Arab invasion of Sassanid Empire beaten back

[Astor]

If the Arabs hadn't succeeded in steamrolling just about every army the Sassanids could throw at them and had pushed them back what would have happened in the following centuries? What would the world have been like?
Would Zoroastrianism still be a thriving religion?

[Heinz Guderian]

If the Arabs could not secure their northern and eastern borders then they would have not had the opportunity to venture into the Levant and Egypt. But the Sassanids were still weak. Alot of things could have happened. Byzantines may have consolidated and moved east. Turkic nomads may have moved south. The mongols would have probably still come crashing through. Zoroastrianism may have had a better chance of survival. But war was not the main reason that this religion began to shrink. Look at the Roman religions, Greek religions, Tengrid religion. Christianity and Islam are/were powerful religions which conquer the minds of masses. For example the Polish/Lithuanians and the fact that the majority of mongols that conquered Islamic regions settled down and their descendants became Moslem.

[Astor]

Well, the Byzantines would have been dealing with Justinian's Plague, leaving them little manpower to spare. It might even have reached the Sassanids. So that rules the ERE out.
There was time to kill till the Mongols showed up. Can't speak with any certainty about the Turkic tribes. And Zoroastrianism was certainly not a shrinking religion. It was simply the
taxes levied on non muslims and all the restrictions placed on them that forced them to assimilate, combined with the rapid conversion of the nobility.

[Morbius Sire]

Well, If there Arabs were pushed back by the Sassanids, The Arabs would have expanded into Egypt via Africa[by boats from Saudi Arabia or Oman], And of course I would think they would have tried again to defeat the Sassanids.

[Shadowcry]

Iran would probably become christian eventually.

[MathiasOfAthens]

One way this could be would be had the Roman Persian wars never happened.

However, the Persians could have achieved victory in one of the many battles fought.

In the first invasion of Mesopotamia 633 Khalid entered Meso with 18,000 men and won four battles. The Battle of Chains, fought in April 633; the Battle of River, fought in the 3rd week of April 633 A.D; the Battle of Walaja, fought in May 633 (where he successfully used a double envelopment manoeuvre), and the Battle of Ullais, fought in the mid of May, 633 A.D. Sorta comparable to Hannible and Rome. Khalid then laid siege and conquered al albar? After that he went to the rescue of another Arab general trapped by rebels.

The Persian court was deeply destroyed by internal struggles.

Later that year, however, Khalid returning from Arabia received news of a large Persian army assembling. From his infinite wisdom he decided to defeat this force separately instead of together like Alexander did. Pure Genius!! Starting with the Battle of Muzieh, then the Battle of Sanni, and finally the Battle of Zumail during November 633 Khalid defeated four divisions of Persian and Christian auxiliaries. Now the Persian capital at Ctesiphon was open.

After that Khalid marched on Firaz and defeated a combined force of Persians, Romans and Arab Christians in dec 633. After winning here he left to attack a key fort guarding the persian capital but was recalled and sent to the Roman Front.

The Next invasion of Mesopotamia came in 636. Again the Persians were allied to the Romans, by marriage non less.

Khalid may have been the strongest general in the Persian force prob deeply inspired others to fight. Without him the Romans and Persians may have been able to stop the invasion.

Once the Arabs expelled the Romans from Syria Mesopotamia and Persia were left wide open, oddly enough. I cant think of any good Roman Generals left at this time... the momentum was really on the side of the Arabs.

Pick any of these battles and find out how the Persians could have won.


Many of the battles are quite interesting but none more so than the Battle of Firaz, wiki cites the combined allied forces are between 100,000-150,000 men. There is only one source for that though. Khalid forces are said to be only 15,000. The battle was that which the Roman/Persian forces had their back against the river. Even with that though the sheer size should have been enough to throw back the enemy you would think? Khalid apparantly encircled his enemy first by meeting the enemies front ranks and then fixing the wings of the enemy. Then sent his men (cavalry) to capture the bridges behind the enemy formation. After that it was a pincer movement and the enemy soon routed in horror. 50,000 men perished on the battlefield.

Perhaps the General was too fool hardly. If the size of the force is anything to go by than nothing else makes sense the general has to have been a fool. Otherwise the arab source lied regarding the roman numbers.

[Astor]

Why is everyone so convinced that Zoroastrianism would have died out if even after the Arabs had been beaten? I mean from modern day Iran to much of central Asia it was a thriving, well established religion. Does anyone know anything about whether the Sassanids were tolerant of other religions and whether they propagated the spread of Zoroastrianism through conquest and missionaries?

[Morbius Sire]

@MathiasOfAthens
Which begs the question, if Khalid wasn't demoted later on by religious leaders, would the Arabs have succeeded in capturing Constantinople?


But ya, if the Sassanid had been in a better shape/state, the Arabs could have had a tougher time conquering the Persian lands.

[MathiasOfAthens]

Believe the arabs at Constantinople were defeated utterly by a combined Bulgarian/Roman force. Plus this is europe and not some arab countryside. I dont think Khalid would have won either.

[Orko]

Weren't the Sassanids on the verge of collapse at that time?

[MathiasOfAthens]

Considering it was right after the Roman war which the Romans won then its understandable the Sassanids were weak. But they were still able to field many armies, sadly no good generals.

[jermagon]

Khalid was invincible he fought 70 battles with zero defeats, he defeated both the Romans and the Persians, and in my opinion if Khaled was in charge of the Arab army who was besieging Constantinople, he would have conquered the city, Khaled was a very talented general one of the best military generals in history, and I guess he could device new plans to force the city to surrender. the two Arab sieges on Constantinople were led by two incompetent generals, the first one was Yazid ibn Muawiya (son of caliph Muawiya and the later 2nd Omayyad caliph), while the second siege was led by Maslama ibn abdel malik (the son of caliph Abdul malik ibn marawan).

[MathiasOfAthens]

Why was he removed.


And most likely he is the key to any rewriting of history.

[Morbius Sire]

From Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_...ssal_from_army

Khalid, by now, was at the height of his career, he was famous and loved by his men, for Muslim community he was a national hero,[89] and was publicly known as Sayf-ullah (Sword of Allah). His fame apparently worried Caliph Umar, who saw it as a possible threat to his own authority.[90] Umar apparently was in need of an excuse to take punitive actions against Khalid

[MathiasOfAthens]

Reading more on Khalid I read more about the Battle of Yarmouk. That battle was indeed the turning point. Not only did it open the doors into Syria but allowed the Muslim army to survive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Yarmouk

It could have been prevented.

[Morbius Sire]

Reading more on Khalid I read more about the Battle of Yarmouk. That battle was indeed the turning point. Not only did it open the doors into Syria but allowed the Muslim army to survive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Yarmouk

It could have been prevented.

Yes, indeed that battle was more of a gambled battle[If it can said that way.] If there was a different ground commander for the Byzantines, one that could have used his cavalry much better, then the Arabs would have been pushed back.

Vahan and his Byzantine commanders never dealt with this mounted force effectively.[90] Their own Byzantine cavalry never played a significant role in the battle and were held in static reserve for most of the six days.[58] They never pushed their attacks and even when they obtained what could have been a decisive breakthrough on the fourth day, they were unable to exploit it.

However, Was there any Roman/Byzantine commander that could have had the right skill and experience for the role that Vahan had??

I know that the Roman-Persian war before the Arab expansion had really depleted both the Byzantines and the Persians, perhaps not in terms of manpower, but surely in terms of skilled leadership.


However, reading further on it, the Byzantines were really fighting in a battle that they haven't gotten done before;

Khalid's strategy of withdrawing from the occupied areas and concentrating all of his troops for a decisive battle forced the Byzantines to concentrate their five armies in response. The Byzantines had for centuries avoided engaging in large-scale decisive battles, and the concentration of their forces created logistical strains for which the empire was ill-prepared.[34][52] Damascus was the closest logistical base, but Mansur, leader of Damascus, could not fully supply the massive Byzantine army that was gathered at the Yarmouk plain. Several clashes were reported with local citizens over supply requisition, as summer was at an end and there was a decline of pasturage. Greek court sources accused Vahan of treason for his disobedience to Heraclius' command not to engage in large-scale battle with Arabs. Given the massing of the Muslim armies at Yarmouk, however, Vahan had little choice but to respond in kind. Relations between the various Byzantine commanders were also fraught with tension. There was a struggle for power between Trithurios and Vahan, Jarajis, and Qanateer (Buccinator).[53] Jabalah, the Christian Arab leader, was largely ignored, to the detriment of the Byzantines given his knowledge of the local terrain. An atmosphere of mistrust thus existed between the Greeks, Armenians, and Arabs. Longstanding ecclesiastical feuds between the Monophysite and Chalcedonian factions, while of negligible direct impact, certainly inflamed underlying tensions. The effect of these feuds was decreased coordination and planning, one of the reasons for the catastrophic Byzantine defeat

The battle of Yarmouk was really in Khalid's hands than the Byzantines' hands

[ivan_the_terrible]

Why is everyone so convinced that Zoroastrianism would have died out if even after the Arabs had been beaten? I mean from modern day Iran to much of central Asia it was a thriving, well established religion. Does anyone know anything about whether the Sassanids were tolerant of other religions and whether they propagated the spread of Zoroastrianism through conquest and missionaries?

They tolerated non-Chalcedonian Christians (ie Christians who had split from the official Byzantine variant at the council of Chalcedon and earlier). As far as I know, there were no forced conversions when Sassanians took regions like Syria and the Levant, where monophysite Christians were in the majority.

Some historians consider Muslim treatment of non-Muslims to be a continuation of this policy, just applied to more religions.

[Gunderic]

There were so many chances to defeat militant Islam.

[Rolling Thunder]

Yes, they could have beaten them. Cataphracts, frontal charge, follow up with the heavy infantry. The issue was that both the Persians and Romans, so used to fighting each other and having to use relatively convoluted tactics to defeat their foes (being of equal strength), didn't simply think to use sheer weight of men and material to crush the arabs.

[Morbius Sire]

Yes, they could have beaten them. Cataphracts, frontal charge, follow up with the heavy infantry. The issue was that both the Persians and Romans, so used to fighting each other and having to use relatively convoluted tactics to defeat their foes (being of equal strength), didn't simply think to use sheer weight of men and material to crush the arabs.

I think that was the bad thing. When the Arabs began expanding, both the Persians and Byzantines had used heavy infantry and heavy cavalry. But the Arabs were using lighter infantry and cavalry tactics[raiding and such]. So even the Byzantines had used their heavy cavalry & infantry, it would have been tough if the Arabs were using faster and lighter cavalry& infantry.