Customer Reviews

Yarmuk Ad 636: The Muslim Conquest of Syria (Praeger Illustrated Military History)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I find it odd that most military historians omit the Battle of Yarmuk in their descriptions of great battles. It was the crucial struggle that permitted the outnumbered Muslims (12,000 Muslims vs 80,000 Byzantines )to take Syria from the Byzantines, was titanic in scale and lasted several days. The book is very detailed in its description of tactics and armaments used by both sides, as well as the organisation of the opposing forces. It describes the crucial events of the battle each day it lasted, and includes funny anecdotes such as the actions of Hind bint Utbah, Abu Sufyan's formidable wife, who took part in the battle. A must read in order to complete the historical picture of the Islamic Conquest, and to add one more to the list of Great Battles. I'd like to see the Muslim conquest of Persia described in the series as well.

The author does a pretty good job of covering this battle between the Muslim forces of the 7th Century and the Byzantine Empire. Recent books on the Jihadist movement cite this battle as an inspiration for Muslim terrorists. As such, western readers should find this ancient battle interesting. Unfortunately, the historical records appear to be weak. It is a weakness that Mr. Nicolle could not fully overcome.

Nevertheless, the book provides a basic understanding of the overall campaign that led up to this battle. Only the second half of "The Campaign" chapter deals with the Battle of Yarmuk. The first half is focused on the overall campaign and the associated battles of Ajnadayn and Pella, among others. Thus, the coverage of the Yarmuk battle itself is somewhat truncated. Some stories are apocryphal and not fully developed. In addition, the author often refers to several important personalities without fully explaining their identity. Basically, there are too many names to keep straight. The Chapter on the "Opposing Armies" is quite good in its description of tactics and recruiting methods. It is well-organized into Byzantine and Muslim sections. The ending chapter does an excellent job of explaining the fall of Syria, which was the major goal of the campaign. The author points out that this Muslim victory had far more to do with the individual cities surrendering than with the defeat of the Byzantine army at Yarmuk.

The 3D maps are pretty good despite a few minor shortcomings. The map of the 4th day of battle contains a landmark or "Tel" with only half the name. This reference is useless, as the reader has no way of knowing what Tel the author is trying to emphasize. The text refers to a Byzantine base camp at Yaqusah, which the Muslims eventually overran. Unfortunately, this camp is not located on any of the three Yarmuk battle maps. Nevertheless, the other maps are quite good; the siege of Damascus being one example. Also, the large area maps that detail the overall movement of both Byzantine and Muslim forces are quite helpful.

The book contains numerous photographs that are a standard feature of Osprey books. Unfortunately, the pictures of the various wall paintings are hard to see due to years of decay, or taken at an angle that makes the photo less than clear. The photographs of the various sculptures, however are first rate and quite helpful.

Bottom line: this is a pretty good book on a very important battle. Despite some minor weaknesses, the reader will gain a basic understanding of this battle that appears to loom large in Islamic mythology.

Prof. Nicolle is one of the foremost medievalist, specially regarding middle eastern history. this book tries to give not only the description of the six days battle but also of the events leading to the conflict. That includes relationship between Byzantine power and their Arab auxiliaries (like the Gassanids), with minorities (like jews or some christhian factions), the muslim faith and their need to spread the word and power of God to all, the weakness of the Persian Sassanid Empire after their last confrontation with the Byzantine Empire, etc.

The author also describes the military of both powers, including recruitment, organization, weapons, armours, types of units, etc...maybe a little too much for a small book of this nature. The leaders are only cursory abridged (but there are very few sources regarding most of them).

The initial invasion lead to the Muslim victories at Ajnadayn and Pella and the massive Byzantine counterattack that lead to Yarmuk.

The battle is described with the possible details with the important events being highlighted by the maps, including the initial and powerfull attack that took the bizantines to the Muslim camps, the flanking by Khalid or the taking of the bridge over the Wadi that led to Yaqusah by the Muslim champion Zarrar.

In this work you will find good maps, good colour illustrations by Angus McBride (although the action plates seem a little static). Also a good description how they fought (Muslims at this time were infantry and mounted infantry based armies, with small cavalry arms). You can also find historical anecdotes like the Muslim Women exorting their men or the battle prowess of Zarrar and his sister.

There are a few weaknesses, like the imprecision in the numbers of the forces (obviously its impossible to accurately determine numbers, but in the initial dissertation about Byzantine numbers the maximum numbers they could field is numbered at 50000 non arabs including garrisons, and in the description of the beginning of the battle the Muslims were outnumbered 4:1! When the author states that Muslim forces were around 20000-40000 we have a math problem here: Never in their history the Byzantines could field armies of 80000 - 160000 combatants), that could be probably be explained with non combatants, etc. The author is also slightly pro Muslim but not excessively so.

All in all a very good book that will clarify several aspects of Muslim expansion and how it was possible.

Never before the Battle of Yarmuk presented in English literature so much complete and thorough. Both sides were presented equally and the backgrounds were defined clearly and intact. Inquiries of the aftermath were also seriously done and showed how decisive the battle was.

Some flaws regarding the sandstorms and the accusation of Ghassanids turnover to the Muslim as the main cause of Byzantines' defeat did not even scratch the beauty of this work.

Easily the best-buy book that came out from OSPREY Campaign Series.

Like much of Nicolle's work, this book has both good and bad points. Most of the research is decent, although for a book on Yarmuk, the narrative is rather weak. The paucity of the sources clearly isn't a problem, as Dr. Haldon has a much better description in his "Byzantine Wars" book. While Nicolle's pro-Islamic bias is well-known amongst Osprey readers, this book could be a showcase for it. The Byzantines aren't given nearly as much page space as the Muslims, and the Byzantine sources are given more criticism than the Arab sources.

I have a few factual quibbles with this book as well. I don't buy Nicolle's assertion that the Byzantine line was 13km long. This goes against everything that we know of Late Antique warfare, and is in violation of the standard Byzantine emphasis on Late Roman and Hellenistic warfare. The respect sizes of the army are also discussed frequently, but not even a rough estimate is given. Nicolle asserts that the Byzantines outnumbered the Arabs 4:1, but this would suggest a Byzantine field army of around 75,000, which is quite unbelievable, considering that from 610-622 Herakleios barely had enough troops to leave Thrace. It is also in violation of the much more reasonable military estimates of John Haldon and Warren Treadgold. Whether Nicolle is not being critical enough with the sources (Theophanes suggests 80,000, which is quite impossible) or he is over-inflating the accomplishment of the Arabs, it is still bad history.

The three stars comes from the inconsistency in this book. Throughout much of the book he talks about Herakleios as if he was present at Yarmuk, but only in the last 10 pages or so does he finally say that Herakleios wasn't present.

The battle maps are decent, and the information is mediocre. Haldon's "Byzantine Wars" has a better battle narrative and scholarly analysis. Many of the pictures just aren't that good, being black and white and grainy. This isn't a bad book, but it is far from the defining work on Yarmuk.

I swear, Dr. Nicolle must have spent his entire life staring at rusty weapons and suits of armor, because that is what half the book is about. Muslim weapons, Byzantine recruitment, size of the Muslim armies, Byzantine tactics that never are mentioned to be used...complete with 10,000 names of EVERY type of soldier of a Byzantine and Arab army that he never uses later and is a complete waste of ink! The origins of the campaign is weak, and the whole summary of the campaign is dry (he moved there, this place surrendered, then they moved here...). Sheesh, even the battle (only several pages long) is exceedingly emotionless and those pages are filled with mediocre pictures taking up more than half the page taken of some dry gorge! I must admit that even the 2D and 3D maps are pretty lame, as it is exceedingly difficult to tell between the armies (there are about 6 of them in the 2D maps, their movements are all in the same color, and the only difference between them is the minute spaces between the dashed lines). Another plus (or minus, in common terms) is that I swear I saw around 100 of "he might have..." "he probably..." "this could have..." "maybe..." that it becomes painstakingly obvious that the whole campaign is soaked in mystery that a very few facts can be said. But of course, why would a person want to buy a book that the more than half of the ideas presented are misleading (also adding the whole campaign/battle is less than a 1/3 of the book)? Unfortunatley I was one of those people, and after reading this, I have absolved to never buy another Osprey from Dr. Nicolle. He would me much better making college speeches about archeology and battle tactics (that werent even used in this campaign, by the way) that writing a book focused very much on fervor and emotion rather than dry, unfactual summaries. Why do I rate it a two? Because I found no grammatical errors. But by the time I realized that, I had ceased to care (and I don't like to be mean, and yes, I just proved I was a hypocrite).