Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [30]
At the same time another Arab force, at least 3,000 strong, but perhaps numbering as many as 9,000 men, huge by the standards of desert campaigning, was pushing northwest from the Arabian peninsula toward the Mediterranean coast. The Byzantine emperor Heraclius, a veteran of decades of war against the Persians, was now aware of the danger posed by the desert Arabs. He dispatched a field army from Homs in Syria to intercept the Muslims advancing north from Beersheba. This Muslim army had already tasted victory, sweeping aside the local forces commanded by the governor of Gaza. A Syriac chronicle written sometime after the event described the outcome of the encounter. “The Byzantines fled and abandoned the commander … and the Arabs slew him. Some 4,000 poor villagers from Palestine were killed, Christians, Jews and Samaritans, and the Arabs destroyed the palace completely.”9 Heraclius had sent the bulk of his soldiers south along the flat coastal strip. The Byzantine column passed the town of Ramleh, heading toward the Arab army, reported as being still near to Gaza. A force of this size moved slowly, keeping close to the sea so that it could be supplied from the Byzantine fleet cruising off the coast. These were not just poorly trained local conscripts but included a nucleus of heavily mailed infantry, horse archers, and armored heavy cavalry—the cataphracts.
At some point south of Ramleh the Byzantines were ambushed by the Arabs—the Muslim army had advanced farther north than Heraclius or his commanders had anticipated. The exact location of the ensuing battle of Ajnadain is uncertain. But the outcome, on July 31, 634, was an annihilating victory for the Muslims. The Byzantine force was following the track south, giving a wide berth to the Jabal Nablus (Judean hills). The land was flat, not the broken ground or ravines that favored irregular fighters. The only advantage that the Muslims possessed was their speed of maneuver and their reckless zeal. All day long the few Arab horsemen darted at the enemy, tempting them into pursuit, and drawing the fire from their bowmen. Their leader, Khalid Al-Walid, had to remind his men to “reserve yourself until the evening. It was in the evening that the Prophet was accustomed to vanquish.”10 But once it had broken the enemy ranks in the late afternoon, the Byzantine army’s advantages of larger numbers and better equipment vanished. The Muslims could gut their opponents’ horses with their knives and spears, and mob the heavily armored infantry. Meanwhile, with the light failing the Byzantine archers had no clear targets.
As they slashed and stabbed, cutting off the heads and limbs of their opposites, shouting their tribal battle cries, the Arabs’ assault destroyed their enemy’s cohesion. The bewildered Byzantine troops ceased to obey orders, milling about as they tried to fight back against their gadfly foe. Once the Byzantines’ momentum had slackened and they began to retreat, the Arabs turned this attempt at maneuver into a rout. The Byzantine troops fled north, pursued by the Arabs for a while, until the latter returned to strip the bodies of the fallen soldiers of their arms and equipment. Tribesmen who had been armed with nothing more than a spear now acquired a horse and a sword. Buoyed up by victory, the Muslims moved against the cities and towns. Jerusalem shut its gates, but outside the walls, according to the patriarch of Jerusalem, the tribesmen “plunder cities, despoil the fields, burn the villages, despoil holy monasteries.” In reality, the Muslims were more concerned with consolidating their authority. Far from mindlessly ravaging the land, they decreed that the Christian inhabitants should pay an annual poll tax of one dinar, and hand over a percentage of their crops each year.11
The disaster at Ajnadain was