17. A Byzantine Defeat That Shaped the Middle East to This Day
The Byzantine and Arab armies spent months camped across from each other, while their leaders engaged in negotiations. The fighting finally began on August 15th, 636. It lasted for five days of attritional warfare, during which the Arab armies remained on the defensive, and withstood repeated, but often poorly coordinated, attacks. Finally, on the sixth day, Khalid drew his opponents into a large-scale pitched battle that ended with the Byzantines retreating in disarray. Retreat turned into a rout when Khalid unleashed his cavalry reserve, who charged with a fortuitous sandstorm at their back, and many panicked Byzantines fell to their death over a steep ravine.
The Byzantines lost an estimated 40,000 men, while the Arabs lost about 5,000. Nearly a Millennium of Greco-Roman rule and influence of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa came to an end, as the successors of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar were replaced by the successors of Muhammad. Syria was forever lost to the Byzantines, followed soon thereafter by Egypt and North Africa. Those territories eventually formed the core of the Arab and Islamic world. The Byzantines ended up confined to today’s Turkey and the Balkans.
