Thwarting the Rashidun Caliphate

im not denying the achievement of the muslims they had some pretty based commander, khalid himself is often hailed as one of the best cavalry commander along with the likes of subotai. but its like everything went wrong for the byzantines and the persians

a byzantine-sassanid war HBO series would be pretty dope desu. with the muslim invasion as the ending, heraclius story is pure kino

>imagine if khalid faced heraclius, the hero who ended the byzantine-persian wars instead.
He might, and probably would have, lost. Heraclius wasn't a military genius, but an astute diplomat and competent commander. Before his final campaign against the Sassanians he did lose battles and was forced into a costly peace treaty, and his campaign against the Persians required years of amassing resources and exploiting political dissent within their ranks.

This was a fine tactic against an imperial power like the Sassanians. It would have failed massively against the Rashidun, who while prone to internal strife themselves were not reliant on unified command like the Romans or Sassanians for their conquests. Their commanders were fairly independent and made local alliances on their own initiative. Heraclius have been the Khosrow II of this scenario had he tried to rebuild and hold out.

The Arabs were far more than just lucky, and the assumptions made that imagine some kind of reversal of fortune for them would be just as much a lucky break for the Byzantines and Sassanians.

Can you name the source that shows attested and proven numbers that don't stem from the Koran, Hadiths or "SoA.com"?

It doesn't take much work to realize that settled agrarian empires can easily field more men than a newly established band of desert tribes

Is heraclius the most>JUST character in history? Win a long costly war with the Persians through years of blood, men, and wealth sacrificed only to lose it all and forever be known as the emperor that lost half the empire.

Even as a Muslim I would almost feel bad for him if the result wasn't so perfect.
Allah is the greatest.

The Arabs did feel bad for him, which is why there's apocryphal stories about how Heraclius was really a good guy who wanted to convert but was stopped by his advisors.

>attested and proven numbers
>history

We don't even have accurate numbers for shit that happened 2 minutes ago.

Where is the proof?

If the Sassanids never conquered their Lakhmid allies territores and killed their King then they might have had a real fighting chance.

The Arabs of Banu Lakhm were devotedly loyal towards the Sassanids cause of their rivalry with the Ghassanids that were supported by the Byzantine. But due to a Sassanid King believing treason was going on he decided to kill their King and annex their lands. So off course when the Muslims came they would open their gates for them at Hirah and allow them free passage into the inner Sassanid lands.

Otherwise their lands would provide a natural border against the Muslims to atleast buy them time and organise, with or without the Byzantine.

Both empires were just piece of shit if they succumbed to some fucking desert niggers with 1/4-1/8 of their population.

The Arabs had consistent contact with the empires and likely picked up their tactics. And even though the empires had larger settled populations neither were in a condition to field massive armies

You're thinking of the Rashidun Caliphate as an empire in the same way the Byzantines or Sassanids were. Everyone thinks of battles like Yarmouk or Qadisiyyah as epic reversals where military genius or pure luck turned the tides of history, but they were more like moments where the diplomacy of all three powers came to a head, revealing the weaknesses of the older two in the face of the younger. While the Rashidun Caliphate did take cities, the war was really fought and lost for the Byzantines/Sassanids in the countryside where the Arabs managed to turn the local tribes who had migrated into Syria and Mesopotamia centuries earlier to their side.

The Arab war strategy was to march into a region, set down roots immediately as a colonial rather than imperial presence, and create a political and military coalition from the disaffected around them, which were numerous throughout the Near East at the time. Where the Arabs ran into trouble, such as in Anatolia or Northern Iran, is where they encountered a political alliance with deep roots and few if any rivals.

Didn't the Byzantines consider the Caliphate their most dangerous opponent because its tactics and and organization were the most similar to their own?

So how big of a factor was the Justinian plague?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian
>The Plague of Justinian (541–542) was a pandemic that afflicted the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, especially its capital Constantinople, the Sassanid Empire, and port cities around the entire Mediterranean Sea.[1] One of the deadliest plagues in history, this devastating pandemic resulted in the deaths of an estimated 25 million (at the time of the initial outbreak that was at least 13% of the world's population) to 50 million people (in two centuries of recurrence).

>tfw

A huge factor, it ties into and where the traditional power bases of the Byzantines, at least, which were mostly Greek and Romanized urban elites, were decimated and the tribes of the countryside came to dominate the region's politics and economies.

The plague wiped out over half of Western Persia's entire population for over 7 years. Also according to Al-tabari, this coincided with unseasonal heavy deluges on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that lead to much of the Sassanid Empire's agricultural breadbasket farmlands for the Persians being drowned as a result.

So famine and significant amount of dead dying of plague for 7 years probably played a huge factor.

Any good books about Heraclius or the byzantine sassanid conflict specifically? Sounds super interesting and I want to more than just wiki entries.

bump

This Harry turtledove series is a fantastic re telling of that period.

Why people fought so much for those lands? It's literally a desert.

it wasnt always like that back then, the nile river delta,the euphrates and persia are some of the most fertile place in the planet, iirc like 30% of the world population then lived there

they need to make peace earlier and went deep into arabia and raze mecca and medina before muhammad, by the time of heraclius it was already too late

>records from any culture you like

yes yes this is very accurate

>records from cultures you don't like

this isn't true there isn't an exact number from 7 different sources from 5 different empires with each soldier detailed with their name, occupation and city of origin. I just can't trust it

please leave

Why? Look at it on Google Earth.

the fact that you don't understand the middle easts importance throughout 95% of recorded history gives me a good idea of your level.....

Educate me then. I'm humble and I like to learn.

Pretty much this

If the Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602–628 hadn't happened, the Arabs wouldn't have made much headway.

Are you mad, Hakim?

the ME, especially Syria and Egypt, were the wealthiest parts of the Roman Empire and the grain from the Nile delta basically supported the entire population of Constantinople.

Egypt was the breadbasket of the Byzantine Empire yes, wealthiest? Not so sure about that.

The major sources of wealth in the time period were trade and agriculture, and Egypt dominated the latter.

I've always contemplated what would've happened if the Shah had somehow consolidated a power base in Central Asia. He'd have thousands of Persian refugees including former soldiers, officers, administrators, etc. to set-up shop in present-day Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan. And he could try to enlist help from the Tang Dynasty (like his son did) or possibly India.

There's also all the Turkic tribes to hire. The Arabs themselves said that their 2 toughest enemies in the Persian campaigns were the Daylamites and the Turkic steppe archers. It took a while for the Arabs to invade and subdue Central Asia because the Turkics were hardy fighters like themselves. The Arabs had the same trouble with the Berbers (also a desert-dwelling people with great equestrian ability) of North Africa.

A Sassanian dynasty in exile would make for an interesting conflict if they somehow managed to consolidate in Central Asia properly.

The Daylamites under the Ziyarids actually reconquered most of Persia with the Buyids during the Abbasid period and were trying to create a neo-Sassanid state under their leader Mardavij, who wanted Zoroastrianism back as the state religion.
However he was killed by one of his Turkic servants and the Ziyarids were absorbed by the Buyids, whom favored Shia islam instead.

And this lasted until they were all absorbed by the Seljuk Turks (minus Tabaristan, which withstood them also like with the muslim conquest).

Yep, I read about them and the other dynasties in the Persian interlude between the Abbasids and Seljuks.

It sucks that Persia gets such bad press in Western media because of the Greco-Persian Wars (300 especially) or getting conquered by Alexander the Great (no shame in that). The Parthians and Sassanians are my favorite Persian dynasties because they were Rome's preeminent enemy. No other foe costed the Romans so much blood and treasure as the Persians did since they too were a great civilization.

I would kill to see a TV series or movie about the Daylamites resisting the Arab onslaught. That shit writes itself. Roman historians rated a Daylamite to be the equal of a Roman legionary in melee and steadfastness.

The Byzantines and Persians intervening in Arabia with their invasions of the south and propping up client kings in the north is probably what set things in motion for Muhammad and the Arab Conquests in the first place.

It's like saying the Chinese could have prevented Genghis Khan if only they'd meddled even more in destabilizing the northern steppe.

not only that, you are just looking at the Roman period. The ME was the area of first civilizations and had a multitude of extremely powerful empires and kingdoms for thousands of years before the Rome even existed and after rome is was still very wealthy and important under the arabs.... it's a region filled with such history it's honestly difficult trying to summarize it. If you're gonna study Eurasian history from the first records you will spend most of your time in the Middle East