Muslim Conquest of Syria - Byzantine Syria

Byzantine Syria

Syria had been under Roman rule for seven centuries prior to the Arab Muslim conquest and had been invaded by the Sassanid Persians on a number of occasions during the 3rd, 6th and 7th centuries; it had also been subject to raids by the Sassanid's Arab allies the Lakhmids. During the Byzantine period, beginning in AD 70 after the fall of Jerusalem, the entire region (Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee) was renamed Palaestina, subdivided into Diocese I and II. The Byzantines also renamed an area of land including the Negev, Sinai, and the west coast of the Arabian Peninsula as Palaestina Salutoris, sometimes called Palaestina III. Part of the area was ruled by the Arab vassal state of the Ghassanids (symmachos). During the last of the Roman-Persian Wars, beginning in 603, the Persians under Khosrau II had succeeded in occupying Syria, Palestine and Egypt for over a decade before being forced by the victories of Heraclius to conclude the peace of 628. Thus, on the eve of the Muslim conquests the Romans were still in the process of rebuilding their authority in these territories, which in some areas had been lost to them for almost twenty years. Politically, the Syrian region consisted of two provinces: Syria proper stretched from Antioch and Aleppo in the north to the top of the Dead Sea. To the west and south of the Dead Sea lay the province of Palestine, which included the holy places of the three Abrahamic religions. Syria was partly an Arab land, especially in its eastern and southern parts. The Arabs had been there since pre-Roman times, and had embraced Christianity since Constantine I legalized it in the fourth century. The Arabs of Syria were people of no consequence until the migration of the powerful Ghassan tribe from Yemen to Syria, who thereafter ruled a semi-autonomous state with their own king under the Romans. The Ghassan Dynasty became one of the honoured princely dynasties of the Empire, with the Ghassan king ruling over the Arabs in Jordan and Southern Syria from his capital at Bosra. The last of the Ghassan kings, who ruled at the time of the Muslim invasion, was Jabla bin Al Aiham. Emperor Heraclius, after re-capturing Syria from the Sassanids, set up new defense lines from Ghazzah to the south end of the Dead Sea. These lines were only designed to protect communications from bandits, and the bulk of the Byzantine defenses were concentrated in Northern Syria facing the traditional foes, the Sassanid Persians. This defense line had as a drawback that it enabled the Muslims, who emerged from the desert in the south, to reach as far north as Ghazzah before meeting regular Byzantine troops. 7th century AD was a time of fast military changes in the Byzantine empire. The empire was certainly not in a state of collapse when it faced the new challenge from Arabia after being exhausted by recent Roman-Persian Wars, but failed completely to tackle the challenge effectively.