which contributed greatly to the Roman inability to make any substantial headway in reclaiming the mountainous Balkans from them. The decentralised and disparate nature of these Slavic tribes also added to that difficulty as it hindered the Roman ability to either destroy or co-opt them as there was little in the way of governmental infrastructure to negotiate with and the Romans increasingly lacked the overwhelming power needed to subdue entire tribal groups.25
While there is a mention of a Slavic people as early as the late-fourth century,26 the earliest definitive record of them comes in the form of the Antae raid of the Balkans during the reign of Justin I (518–527).27 There were various other Slavic raids on Roman territory through the remainder of the sixth century, driving deeply into the Balkans, reaching Thessalonica and even Constantinople at one point.28 The Romans did have some success against various Slavic tribes during their campaigns against the Avar khanate, eliminating Slavic settlement south of the Danube in the late-sixth century.29 However, after recovering from these defeats and while the Avars themselves focused on Constantinople, the Slavs were able to surge south and fan out far and wide across the Balkans. Cities such as Naissus, Serdica and Salona were taken, while Thessalonica came under repeated attack and some Slavic tribes penetrated into the Peloponnese. The depleted and distracted Roman forces in the region could do little or nothing.
