Edited by: Scott Holroyd

The name Islam means "Surrender" in Arabic. Islam became distinct from other religions of the time because of the preaching of Mohammed Quraysh (Quraysh is the tribe to which he belonged). Mohammed was born around 570 C.E. in Mecca in what is now Saudi Arabia. He was born into a religious culture of idols, polytheism and animism. The Ka'bah was already in existence in Mecca where a sacred piece of meteorite is surrounded by 360 idols. One for each day of the year. The Ka'bah was believed to be built by Adam, and repaired later by Abraham. So there is a great deal of overlap with Judaism. Every Muslim is directed to travel to the Ka'bah once in his life and walk around it seven times then touch the black stone on one of it's corners.

Muslim means "one who practices Islam". Qur'an, or Koran means Recitation. The Qur'an was recited by Mohammed between the years 610 C.E. until his death in 632 C.E. . Many of the stories of the Qur'an are parallels to the old testament with a few mentions of the new testament, Hebrew writings, and other earlier religions.

Soon after the completion of his teachings, Mohammed set out to get others to "surrender" to his own beliefs.

Mohammed

610. Koran dictation

624 Badr

625 Ohod

627 Medina

630 Mecca

632. Death of

Mohammed

Dies)

633 Hira

634 Ajnadain

635 Pella

635 Damascus

636 Yarmuk River

637 Kadisiya

637 Jalula

637 Jerusalem

638 Aleppo

641 Nihawand

641 al-Fustat

642 Alexandria

643 Tripoli

655 Lycia

656 Basra

657 Siffin

673 Constantinople

680 Kerbela

698 Carthage

709 Kabul

711 Rio Barbate

717 Constantinople

718 Covadonga

721 Toulouse

732 Tours

736 Kashgar

739 Acroinum

750 Zab al Kabir

806 Heraclea Pon.

838 Amorium

873 Samosata

875 Apulia

902 Taormina

928 Erzurum

934 Melitene

934 Simancas

939 Zamora

960 Candia

964 Adana

969 Antioch

976 Damascus

982 Crotone

1097 - The First Crusade

Following are the accounts of the battles fought in the name of Islam by the generals of Mohammed. The entire accounts are taken from : "An Encyclopedia of Battles", by David Eggenberger, Dover Publications, 1985. These historical accounts are not taken from a theological point of view, rather tell the account of the battles as they happened from a historical perspective.

To understand Islam is to understand that from its very inception, it was a means by which a people subjugated the surrounding tribes and later entire nations. The following is quoted directly from Mr. Eggenberger:

A year and a half after Mohammed made the 210-mile flight northward from Mecca to Medina (because of banishment), he launched his first military operation. With 300 loyal followers, he set out to intercept a caravan on its return from Syria to Mecca. The caravan was defended by a thousand Meccans, led by Abu Sufyan of the Koreish Tribe (Mohammed's own tribe). At Badr in the Hejaz of western Arabia Mohammed's men routed the larger enemy force and captured the caravan. It was the first of a long series of battles mon by the hard-riding desert cavalry of the Arabian Moslems.

A year after Mohammed's initial victory at Badr, his followers clashed again with the Koreish tribe led by Abu Sufyan. At Ohod, northwest of Medina, a thousand Moslems fought their second battle against a force three times their size. This time Islam was defeated; 70 died on the field and the Prophet himself was wounded. Mohammed retired to Medina, but his opponents did not attack the city for another two years.

Alarmed at the growing strength of Mohammed's Islamic movement in Medina, his opponents organized an attack on the city. Abu Sufyan of the Koreish tribe led a force of 10,000 men to Medina, which was defended by the Prophet and some 3,000 followers. Fighting behind a trench dug around the city, the Moslems repulsed every Koreish attack for 20 days. The besiegers then gave up the attack and dispersed. The following year Mohammed secured the right to make a pilgrimage to Mecca (the Treaty of Hudaybiya). From this time on the initiative in the Arabian civil war passed to the Moslems. Two of the converts became great Islamic Generals - Khalid ibn-al-Walid, the Conqueror of Syria, and Amr ibn-al-As, victor in Egypt.

When Mohammed's opponents broke the 628 Treaty of Hudaybiya, the Moslems resumed the civil war in Arabia. Their growing power made ultimate victory a certainty. Mohammed himself led an attack from Medina, 210 miles south to Mecca. (He was 60 years of age). Storming into the city of his birth in January 630, the Prophet won over the inhabitants, destroying a reported 360 pagan idols. Mecca was then enshrined as the Holy City of Islam. During the remaining two years of his life, Mohammed, by sword and persuasion, succeeded in stamping out virtually all paganism in Arabia. The Job was completed about 633 under the caliphate of Abu-Bakr, one of the father-in-laws of the Prophet.

The first Moslem attack against the powerful Persian empire of the Sassanians was little more that the usual border raid. Under Khalid ibn-al-Walid, later to become one of the great generals of Islam, a force of Arab Horsemen swooped down on the village of Hira, just west of the lower Euphrates River. After extracting a very small tribute, the Arabs withdrew to make a forced march across the Syrian desert to Ajnadain. At that time the Persian ruler was Rustam, the regent for the youthful Yazdegerd III. Rustam sent out a counter raiding force. The following year, these Persian cavalrymen routed a band of Arabs in the so-called Battle of the Bridge. Hira again came under Persian control. It was, however, the last Persian victory over the Arabs. In a few months the new military power of the Moslems would destroy two armies of the Byzantine Empire and overrun both Palestine and Syria. Persia would have to deal with its western neighbor on a live-or-die basis.

Under the caliphate of, first, Abu-Bakr and then Omar I, large forces of Moslem cavalry burst out of Arabia to invade both Syria and Persia. The attack toward Syria was checked at Ajnadain, southwest of Jerusalem, by a Byzantine army under Theodorus, brother of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. However, the Moslem general Khalid ibn-al-Walid made a dramatic forced march from Hira across the Syrian desert with reinforcements. The combined Arabian force of some 45,000 troops routed the more numerous Byzantine army on July 30, 634. Khalid pressed on northward toward Damascus.

After the Moslem victory at Ajnadain, Khalid ibn-al-Walid led his Arabian horsemen northward past Jerusalem toward Damascus. In northern Palestine the retreating Byzantine army made a stand at Pella on January 23, 635. But for the second time the hard-riding Arabian cavalry routed their opponents. It was the first victory under the caliphate of Omar I. Khalid then pressed on toward Damascus.

From his victory at Pella, in northern Palestine, Kahlid ibn-al-Whalid took his Arabian horsemen into Syria. As the Moslems approached Damascus, the Byzantine garrison threw up a strong defense. When the Arabs began to besiege Damascus, Emperor Heraclius ordered one of his generals, named Werdan, to relieve the city. There followed a swift series of maneuvers that established Khalid as one of the best generals of his era. He began pulling away from Damascus to meet Wurdan, but as he did so the garrison sallied out to attack his rear. Khalid wheeled quickly and smashed this assault with heavy losses to the Byzantines. Then he turned back to confront and drive off the Werdan relieving force. The energetic Moslem turned again to lock Damascus in a siege that forced the city to surrended on September 4, 635. An Arabian column rode 85 miles to the north to take Emesa as well.

To throw back the Arabian invasion of Syria, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius sent two armies into the field - one from the north, the other from the Palestine coast. The Arabian general Khalid ibn-al-Whalid pulled back his Moslem cavalry to the valley of the Yarmuk, an eastern tributary of the Jordan River. Here he received reinforcements from Medina and from some tribes of Syrian Arabs, to bring the Moslem strength to about 25,000 warriors. The combined Byzantine force, under Theodorus Trihurius, was twice as large, but much of it was composed of Asiatic auxiliaries. On August 20, 636, the Moslems opened the battle with their usual slashing cavalry attacks. Although the first forays were beaten off, the Islamic horsemen continued to strike until the Byzantine lines collapsed, at the end of the day. In the rout that followed, the Imperial forces suffered enormous losses; some 4000 Moslems were killed.

The defeat broke the Byzantine power in southern Syria and in Palestine. The Moslem wave swept on to Damascus without opposition. Here the capital of Islam was established for the next hundred years. Before pushing on to northern Syria. The Moslems then turned back to attack Jerusalem.

637. C.E. - The Battle of Kadisiya

The growing power of the Arabian Moslems made certain a showdown clash with the empire of Sassanian Persia, to the east. The Persian moved first. In the spring of 637, Rustam, regent for Yazdegerd III, took an army of about 100,000 men across the Euphrates River to Kadisiya, near the present Hilla, in Iraq. Expecting the Persian attack, Caliph Omar I sent forth 30,000 Arabian cavalrymen under Sa'ad ibn-Abi-Waqqas.

The battle began with the usual series of cavalry rushes by the Arabs. But the huge Persian force held its ground and then counterattacked with elephants, which terrified the Arabian horses. Sa'ad was barely able to prevent a route at the end of the first day's combat. Fighting resumed the second day, although the slashing Moslem attacks inflicted heavier casualties than were received. On the third day Sa'ad was reinforced by some veterans of the Syrian campaign who knew how to fight elephants with arrows and javalins. The beasts were wounded and then stampeded back through the Persian lines, opening holes for the Arabian cavalry to charge through. The Moslems pressed home their attacks throughout the day and during the night (called the "Night of the Clangor"). At daybreak a sandstorm began blowing in the faces of the stubborn Persians. Rustam sought personal safety by swimming across a canal running to the Euphrates. He was caught and beheaded. The Persian army then disintegrated, taking terrible losses from the Arabians, who gave no quarter. Moslem losses in the battle totaled 7,500 killed. In the booty captured by the Arabs was the jewel-encrusted sacred banner of Persia.

Sa'ad crossed the Euphrates in pursuit. Yazdegerd offered to yield all territory west of the Tigris River. When the Arabs scoffed at this, the Persian emperor abandoned his capital at Ctesiphon, which was promptly occupied and sacked. He later made two other attempts to halt the Moslem invaders, but the decisive battle of the Arabian-Persian War had already been fought at Kadisiya.

637. The Battle at Jalula

The Persian army beaten at Kadisiya was rallied by Emperor Yazdegerd III six months later at the entrance to the mountains 50 miles north of Madain. After looting the rich capital of Ctesiphon, the Arabian army of Sa'ad ibn-Abi-Waqqas rode north in pursuit. At Jalula the Moslem cavalry began the slashing attacks that had proved so effective against the heavier-armed but demoralized Persians. Again Yazdegerd's horsemen broke and fled, losing heavily in the rout. The Moslems pushed on to invade and occupy central Persia. It would be four years before Yazdegerd could organize another army to defend his country against the invaders.

637. The Battle for Jerusalem

Following their great victory on the Yarmuk River, one Arabian army pressed northward to Damascus while a second Moslem force launched an attack against Jerusalem. With no Byzantine army to defend them, the residents, under the patriarch Sophronius, rallied behind the city's walls. The strength of the Moslem armies lay in their hard-riding cavalry, which could do little against a fortified city except surround it.

For four months the Arabs, under the personal direction of Caliph Omar I, besieged Jerusalem. Finally, realizing the hopelessness of their isolated position, the defenders surrendered the city to Omar. Within the next year all of Palestine lay under Moslem rule.

638. The Battle at Aleppo

After organizing their conquest of Damascus and breaking into Jerusalem, the Arabs stood ready to ride on into northern Syria. In 638, Kahlid ibn-al-Walid led his Moslem cavalry into Antioch and Aleppo. Only in the latter city did he meet stubborn resistance. Although Aleppo itself surrendered readily, the Byzantine garrison took refuge in the citadel where they defied capture for five months. At last the besieged commander surrendered the fort and became a convert to Mohammedanism. This battle ended the last resistance in Syria to Moslem domination. Only the Taurus Mountains prevented the Arabian flood from sweeping on into Asia Minor.

Four years after his Persian armies had been decisively beaten at Kadisiya and Jalula, Yazdegerd III organized a new force to make a final stand against the conquering Moslems of Arabia. He and his son Firuz III built up an army of 100,000 men at Nihawand (40 miles south of Hamadan in modern Iran). To the attack came a much smaller force of Arabian cavalry under Sa'ad ibn-Abi-Waqqas, the Moslem general of Caliph Omar I. The new Persian army, like its predecessors, could not stand up against the swift, slashing attacks of the desert horsemen. Sa'ad's Arabians swept the field inflicting heavy casualties. Yazdegerd fled to a mountain refuge. The Arabian conquesst of Persia was complete. With the murder of Yazdegerd ten years later and the flight of Firuz to China, the Sassanian dynasty ended.

In the east, the all-victorious Arabs pushed on to the borders of India within two years. In the west, Syria had been taken and the invasion of Egypt was already underway.

641. al-Fustat - First Battle in the Moslem Conquest of Egypt

The aggressive Moslem caliph Omar I remained unsatisfied with the swift Arabian conquests of Syria( including Palestine) and Persia. In 639 he sent an Arabian army under the general Amr ibn-al-As westward toward Egypt, then held by the Byzantine Empire. With 4,000 horsemen, Amr rode along the ancient road of conquest, seizing Pelusium and Helipolis, at the edge of the Nile delta, in 640. The Byzantine army prepared to defend Egypt at the old Roman settlement of Babylon on the Nile. The capable Amr encamped at al-Fustat (later to become old Cairo) and laid siege to Babylon. The Moslem army, steadily augmented by fresh recruits, prosecuted the siege vigorously. On April 9, 641, the Byzantine garrison surrendered. Amr promptly moved down the Nile to Alexandria, Egypt's greatest city.

642. The Battle of Alexandria

The Arabian victory at al-Fustat (Old Cairo) opened the way for an attack on Alexandria, Egypt's greatest city and a naval base of the Byzantine Empire. Alexandria was defended by 50,000 troops, but the garrison was demoralized and uncertain in the face of half their number of Moslem invaders commanded by the able general Amr ibn-al-As. For 11 months of alternate siege and truce, the city held out against the Moslems, who had only cavalry to attack the fortification. Finally the patriarch of Alexandria, Cyrus, who was himself hostile to Constantinople, surrendered the city. Under the arranged terms the inhabitants were to pay tribute in return for security of person, property and religious exercise. The Moslems now stood masters of all Egypt.

Three years later, in 645, the apearance of a Byzantine fleet outside Alexandria prompted the residents to rebel against their Arabian conquerors. But Amr crushed the revolt as effectively as he had taken the city originally.

643. The Battle for Tripoli (unfinished)

1097 The First Crusade

1147 Second Crusade