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The First Arab Expedition against Amorium*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Walter E. Kaegi
Walter E. Kaegi*
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
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Extract

The chronology of Byzantine history in the middle of the seventh century is obscure and confused. Among the unsettled problems is the date of the early Arab raids into Asia Minor after the Arabs completed their conquest of Palestine and Syria in 640. The scanty Greek and Oriental Christian sources need supplementation from the Arabic ones. Although Charles C. Torrey published his edition of the Futūḥ Miṣr or History of the Conquest of Egypt, North Africa and Spain by Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam more than fifty years ago, Byzantinists do not appear to have consulted the important section on Egypt which has not been fully translated into a western language. Yet Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam, who was born c. 798-9 and who died in 871, is a significant and early historical authority. He provides a short reference to an Arab expedition against Amorium in the year A.H. 23 (A.D. 644): ‘… according to Layth b. Sa’d [and] he said ‘Wahb b. ‘Umayr was commander of the forces of Egypt in the Amorium expedition [fī ghazwati ‘Ammūriyata] in the year twenty-three and the commander of the forces of Syria [was] Abu’l-A’war al-Sulamī’.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 3 , 1977 , pp. 19 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1997

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References

1. The History of the Conquest of Egypt, North Africa and Spain Knoum as the Futīh Misr of Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam, ed. Torrey, C. (Yale Oriental Series—Researches III, New Haven, 1922)Google Scholar. On the work, see Torrey’s ‘Introduction’, pp. i*-24*, and Rosenthal, F., ‘Ibn’ Abd al-Hakam’, Encyclopaedia of Islam2 ,III, pp. 674–5.Google Scholar

2. Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam, Futūh Misr (Torrey, p. 108, lines 14-16). Torrey did not include this passage in his earlier abridged translation of a section of Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam, ‘The Mohammedan Conquest of Egypt and North Africa … 643 to 705’, Yale Bicentennial Publications: Biblical and Semitic Studies (New York—London, 1901), 279-330. Amorium was a city of Galatia Salutaris; it later became capital of the important Anatolic Theme: Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De thematibus, ed. Pertusi, A. with commentary (Studi e Testi, 160: [Vatican City, 1952]), p. 115.Google Scholar

3. Al-Tabarī, Annales, ed. Goeje, M.J. de (reprinted, Leiden, 1964), Ser. 1, V, 2798 Google Scholar. Cf. Caetani, L., Annali dell’Islam (Milan, 1912), V, pp. 32–3 Google Scholar. Without other confirmation one cannot accept the testimony of the early sixteenth-century Persian historian Khvānd Amīr that Amorium actually fell in A.D. 23 to Mu’āwiya:’… and in this same year Mu’āwiya also brought Amorium under his control’. Amīr, Khvānd, Habīb al-siyar, ed. Humā’ī, Jalāl al-Dīn (Teheran, 1954), I, p. 474 Google Scholar. I thank my colleague John Woods for translating the passage from Persian. Khvānd Amīr is too late to serve as a definitive authority on the seventh century; he does not, moreover, cite his own source.

4. Ibn al Athiri, Chronicon…, ed. Tornberg, C.J. (Leiden, 1869), III, p. 60.Google Scholar

5. On the reliability of al-Layth b. Sa’d, see Torrey’s ‘Introduction’ to his edition of Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam’s Futūh Misr, p. 6*.

6. On Abu’l-A’war, see Lammens, H., ‘Études sur le règne du Calife Omaiyade Mo’âwia Ier‘, Mélanges de la Faculté Orientale, Université Saint-Joseph, I (1906), 42–3, 48–50 Google Scholar; Lammens, H., ‘Abu’l-A‘war’, Encyclopaedia of Islam2 ,I, p. 108 Google Scholar. For the expeditions: Theophanes, Chron., A.M. 6146 (ed. Boor, C. de [Leipzig, 1883], I, p. 345)Google Scholar; Michael, the Syrian, Chronique, 11.10 (ed. Chabot, J.-B. [Paris, 1901], II, pp. 441–2).Google Scholar

7. Al-Balādhurī, Liber Expugnationis Regionum(ed. Goeje, M. I. de [Leiden, 1866, reprinted 1968], pp. 136–7)Google Scholar. Al-Balādhurī died c. 892. Testimony for A.H. 20 (A.D. 641): al-Tabarī (de Goeje, ser. 1, V, 2594), Ibn al-Athīr, Chronicon (Tornberg, II, p. 444) and Michael the Syrian, Chronique 11.8 (Chabot II, p. 431); Caetani, , Annali dell’ Islam, IV, pp. 218–19.Google Scholar

8. Brooks, E. W., ‘The Arabs in Asia Minor (641-750), from Arabic Sources’, JHS, XVIII (1898), 183 Google Scholar, lists the raid of A.H. 25 by Mu’āwiya which reached Amorium. In another historical survey of Arab expeditions, Brooks cites no sources, but mentions the Arab capture of Arabissus in Cappadocia in 643, and a raid by Mu’āwiya which resulted in the sack of Euchaita in 644; the earliest raid against Amorium which he mentions is that by Mu’āwiya in 646: ‘The Successors of Heraclius to 717’, Cambridge Medieval History, II (1926), p. 393. Stratos, A., (Athens, 1972), IV, pp. 40–2 Google Scholar, esp. n. 140 on p. 41, mentions no raid against Amorium earlier than a single one by Mu’āwiya which he dates to A.D. 647. Torrey’s edition of the Futūh Misr appeared too late for inclusion in the analyses of Caetani, L., Annali dell’Islam, or of Brooks, E. W. in his JHS article, or of Wellhausen, Julius in his ‘Die Kämpfe der Araber mit den Romäern in de Zeit der Umaijiden’, Nachrichten von der Känigl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse (1901), pp. 414–47.Google Scholar

Amorium became the residence of the commander of the Anatolic theme, but its exact status at this time is obscure: Pertusi, A., ‘Commentario’ to his critical edition of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, De Thematibus (Studi e Testi, 160 [Vatican City, 1952]), p. 115 Google Scholar. Lilie, R.-J., Die byzantinische Reaktion auf die Ausbreitung der Araber (Miscellanea Byzantina Monacensia, 22 [Munich, 1976])Google Scholar, provides a synthesis of recent scholarship on the early Arab invasions; many of his conclusions are sensible. He did not know of die passage in Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam; on p. 63 he lists an expedition for 644 under Mu’āwiya that went as far as Amorium, but in n. 12 on p.63 he expresses doubt concerning the existence of the expedition: ‘Möglicherweise handelt es sich hier um den Einfall des Jahres 646, der ebenfalls bis vor Amorion führte.’ The conclusions of Lilie concerning die expedition of 644 must be modified. There was an expedition against Amorium in 644; the only question is whether its commander was Mu’āwiya.