PREVIEW： Epochs #237 ｜ The Fourth Crusade： Part II with Furius Pertinax
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Summary
In this episode, we take a look at the legacy of the Sassanids, the greatest generals in world history, and their impact on the history of the Middle East. We discuss their achievements, their failures, and how they became one of the most successful civilizations in history.
Transcript
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okay so where would you go after what would you talk about after so i think i think i think we
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can't we can't really reckon with this topic without actually perhaps discussing like a
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little bit of the arab wars because the the sassanids unlike the romans actually do score
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i think two victories over the arabs battle the battle the bridge which was one i can't remember
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the second one but the arabs have this way of just prevailing or with almost every encounter
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and even though the iranians you might say are more conditioned to fight in this climate than
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what even like the greeks and romans are you know the arabs are far more familiar with desert fighting
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they're far more familiar with you know riding through harsh you know desert climates and water
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scarcity and i mean there's even an anecdote where um khalid abin waleed who's probably you know even
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if you have like the discussion of like the greatest generals in world history like he's he would have
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to be in the top five he's on the list yeah he's definitely i mean at the very least the top 10
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and like he doesn't lose a battle and he's you know like i said but the arab is a bit opportunistic
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but i mean that still doesn't discount their prowess and their skill um where i think it's
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after the one of the battles with the persians knowing that the romans have amassed this fairly
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large army for the battle of yarmulke which is 636 um he actually sends a contingent of the
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persian army or the you know the arab army in persia across the desert across the what the arabs
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called al jazeera across mesopotamia and he basically like doubles the size of the camel
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contingent and just has the camels drink a heap of water yeah and using navigation through the stars
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completely bypasses all the roman border forts through a way that the romans think is impossible
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to invade and then pops up somewhere in like southern what they call coel syria and has his men just you
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know intimately kill cat the camels to take the water out of the hump and they actually make it across the
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desert with very few losses and the romans are wild there's like 10 000 more men here holy holy moly
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like we're in trouble now that's the classic arab thing bedouin thing of um where we can take a
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a a a camel mounted army where you just cannot even comprehend that that we could do that that men can
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do that and then they they do do it and it's like well all right you got us you got us we're not ready
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we're not prepared from that angle and i mean the romans had varying degrees of success in that part
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of the world but you look for example you know the crassus and the disaster carri or even mark
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antony his path in expedition like when you're not prepared the attrition you can suffer is immense
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they do it all the way up to the killing the ottomans in world war one yeah yeah lawrence of
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arabia leading camel yeah camel armies against the ottomans in like 1917 bedouin insurgents on
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yeah i mean so they were doing that in late antiquity absolutely yeah um and all the way
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through the middle ages and so so so to their credit the the sassanids do fight very gallantly
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and for instance once they start losing cities in mesopotamia they mesopotamia they do fortify
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so like modern day syria and iraq we talked about well in this case modern day iraq right you know
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basically a stretch from what it would be modern day balzra to mosul right um okay you know the
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arabs capture city by city by city by city and eventually they reach well in this time it's
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called seleucia but tesiphone seleucia it's basically what they bagged at and after a very
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bitter siege the arabs do take it after certain persians elements defect to the to the arabs
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cosmo evacuates the city and they do make a couple of stands in and around like the zagros mountains
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i think the final battle is the battle of navahand i think it's called um but really after that point
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the treasury is expended and um because i mean all this in the aftermath too that after the loss of
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the the final war with heraclius cosmo is is deposed and killed and then you just have this
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massive succession crisis they do settle on general uh rostom uh uh part of my iranian if it's bad but
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i think it's farukzad is is the general who basically becomes i won't even attempt it
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i i don't i just i simply try um because in the end like you know i mean i think it's due that
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credit that iran gets because i mean perj is a great civilization certainly certainly in the pre-modern
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time perj was a great civilization um and there are people with a longer history than my own for
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instance um and uh and rostom actually almost fights the arabs to a standstill but then he's
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actually killed in in battle uh he's thrown from his elephant and crushed and you know it's one of
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those tight tight run sort of situations where the arabs just pit the the civilized army um but
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really from from that from the loss of cessephon and then afterwards afterwards the the loss of the
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battle of navihand which was the last rallying of the the persian armies the state more or less
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collapses and in a bit of a parallel to um to the fate of uh darius with bessus they flee east
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and the last king is killed in an unhandled way like for instance in this case like i remember
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what if it's like shippur the third or whichever one is the last emperor or the last king of persia
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he's killed by miller on the outskirts of merv all right you know so it's a very similar fate to
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darius yeah yeah hunted down to the ends of the air yeah yeah yeah almost but that being said is is
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that he's i believe one of his relatives i can't remember if it's like a cousin or a son or something
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actually survives in the chinese court because the chinese actually have designs to re-establish
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the sassanids you know in the in the fagan and faganian plains but just never materializes so
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persia's wiped off the map and uh although there is a struggle uh um for instance um as an example
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sake the bavandid dynasty uh which exists the just sort of south of the caspian sea fight on as a as a um
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and the yustanid so there's a few there's a few you know families that maintain their zoroastrian
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religion their persian identity and actually sort of fight for another couple of centuries in the
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in the mountainous regions of gilan and sort of southern azerbaijan what is sort of today
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actually not far from modern day tehran they're the um the albors mountains but the arabs are just
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very powerful and they proselytize with great energy and persia you might say is never the same again
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so this is when the quote-unquote middle east becomes islamic more or less is this and and
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then inversely you have um the romans have some initial success against the arabs in terms of the
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border skirmishes but once the arabs start pouring comprehensive forces into syria for instance the
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romans lose damascus i think in i want to say in 632 but even then the siege of damascus is like six
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six month six month affair and it's general thomas is fighting with one eye missing and the city only
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falls when a defector an arab defector converts and opens the gates for the the the arabs to take
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the city all right but you know the romans send a counterattack to damascus and almost retake it
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um but heraclius at this point realizes that it's not just a border incursion and hearing reports from
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the persians because this point the romans and the persians are cooperating he realizes that this is
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actually a major major problem so he's pulling troops from all across the border raising new
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soldiers and dispatches this army to a place called yarmouk which is a river in modern day it's it's sort
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of not far from the latani it's it's um sort of one of those parts of the world that sort of separates
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like what you call lebanon from you know judaea palestine that part of the world um and yarmouk ends
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up being a almost like a a cataclysmic six-day battle like an absolute struggle for instance even in
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in sort of arab history i think it's the second or third battle they call the day of the eyes
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because the romans used so many archers that so many arab soldiers at least lost one eye like it
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was a pretty hard fought battle if you get what i mean um but you know the romans had um armenian
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contingents they had slavic contingents that you know um in reference to magna gracia like you know
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roman contingents a greek contingent you know it was really like them summoning the absolute strength
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of what they could given the aftermath they found themselves in after the persian war
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um you know you're talking probably a force of at least 50 60 000 you know if ancient battles ever
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go beyond one day yeah it's uh it's a big affair yeah it's a very serious affair yeah i mean so for
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it to go into multiple multiple days well you gotta think that six days is almost a week well yeah it's
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sort of incredible even the polionic era battles were seldom more than one day yeah it was a two or
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three-day thing it was gigantic so yeah you could only infer that this was well it was a pivot it's
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one of those very very very pivotal battles that again i think a lot of people in the west
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in the western tradition may never even have heard of which is actually a pity uh not not to say that
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we shouldn't you know keep in mind say like richard the lion heart or that we shouldn't keep in mind
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the capture of jerusalem in 1099 or you know other battles that are more at the you know the forefront of
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our uh you know consciousness you know for instance like we a lot of people who aren't even
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particularly fond of history will sort of know of you know alexander you know they might not know
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the battle of gorgomela but they know about alexander's victories although they'll know about like
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caesar and they might not know about pharsalus or whatever but you know they'll have some kind
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of conception but yarmul just doesn't exist in our you know in our sort of socio our sociocultural
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memory and i've never heard of it until i have studied yeah uh as we all do eastern roman history
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yeah yeah and it's one of the most pivotal battles in in the actual entirety of our civilization it is
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actually up there in importance with marathon it is up there with thermopylae it's up there with
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um with pharsalus it's up there with milvian bridge it determines a lot yeah yeah a great deal
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yeah yeah oh it sets the tone for well well until today you could argue could quite well argue we are
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still living in the reverberations of yarmul in many ways like you got to think if if if the whole
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um roman persian arab conflict had gone differently there would probably still be a delineation between
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a a larger more powerful persian civilization with its own sphere and a greco-hellenic orthodox sphere
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turkey would be christian to this day and syria and palestine and yeah you know if you if you
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like have in your head a map of say justinian pre the um like you know the the reconquest wars that's
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kind of what an eastern empire would look like sent to rank on santa mobile if things had gone
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differently it didn't but i'm just making the point that that has a massive transformational sort
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of you know right effect yeah yeah so so so yarmulk ends up being a quite a disaster um on the sixth day
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the arab score an absolutely fantastic victory um and much of the roman armies is is driven off the
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field and much of that was killed and even within the battle itself even though the arab suffered
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pretty horrendous losses um out of a force of say you know things espers sort of very wildly as you
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know with these kind of battles some say as low as 30 some say as much as 80 i probably settled on
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somewhere around 50 or 60 because i mean it can be said that a lot of contingents were brought there
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um but yeah so about two-thirds to three-quarters of the armies destroyed and the romans retreat to
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their cities and one by one the arabs capture they take you know they take jerusalem they take caesarea
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maritama they take um you know amaz emezer and they take all these cities that are through that
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the levant and really the the east romans only stabilized things along the taurus mountains and
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that's where it stays for a couple of centuries so they're getting aleppo they're getting damascus
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homs aleppo damascus the whole thing yeah the whole shebang yeah um you know uh tartus um uh acra
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tyre the whole shebang yeah i mean it is a gradual process i mean they don't take them instantaneously
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well like for instance the the siege of caesarea maritama which is you know caesarea and what is
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monday israel um was took the arabs over a year you know gaza uh the city of gaza took
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several months and and actually there's um there's a story i think of the 40 40 martyrs of gaza
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so you you sort of see some of the emergence not this is a religious discussion but you sort of
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start to see the emergence of like these martyr stories um in the late classical early medieval
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period as a result of these these battles and these losses against the arabs yeah so that changes
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uh the dynamics sort of the the world pre-heraclius is quite different to the world
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post-heraclius right it's a different map in the east anyway sorry well yeah and i think it's fair
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to say that if it isn't a single hinge point then somewhere in between or bookended by justinian and
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heraclius is before this is the classical world even if rome's fallen it's in the classical world
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but after it is certainly not the classical world it is a new era a new world in the true sense of the
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word or like late late antiquity they like to say now uh and then yeah so which is a perfectly
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accurate yeah yeah that's reasonable yeah i haven't got a problem but late antiquity you could
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more or less say that late antiquity dies on the battlefield of yarluk yeah right fair enough yeah
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yeah and i know historians love to uh draw essentially arbitrary lines in the sand although but they're
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not arbitrary often they're actually not arbitrary it does make complete sense to do that it does make
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sense it's not just so it makes a textbook easier to cut up into chapters it really is a real
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thing it really it really was well there are there are events that do delineate and you know forever
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transform time after things do happen after the event you're saying things do happen absolutely
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and and things even after even after the fall of yarluk even though the romans are in
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you know perpetual retreat at this point you know and i've only sort of had a bit of a cursory look at
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this i mean i'm more well read about other things as well but you know the the arab conquest of
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egypt was not an easy thing between the romans holding on to alexandria and then fighting on to
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the the what you could call the nile capital or it was a fortress called heliopolis of which is several
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heliopolis heliopolis in the ancient world but the one along the the nile i mean again takes the
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arabs almost a year to capture it you know um even alexandria wasn't a simple thing and even actually
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after the loss of alexandria it's one of the few instances where i believe heraclis might still
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have been alive but he dispatches a naval task force to recapture alexandria and they actually
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push into the delta and like actually start retaking parts of egypt until they're contained and defeated
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at battle of nikki which is i think in the 640s at some point um but you know the the arabs just have
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this irresistible momentum and sort of every every year or two the the if i could call it the government
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or you know of the caliphate based in in mecca um sends just continual streams of reinforcements to
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all these generals who are sort of fighting on the periphery um expanding the the rashden caliphate both
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west along africa um placing a lot of pressure under the byzantines northwards and then they eventually
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come into conflict with the armenians and later the khazars um and then they're marching eastwards
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they've completely overrun persia they're at the indus valley they're pushing into coruscant and what
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you'd call the you know ferganian valley they fight a battle against the the chinese i mean they
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accomplished that within two generations it's actually quite astonishing yeah if you look at maybe
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a time lapse you can get you find sort of maps can't you where it's a time lapse of youtube how
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different empires grow and shrink yeah the the arab one to begin with just boom yeah yeah just a
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massive explosion yeah yeah absolutely crazy okay so this impacts um byzantium but of course hugely
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so they race along uh north africa they race out in eastwards across i i will say that like i said
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likes about egypt in that it was hard fought over so it was carthage actually because again the carth
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carthage presents another instance where they counter-attack from sicily with the naval task force
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and actually funnily enough the visigoths actually assist the byzantines as well um and that's
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actually where the arabs reckon with destroying carthage and that's where they found the modern
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city of tunis um you know and and then you know if we want to touch on we can but you know then they
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get to you know morocco algeria they cross the straits of gibraltar and then i mean even in sort of
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shall we say more vanilla um or slightly um you know um more um i'm trying to think uh i'm all
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sort of mild compatriots in the political sphere will often know about tours portier and you know
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the charles martel the eighth century isn't it that's the seven yeah yeah i can't remember the exact
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date of battle of tours portiers but yeah it's charles martel yeah um and then you know there's this
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whole thing about oh well the arabs were here and and the franks defeated them it's like there's this
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whole backslope how they actually got that bloody far you know you've got to think to get from
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alexandria the long way around to aquitan to southern france it takes some doing yeah you know
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and you're talking also the complete destruction of visigothic uh spain essentially they hold a
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small tiny slither kingdom in the north what they call asturias um yeah and i mean the arabs like i
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said they accomplished that in a couple of generations it's it's to draw it back to byzantia
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so i'll get on the map yeah if they go straight north from arabia from the hejaz straight north
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up through uh yeah gaza modern jerusalem modern day israel lebanon um that direction
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they do come up against byzantium yeah and taurus mountains yeah and um well we all know
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they don't take it until 1453 it takes them that long yeah and it's not even the arabs and it's not
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even the true arabs at that point right but so that's really where um byzantium
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comes into its own really it is a rock against which the arab armies yeah crash against it becomes
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you might say recognizably the medieval entity which is still technically the east roman empire
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but we what we call this byzantium and i mean i i would gladly and do call it the east roman empire
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but for sake of historical reference you know byzantium is easier for a lot of people and so
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this is the byzantine empire they sent around are centered around constantinople its army's
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transformed its demography's transformed also in terms of its internal politics um and this is
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actually an interesting little sort of side point the arabs had quite an easy time once
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east roman armies armies were defeated in the field or when their you know troops were sort of
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attritioned in the cities you know during sieges um many christians in the east actually opened the
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doors to the arabs because of the sort of monophysite myphysite split um the the nature of god
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you know i can't remember exactly what you'll have to ask apostolic majesty is more into theology than i am
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um are you talking about the great schism no not the great schism this is like interpretation
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between like the nature of god whether it's um he's an inter-christian yeah yeah but within but
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within like the eastern church specifically okay so the idea is that you know is is god you know
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you know you know like for example when you sort of say pray say father son holy spirit you know
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it's like does god have three natures or is he sort of three natures in one god right it's it's like
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the arian not the arian controversy but in this no not the arian but in a similar vein right
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okay well like for instance you know like armenians are mostly um sorry coptics are mostly myphysite
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and then greeks are mostly monophysite okay i know what you're talking about yeah yeah so so that split
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happens and it's sort of the line between greeks and armenians and christian arabs and copts and
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it ends up being quite well for instance it to some degree weakened justinian and to some degree kind
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of crippled maurikios as well so i was gonna say that goes back to like what the the fifth century
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yeah it's it's like it's like in it's like in the aftermath of arcadia it's more or less like that's
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how far back it is and so a lot of these christians that don't adhere to the policy of the patriarch which
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is monophysism you know the monophysites go well if we're going to get punished by constantinople
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then oh well how bad is the jizya you know we'll be able to practice you know unimpeded and in a lot
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a lot of cases they do actually cooperate with the arabs and just pay the jizya
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um and also too at this point because of all the catastrophes that occurred in byzantium
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they started to be they started to sort of come as was under justinian's time a very heavy tax
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regime and the jizya was a flat tax so so for a lot of people actually made sense to welcome the arabs
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and the real the true arab uh those earlier invasions are um i think it's fair to say that their
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their rule is um not as bad let's say as sort of the later ottoman rule which could be extremely
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oppressive and repressive they were very much again if you pay the jizya yeah yeah then you
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can they'll likely hands off in so far as i mean i mean we know what the stipulation is it's a rule
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of three it's what is convert die or pay the jizya yeah and but once the jizya was paid then they'll
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largely hands off which is something that can't really be said for later you know empires later
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you know islamic regimes yeah but certainly the the uh the rashidans the umayyads and i would say
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probably was true sort of around saladin's time with the sort of the abbasids and the fatimids
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it was like it was fairly kind of hands-offish you know because you've got to think even until
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like early modern times i mean they have still been very large intact christian arab populations in
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the near east which like you say about historical amnesia most people in the west don't appreciate
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you know you've got to think like prior to even the gulf war you know um there were 750 800 000
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arab christians in iraq like most people would know that yeah you know that's true that's true
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something like the islamic state or even the post-1979 iranian revolution um or even the wahhabists of
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saudi arabia today they're actually quite strong highly repressive yeah they're quite um strong in
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terms of their their um their repression um even in medieval times often an islamic regime wouldn't
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be that quite authoritarian quite literally like isis is way more authoritarian than most medieval islamic
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well this is the state well this is the irony i know this isn't about the arabs but this is a slight
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tangent for the sake of curiosity and for our view's sake is that in in a very literal sense the
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first the initial rashtan caliphate of muhammad's successors you know abubakir and so on um were
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more lenient to jizya payers than the current regime in saudi arabia like literal food for thought
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you know that it's the same territory it's still i mean under the capitals riad nowadays but you know
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mecca medina exists within that country and it's the center of islam or rather you know it's like
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the holy center point of islam but you know the the and i'm not here to like argue about islamic
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tolerance necessarily i'm just giving the the the the perspective of comparing the two eras and the
00:24:08.480
two times and what was the appeal for instance of the myphazites to actually just say well the
00:24:14.640
romans are gone the tax regime's gone i pay the jizya i can just get on my life i mean you know a lot of
00:24:20.280
people like to get pent up about oh well you should just sort of fight to the last man but i mean you
00:24:23.520
know people had lives to live and also the ancient and medieval world was a rather harsher place than
00:24:28.620
it is today and you know i think people kind of grateful to get out of a siege of their life you
00:24:32.360
know and piece of bread in their in their in their hand if you get what i mean
00:24:35.800
so where would you go then do you think because often when you look at um the bazantan empire
00:24:43.820
there's periods where there's someone very very important and pivotal and interesting like
00:24:47.700
and then you might get whole dynasties or whole years decades or even a century or more where it's
00:24:56.700
sort of not that not not as interesting not as pivotal or you get a whole bunch of rulers a quick
00:25:03.760
succession of them and they're all um usurping each other and there's no sort of standout figure
00:25:09.780
necessarily or there's no sort of truly truly massively pivotal event so where where would
00:25:16.960
in your mind where do you go well well well the thing is is that you sort of there's there's sort
00:25:22.080
of a number of these catastrophes you know i mean we know that was it under justinian the second
00:25:26.360
where he temp or was it or was it someone else where they temporarily relocated the capital to
00:25:31.020
sitacusa in sicily and then like the court murdered him and then transferred the the the regime back
00:25:36.820
to constantinople who was that i'm trying to think if that was um i got a feeling it was justinian the
00:25:41.620
second but i can't actually remember now we sound like an amateur i should know does justinian the
00:25:45.280
second get his tongue cut out or his eyes put out uh no because his his nickname was reno like
00:25:50.880
rhino he had his nose cut yeah yeah and he had the mask yeah yeah the fake nose yeah yeah like
00:25:56.300
yeah yeah yeah um but um but anyway you know there's there's a quite a dark period following
00:26:02.580
the death of heracles yeah right which is actually unfortunate because he did have sons but they were
00:26:06.800
not of they were not a stature which which you know put this way if if heracles had had a son
00:26:12.480
as he was to his father the empire would actually stood a pretty decent chance of if not throwing the
00:26:19.260
arab's back but at the very least holding station under a different emperor for instance they
00:26:24.280
probably would have held tunisia and what we call carthage they probably wouldn't have lost sicily
00:26:28.580
but you know fate wasn't kind to the empire at this time we hope you enjoyed that video and if you
00:26:33.760
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