Arab conquests would fail if Byzantium wasn't weakened by war?

[Guest SassinidAzatan]

In various books I come across concerning the topic of Arab invasion of the Byzantine territories, they all state that if the Byzantine Empire wasn't weakened by the war agains the Persions, they would easily defeated the Arab invaders. What would you say?

Edited March 24, 2011 by SassinidAzatan

[Caius Maxentius]

It seems logical that Byzantium would have fared better if the Persian war hadn't so recently happened.

 

At the same time, I'm not sure if the Empire's weakness was all military in all cases. The amount of social/religious alienation that had happened as a result of the Chalcedonian/Monophysite conflict, especially in places like Egypt and Syria, probably made the local population more amenable to regime change. I'm sure people in these provinces had had their fill of violent religious interference from Constantinople.

 

I'm also not entirely sure about how much better the military situation would have been without the Persian war. I remember reading that Heraclius had to give the army a major overhaul to meet the Persian threat; it doesn't sound like it was in great shape at his accession. If the Arab blitzkrieg had started then, would he have been in a much better position?

Edited March 25, 2011 by Caius Maxentius

[Kosmo]

The arab invasion was preceded by the persian attack that devastated much of the empire including Syria and Egypt, that were later conquered by arabs, but also other regions were devastated in that war like Anatolia, the Balkans and even the islands of the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas, so the empire was much weaker then around 600 AD.

Before the war Arabia was divided between areas of influence of Rome and Persia so even the islamic unification of the arab peninsula was possible only because of the conflict that distracted romans and sassanids alike while destroying other arab entities like the christian Ghassanids, allies and subjects of the romans. Persian weakness was also a factor, a strong Persia would have probably hindered an arab attack on romans.

One advantage Arabs had was that their attack came from a surprising direction and romans had little defenses in southern Syria. Once Syria fell the main roman army had to defend Anatolia while the overland road to Egypt was cut and the small garrison there was left isolated. Another arab advantage was the religious fanaticism of their soldiers.

Without islam it is very likely that christianty would have eventually dominated Arabia.

[Hero of Canton]

Everything I've read on this topic has maintained that 100+ years of war between Persia and Byzantium left both empires exhausted (economically drained and bled white) and ripe for the picking by the arabs. As things turned out Persia went under and Byzantium barely stayed afloat.

 

I have also read that the religious strife endemic to this period of Byzantine history had the provinces of the Levant and Egypt welcoming the invading arabs almost as liberators due to the oppression they were suffering from the Orthodox Church/Byzantine government.

 

So my take on this is that even if the Byzantine Empire was in better shape militarily due to greater success against the Persian Empire (or if a lasting peace was somehow brokered) the religious strife between the central government and the "heretics" of the Levant and Egypt would still have left those regions vulnerable to going over to the arabs.

 

I have also read in this forum the opinion espoused that a healthier economy that allowed the Byzantine and Persian Empires to adequately fund their "Client Arabs" could have prevented the successes the arabs experienced in OTL.

 

That's my 2 sestertii legate.

 

HoC

[DecimusCaesar]

It's true that protracted wars between Byzantium and Persia had weakened the two superpowers, but there was also internal instability within the Roman Empire which was a weakness that the Arabs could have exploited. Part of the failure of the Roman army to defeat the Arabs at the battle of Yarmouk in AD 636 was the infighting between various factions within the Roman army. These religious and political tensions ran much deeper within Roman/Byzantine society, something that the Sassanids had expolited in the past, and something that the Arabs did exploit when they appeared on the scene. It's also worth rememberig that the Arabs themselves were ambitious, energetic and rather zealous, so even if the Romans had defeted them at Yarmouk, they could have easily regrouped and tried again at a later time.

[Northern Neil]

Other factors are the slavic invasions and the continual cost of maintaining the obligations incurred by Justinian's reconquests. Although much diminished, these reconquered territories still consisted of a coastal strip in spain, sicily, much of Italy and the Maghreb. Heraclius had all this to think about, as well as the temporary loss of the Balkan provinces due to the Slavic invasions and the initial loss of Egypt, brought about largely by Phocas' mismanagement. By the time Heraclius had patched all this up, there wasn't really anything left with which to counter this new threat.

 

The wrangle over Monophysitism, alluded to by Decimus, certainly didn't help. On looking up Monophysitism, it seems like a far less confusing view of Christianity than those proposed by Arius, or discussed at Chalcedon.I can see how people in Syria, Egypt and Tripolitania would have been swayed by a newer and simpler version of the 'truth'.