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It is generally agreed that the tactics, technology and organization of the Muslim armies developed considerably from the time of Muḥammad to the ʿAbbāsid revolution. The military reforms of Marwān II, the last Umayyad Caliph of Syria, are similarly regarded as marking a change from primitive Arab tribal armies to more professional forces that could take a place among their sophisticated Middle Eastern contemporaries. Yet, a closer investigation would suggest that Marwān's reforms reflected military changes rather than stimulating them.
It is, however, difficult to justify another moment at which to separate the infantry-dominated early Muslim Arab armies from those possibly cavalry-dominated, and certainly more cosmopolitan, forces that succeeded them. Since no obvious date offers itself on technological or tactical grounds, it may be necessary to select a convenient year in the political history of early Islam. The death of ʿAlī in 661 AD, and the consequent establishment of the Umayyad Caliphate as a relatively straight forward dynastic state, would thus be an obvious choice.
Muslim armies of the early period, their equipment and tactics, have, of course, already been studied in detail by a number of scholars,1 while others have analysed the war-like verses of those Arabs of Arabia
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1. Hill, The Mobility of the Arab Armies in the Early Conquests, passim; Hill, "The Role of the Camel and the Horse in the Early Arab Conquests", passim; Fries, op. cit., passim.
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who filled the armies of the Prophet and the Rāshidūn Caliphs.2 Rarely, however, has an effort been made to see this subject in relation both to neighbouring cultures and to subsequent periods. Illustrated Islamic material from these early decades is non-existent, while artifacts are at best of doubtful date and authenticity. Hence, it is hardly surprising that few have tried to describe the actual appearance of the troops and equipment in question. Yet a handful of potentially useful pictorial sources do survive from neighbouring or conquered cultures, while it may also be possible to see developments of such early Islamic military technology in the barely better illustrated Umayyad era.
Before attempting to shed a little light on this aspect of the material culture of 7th century Islam, the known military traditions of the civilization must be outlined. It has recently been suggested that 7th century Arabia was not poor in weapons, and may indeed have been relatively richer than its neighbours, considering its small population and the fact that a high proportion of these were warriors.3 The merchant bourgeoisie of the Ḥijāz lived almost like the feuding families of an Italian Renaissance city, in houses that were veritable arsenals. These clan or tribal stores of arms and armour ensured the merchants' domination of those vital trade routes that lay across bedouin-controlled territory. Such stores were also constantly replenished or increased by tribute from subordinate families or tribes, and by a steady importation of arms.4 Not all weaponry need
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2. Schwarzlose, op. cit., passim; El Gindi, op. cit., passim; Al Jarhūʿ, op. cit., passim.
3. Lombard, Les métaux, pp. 253-255.
4. Ibid., p. 153.
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have been imported from a distance, of course. Apart from local arms made from local ores, non-metallic equipment such as felt armour recorded in use at the time of the Prophet,5 and shields of various leathers mentioned by early Arab poets, were probably produced in or near the Arabian peninsula.
Although early Arab poetry cannot be regarded as a literal guide to the military situation in 6th and 7th century Arabia, it does seem to support the thesis that arms and armour were abundant in the area, one poet, for example, considered it worth noting that he fought without armour during a particular battle.6 In such cases a warrior would still presumably have used a shield, perhaps of camel-hide, particularly if he was on foot and engaged in sword-play.7 Similar verses also suggest that armour, such as the basic dirʿ hauberk, was often worn without helmets,8 but that the latter might have been more common among cavalry than among infantry.9 Of course, horsemen were an élite in Arabia, as they were in most warrior societies, and the confused melée of cavalry warfare made a cavalryman more vulnerable to an unexpected blow from an unseen quarter than was a foot-soldier fighting in the ranks.
Statistics based upon poetry must be treated with even greater caution than the verses themselves, but some interesting results have been produced by ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿAlī al Gindi, and these again suggest that armour was far from rare in early 7th century Arabia. In the
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5. Al Ṭabarī, op. cit., vol. I, p. 1541.
6. Al Jarbūʿ, op. cit., pp. 219-220.
7. El Gindi, op. cit., p. 170.
8, Al Jarbūʿ, op. cit., 227.
9. El Gindi, op. cit., p. 97.
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available poetry he noted one hundred and seventeen mentions of swords compared with ninety-two of spears and only thirty-four mentions of the bow. The numbers relating to armour are even more surprising. No less than seventy references were made to hauberks, but only seven to helmets and three to shields.10 Surely, this must at least indicate that sword and spear dominated the battle-field and that the hauberk was, in its various forms, quite common.
While it could be argued that the Arabs were richer in arms and armour per head of population than were their more settled neighbours, few would dispute that the Arabian peninsula was acutely short of horses. This is not to say that cavalry was unknown. Even in southern Arabia, where the domesticated horse had probably only been known for a few centuries, some leading warriors owned their own mounts as early as the 6th century.11 Some decades later, when Najrān fell to the Muslims, horses were plentiful enough to be demanded as tribute in similar numbers to camels and armours.12 Horses were also demanded as tribute from other areas including, perhaps surprisingly, the primarily desert region of Yamāmah along the Gulf coast.13 When the Muslim conquests spread beyond the Arabian peninsula towards the Fertile Crescent, tribute and booty of horses naturally became more abundant,14 but it would be a long time before cavalry could play anything but a subordinate role in these first Muslim armies.
The Muslims, while still limited to the Ḥijāz, apparently fought
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10. Ibid., p. 149A.
11. Al Asali, op. cit., pp. 204-205.
12. Al Balādhurī, op. cit., p. 98.
13. Ibid., p. 137.
14. Ibid., p. 93.
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in close ranks for moral support. By this means, apparently, Muḥammad's outnumbered but deeply committed warriors were able to defeat their pagan foes. Such disciplined infantry formations, which could accept higher casualties, were normal in the professional armies of Byzantium and Iran but were, according to Moraes Farias, unlike the normal Arab practice of the time.15
Javelins were used at the start of a battle, before the opposing forces came into contact.16 Yet they seem not to have been highly regarded as weapons, for they are only rarely mentioned in early Arab verses.17 Byzantium had already updated earlier Graeco-Roman infantry formations to meet the needs of late 6th century warfare. They now placed their scutati shield-bearing infantry with spears up to four metres long, in four close ranks, those with the heaviest armour standing in front or on the flanks. By this means the spears of all four ranks could present a deadly hedge against an approaching foe. Behind these scutati stood the psili javelin-men who hurled their weapons over the heads of the scutati. Archers may also have been stationed here, although they are more likely to have been on the flanks.18 Such tactics were almost certainly the inspiration for Muḥammad's military ideas. The Byzantines had already reduced the amount of armour worn by their infantry, relying instead on larger shields. In part this may have been a move towards greater mobility,19 but it was just as likely to reflect a poverty of metal resources. It
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15. Moraes Farias, op. cit., p. 812.
16. Al Jarbūʿ, op. cit., p. 229.
17. Ibid.
18. Lombard, Les métaux, p. 247; Haldon, Some Aspects of Byzantine Military Orqanization, pp. 20 and 23.
19. Lombard, Les métaux, p. 148.
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may even have led to Byzantine infantry being less well armoured than their first Muslim foes.
The subordination of the bow to the javelin in these 6th and early 7th century Byzantine sources is an almost exact antithesis of the situation in mid-7th century Arabia, where the "Saracenoi" had, of course, long been characterized as archers. According to the earliest surviving biography of the Prophet, written by Ibn Is'ḥāq (d. 768 AD), the role of archers in the Ḥijāz was skirmishing before two armies closed,20 and then protecting the flanks of an infantry formation from the enemy's cavalry.21 Again the tactical concept is identical to that evolved in Byzantium.
Doubtful as the dating of most religious relics must be, one bamboo bow, said to have belonged to the Prophet and now in the Topkapu Reliquary (Fig. 105), is of a very simple type that may well have been used in the Ḥijāz before the widespread adoption of the composite bow. The role of cavalry in Muḥammad's first armies could not, of course, mirror that in the existing Middle Eastern empires. Throughout the period covered by this chapter, Muslim cavalry did not use stirrups. In all probability this device was not even known in Arabia and the first provinces overrun by Islam. On the other hand there is a possibility, as indicated by al Jāḥiẓ, that the first Muslim horsemen did know of the stirrup but, for many years, made a conscious decision not to use it.22 This suggestion will be discussed in greater detail in a later chapter. Since pagan Mecca was richer in horses than Muslim
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20. Ibn Is'ḥāq, The Life of Muḥammad, Apostle of Allah, E. Rehatsek trans., (London 1964). p, 94.
21. Ibid., p. 107.
22. Al Jāḥiẓ, Al Bayān Wa'l Tabyīn, pp. 19-20.
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Madīnah, cavalry first appeared fighting against Islam rather than for it. Nevertheless, so valuable were war-horses in these and subsequent decades that they were generally led to battle from a camel or a mule and only mounted for the combat itself23 On the other hand, other sources indicate that cavalry might have led an army into battle or across hostile territory,24 though not being expected to engage an enemy if the latter were prepared and waiting. Rather the horsemen would hover on the flanks of the opposing infantry, ready to take advantage of any loss of cohesion among the enemy.25 If the foe admitted defeat, their infantry would then seek to break off contact, and in any era this is a dangerous military situation. In 7th century Arabia cavalry would then be expected to attack, particularly if the retiring foe broke or became disorganized.
In such situations the lance was considered the best cavalry weapon.26 Among the bedouin it would probably have come in two styles, the normal weapon of five cubits' length which is shown in almost all Middle Eastern art, and a much longer eleven cubits weapon.27 Although these long spears appear in later medieval art and were used by the bedouin well into the 20th century, illustrations from earlier times are virtually unknown. One example of very uncertain, though possibly 7th century, date comes from Coptic Egypt (Fig. 136). A verse celebrating a cavalry victory at al Ghamr, during the Muslim conquest of Palestine,
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23. Hill, "The Role of the Camel and the Horse in the Early Arab Conquests," p. 36.
24. Al Jarbūʿ, op. cit., p. 239; Hill, "The Role of the Camel and the Horse in the Early Arab Conquests," p. 39.
25. Hill, "The Role of the Camel and the Horse in the Early Arab Conquests" p. 37.
26. Ibid.
27. El Gindi, op. cit., p. 151.
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also indicates that a horseman's lance was generally longer than the weapon used by other warriors.28
In addition to spears, long or short, early Arab cavalry may also have used bows or javelins.29 It may be worth noting that while such multi-weapon archer-lancer cavalry had been developed in Byzantium from the early 6th to early 7th centuries, such troops failed in the 7th and 8th centuries against new foes who, of course, included the Arabs.
The 7th century Byzantines, though not perhaps individually the most effective cavalry of this period, were not, unlike the Arabs, short of horses. Thus they could afford to field offensive cavalry formations and accept the inevitable wastage that sending cavalry against prepared infantry entailed. According to the Strategikon attributed to the Emperor Maurice, such cavalry formations would consist of seven or eight ranks of lancers with lighter and more manoeuverable horse-archers in looser formations on their flanks. Additional and separate units would also attempt to turn the enemy's flank or prevent him from turning one's own.30
Clearly the Muslims needed many more horses before copying such ambitious cavalry tactics, yet the Prophet Muḥammad was obviously aware of the need for cavalry if Islam was ever to go onto the offensive. He ordered the purchase of horses and, where possible, the levying of more animals as tribute.31 It has even been suggested that the conquest of Khaybar and the subsequent income from this area, plus booty from
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28. Al Balādhurī, op.cit., p. 135.
29. Hill, "The Role of the Camel and the Horse in the Early Arab Conquests" p. 39.
30. Lombard, Les métaux, p. 147.
31. Altheim and Stiehl, "Dhū Nuwās," p. 320.
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defeated Jewish tribes in Wādī al Qūra, Taymar and Fadak, enabled Muḥammad to raise and maintain Islam's first cavalry force.32 By this means the Muslims were at last able to counter-attack their enemies.
Once Islam went successfully onto the offensive, new problems naturally arose. These sprang primarily from the need to besiege fortified towns and from an acute shortage of strictly Arab manpower. At first, however, some specifically Arabian tactics enabled the Muslims to bypass these problems with superior strategy based upon the widespread use of the camel. Camel-riding and more mobile Muslim infantry armies out-manoeuvered their foes and thus gave battle at times and places of their own choosing. Usually this entailed forcing the enemy to attack Arab infantry when the latter had dismounted in a good defensive position.33 A lack of camels in adequate numbers in Iran34 might, indeed, have accounted for the comparative slowness of Islam's conquest of this area compared with its immediate successes in the Fertile Crescent and Egypt. In fact, the Arab conquest of Egypt is still a source of controversy. Was the army of ʿAmr ibn al ‘Ās primarily a cavalry force35 or did it consist largely of heavily armoured infantry, known as thaqlāh,36 riding to battle on camels?37 All scholars agree, however, that cavalry played some role in this brilliant campaign. It was also during the Arab conquest of Egypt that the Muslims
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32. Ibid., pp. 368-369.
33. Hill, "The Role of the Camel and the Horse in the Early Arab Conquests, " p. 37.
34. Ibid., p. 33.
35. Ibid.
36. A. Crohmann, From the World of Arabic Papyri, (Cairo 1952), p. 114.
37. Canards, "L'Expandion Arabes," (during questions after his paper), pp. 316-317.
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suffered some of their heaviest casualties from artillery, in this case defending Byzantine Alexandria.38 While the early Muslims were undeniably inferior to most of their foes in terms of siege engines and engineering, they were not entirely ignorant of the art. During the siege of Ṭā'if, Muḥammad's men used both a dabbābah or mantlet of cowhide and the manjanīn or mangonel. The former might have acted as a protection for those Yomenis operating the latter.39 SeveraI tribal castles in the Ḥijāz were apparently equipped with mangonels.40 and their use might have been learned from the Sassanians in Yemen.41 This engine was perhaps ultimately of Chinese origin and was widely used in Byzantium where it was known as the magganon or manganikon.42 While it may have been known in north Arabian, and strongly Iranian influenced, Ḥīra in the 3rd century, it was certainly being used by the Muslims at the time of the Caliph ʿUmar I.43
The true counter-weight trebuchet, which was probably invented in the Middle East, did not appear until the 12th century44 when, confusingly, it was also known as the manjānīq. What the Arabs, in Yemen or Ḥīra, had learned from central Asia via Iran, and which the Byzantines had probably learned via the Avars,45 was a more
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38. Butler, op. cit., p. 293.
39. Al Balādhurī, op. cit., p. 74; Fries, op. cit., pp. 55-56.
40. Althein and Stiehl, "Dhū Nuwās," pp. 366-367.
41. Fries, op. cit., p. 56.
42. Schwarzlose, op. cit., p. 321; Bosworth, "Armies of the Prophet," p. 202.
43. Partington, op. cit., p. 189; Bosworth, "Armies of the Prophet," loc. cit.
44. D. R, Hills "Mechanical Technology," in The Genius of Arab Civilization, J. R. Hayes edit., (Oxford 1976), pp. 175-187.
45. Howard-Johnson, op. cit., p. 303.
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primitive mangonel operated, not by a released counter-weight, but by the combined pulling strength of a team of men.46 Various forms of such man-powered manjānīq were later described in detail by al Tarṣūṣī in the 12th century.47 Primitive as such engines might sound, they were clearly seen as an improvement over the existing torsion engines of the Roman world,48 and were to become popular throughout the Mediterranean area and eastern Islam. Earlier torsion engines were still known and continued to be used in Islam for many centuries after they had been abandoned in Europe. The ʿarrādah (orig. Aramaic "wild ass") was, for example, the same as the Byzantine onagros.49 This ballista shot a small rock accurately and fast along a low trajectory and had great range.50 The mangonel, by contrast, had limited range, hurled a larger missile high and relied on the rock's own plunging weight to do the damage. As such the mangonel was a fortification destroyer while the ballista could be, and indeed was, used in open battle. The ʿarrādah may not, however, have been known in Arabia, for one of its earliest mentions was during the Byzantine defence of Rās al ʿAin when the weapon proved very effective against the Arab besiegers.51
While Islam, with its urban bourgeois Elite, could rapidly assimilate the weapons and technology of its equally urbanized foes, the problem of
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46. Hill, "Mechanical Technology,'' loc. cit.
47. Al Tarṣūṣī, op. cit., p. 120.
48. L. White, Jnr., "The Crusades and the Technological Thrust of the West," in War, Technology and Society in the Middle East, V. J. Parry and K, E. Yapp edits., (London 1975), pp. 101-102.
49. Bosworth, "Armies of the Prophet," p. 207.
50. Fries, op. cit., p. 57.
51. Al Balādhurī, op. cit., pp. 242-243.
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inadequate manpower was not so easily solved. The situation was apparently getting serious by the reign of the Caliph ʿUmar (634-644-AD), at which time the recruitment of Islam's defeated foes, particularly of Persians, was being encouraged.52 The militarization of the mawālī, or newly converted "freedmen," was also given official blessing.53 At first these latter new Muslims had entered the ranks as servants or batmen,54 but some were clearly playing a vital military role by Umayyad times.55 Judging from the evidence of the later 7th and subsequent centuries, these fully-fledged mawālī troops mostly fought as heavily armoured infantry,56 although they are also mentioned as horsemen fighting with short spears and javelins.57
Now was also the time when the jund or regional armies were organized.58 This was, perhaps, not merely a means of garrisoning a vast new empire, but also an attempt to make the most effective use of limited manpower resources. Like so many other aspects of early Islamic military organization, the regional jund armies could have been inspired by Byzantium, in this case by Constantinople's attempt to set up regional theme forces in the early 7th century. These Byzantine reforms may themselves have been inspired by Sassanian
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52. Ayalon, "Preliminary Remarks on the Mamlūk Military Institution in Islam," pp. 44-45.
53. Ibid.; Bosworth, "Armies of the Prophet," p. 203.
54. Crone, op. cit., p. 93. 55. Ayalon, "Preliminary Remarks on the Mamlūk Military Institution in Islam," loc. cit.; Crone, op. cit., pp. 27 and 92-93.
56. Ayalon, "Preliminary Remarks on the Mamlūk Military Institution in Islam," p. 50; al Ṭaberī, op. cit., vol. II, p. 464.
57. Al Jāḥiẓ, Al Bayān wa'l Tabyīn, p. 22.
58. Montgomery Watt, The Majesty that was Islam, p. 50; Bosworth, "Armies of the Prophet" p. 203.
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military organization, and it is equally possible that the Arabs copied the concept directly from the Persians.59 Although the themes were not completed before the eruption of Islam,60 the first region to be so organized was Anatolia. Thus the Muslims would soon have become aware of the idea.61
As the area under Muslim control widened, so an ever-increasing number of horse-raising steppe-lands were acquired. Even in the time of the Rāshidūn Caliphs, cavalry started to play a more important role in the armies of Islam. But however rich the Arabs might have been in arms, their horsemen rarely seem to have been as heavily armoured as their Sassanian and Byzantine heavy-cavalry foes.62 If this was indeed a disadvantage, which is far from clear in the written sources, it seems to have been more than compensated for by the Muslims' possession of the finest cavalry mount available. This was the Syrian-Arab breed. It was a cross between the small but strong North African Barb and the heavier Iranian horse. Originating in northern Syria, it was both swift and light, combining the advantages of its two forebears.63
Arab cavalry-versus-cavalry tactics do not, at this time, seem to have differed from those that had been, and would remain for many centuries, traditional throughout the Middle East. Spears would first be used against another horseman, a sword only being drawn
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59. Darko, "La Tactique Touranienne, Il," p. 136.
60. Haldon, Aspects of Byzantine Military Administration, pp. 97-101.
61. D. T. Rice, The Byzantines, (London 1962), pp. 47-50.
62. Canerd, "L'Expansion Arabe." pp. 316-317.
63. Lombard, The Golden Age of Islam, pp. 169-170.
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later.64 Full equipment for an Arab horseman just before the Umayyad revolution is unlikely to have changed during the rest of the 7th century. When going on a raid, probably as part of a small entirely mounted force, this was listed by al Balādhurī as turs shield, dirʿ hauberk and bayḍah helmet, plus a packing needle, five smaller needles, linen thread, an awl, scissors, a nose-bag and a basket.65 It was probably such heavy cavalry that was described by an Arab poet as "loaded down with coats of mail" while raiding Nubia in 652 AD.66 Unfortunately, available illustrations of possible early Muslim cavalry from Egypt (Figs. 135 and 136) do not show any obvious armour other than the helmet. One of these sources does, however show a long-hafted mace (Fig. 136) of a type that was to become widespread among Umayyad cavalry. This ʿamūd appears as the only weapon on a silver dish, probably from 7th century Palestine or Syria, that was discovered in central Russia (Fig. 115). One of the figures on this dish may wear a scale hauberk of a type that might have been the basic dirʿ of the 7th and 8th centuries. Although the ʿamūd is noted in early sources, it seems to have been a bedouin weapon and is rarely mentioned in use by regular Muslim troops until the Caliphate of ʿAlī (see Part Two, chapter Two).
Elsewhere horse-riding anṣār warriors who took part in the Day of the Camel battle in 656 AD were described as armed with swords on baldrics, and "bristling" in iron armour.67 These men might, of course, have been mounted infantry. Other troops were, on the same
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64. Al Balādhurī, op. cit., p. 129.
65. Ibid., p. 445.
66. Shinnie, op. cit., p. 4.
67. Al Masʿūdī, op. cit., vol. IV, p. 309.
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occasion, specified as cavalry. They were armed with rumḥ lances while some also had iron armour. Whereas in Byzantium such heavy cavalry were trained to fight as once-only shock-troops,68 Arab armoured horsemen could fight just as effectively on foot. This they would do if, for example, surrounded and outnumbered.69 Arab horsemen could also fight as infantry in ranks, abandoning their armour for greater freedom of movement if required.70 At the battle of Ṣiffīn in 657 AD, heavily armoured horsemen were also recorded as dismounting to fight a duel between the opposing armies, though this time they retained their armour. The champion from ʿAli's side wore a dirʿ hauberk tightened by a maḥzasm belt, a mighfar coif that apparently covered all his face except his eyes, and was armed with a sword. The champion from Muʿāwiyah's army also wielded a sword and wore a dirʿ of scale armour.71
Such incidents clearly show that infantry still dominated the battlefield. Such a situation might lie behind one of medieval Islam's favorite military ḥadīths in which the Prophet reportedly said, "Use ye the spear and the Arab bow, for with them was your Prophet victorious, and with their might ye have conquered the earth."72 While the statement is unlikely to have been genuine, it may well have originated in the time of the Rāshidūn Caliphs when Islam did indeed seem to be conquering the earth. The bow was, in the Arab armies of the time, primarily an infantry weapon, while the spear
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68. Darko, "La Tactique Touranianne, II," pp. 130-131.
69. Hill, The Mobility of the Arab Armies in the Early Conquests, p. 188.
70. Al Masʿūdī, op. cit., vol. V, p. 55.
71. Ibid., vol. V, pp. 49-50.
72. N. A. Faris and R. P. Elmer, Arab Archery, (Princeton 1945), p. 8.
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was used by all troops.
Considering the reverence with which the supposed swords of the prophet and the Rāshidūn Caliphs were preserved by later generations of Muslims, it seems surprising that more emphasis was not given to swords in pious ḥadīths. Genuinely attributed or otherwise, those blades now preserved in the Topkapu Reliquary are certainly very early indeed (Figs. 106-114).73
Abundant as armour might have been among early Muslim cavalry, it was clearly not universal. Nor was it worn by all infantry. In fact, the Arabs' situation was much like that of their Byzantine foes. Both sides found it necessary to put armoured infantry in the front ranks to defend those not so protected who stood to the rear. This was the case in the battle of Ṣiffīn.74 If such front-ranking troops wore normal long-sleeved hauberks like that perhaps illustrated in Fig. 462, and carried shields, then an analysis of the most commonly inflicted wounds, drawn up by D. R. Hill, would be quite understandable. Most frequent hurts were suffered to legs and feet, the least common to shoulders, hands and bodies. Arrow wounds to the face were also common.75 With the exception of the latter, such wounds are similar to those found on most of the victims of the battle of Wisby. In this singularly grim 14th century Scandinavian encounter, the losing side once again largely consisted of armoured infantry fighting in ranks.76
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73. A. R. Zaki, Al Sayf fī'l ʿĀlim al Islāmī, (Cairo 1957), passim.
74. R. Levy, The Social Structure of Islam, (Cambridge 1957), p. 432.
75. Hill, The Mobility of the Arab Armies in the Early Conquests, p. 143.
76. Thordeman, Armour from the Battle of Wisby. 1361, vol. I, pp. 149-209.