BTW, wot justification you have for all these
624 C.E. - The Battle of Badr
A year and a half after Mohammed made the 210-mile flight northward from Mecca to Medina (because of banishment), he launched his first military operation. With 300 loyal followers, he set out to intercept a caravan on its return from Syria to Mecca. The caravan was defended by a thousand Meccans, led by Abu Sufyan of the Koreish Tribe (Mohammed's own tribe). At Badr in the Hejaz of western Arabia Mohammed's men routed the larger enemy force and captured the caravan. It was the first of a long series of battles mon by the hard-riding desert cavalry of the Arabian Moslems.
625 C.E. - The Battle of Ohod
A year after Mohammed's initial victory at Badr, his followers clashed again with the Koreish tribe led by Abu Sufyan. At Ohod, northwest of Medina, a thousand Moslems fought their second battle against a force three times their size. This time Islam was defeated; 70 died on the field and the Prophet himself was wounded. Mohammed retired to Medina, but his opponents did not attack the city for another two years.
627 C.E. - The Battle for Medina
Alarmed at the growing strength of Mohammed's Islamic movement in Medina, his opponents organized an attack on the city. Abu Sufyan of the Koreish tribe led a force of 10,000 men to Medina, which was defended by the Prophet and some 3,000 followers. Fighting behind a trench dug around the city, the Moslems repulsed every Koreish attack for 20 days. The besiegers then gave up the attack and dispersed. The following year Mohammed secured the right to make a pilgrimage to Mecca (the Treaty of Hudaybiya). From this time on the initiative in the Arabian civil war passed to the Moslems. Two of the converts became great Islamic Generals - Khalid ibn-al-Walid, the Conqueror of Syria, and Amr ibn-al-As, victor in Egypt.
630 C.E. - The Battle for Mecca
When Mohammed's opponents broke the 628 Treaty of Hudaybiya, the Moslems resumed the civil war in Arabia. Their growing power made ultimate victory a certainty. Mohammed himself led an attack from Medina, 210 miles south to Mecca. (He was 60 years of age). Storming into the city of his birth in January 630, the Prophet won over the inhabitants, destroying a reported 360 pagan idols. Mecca was then enshrined as the Holy City of Islam. During the remaining two years of his life, Mohammed, by sword and persuasion, succeeded in stamping out virtually all paganism in Arabia. The Job was completed about 633 under the caliphate of Abu-Bakr, one of the father-in-laws of the Prophet.
633 C.E. - The Battle of Hira
The first Moslem attack against the powerful Persian empire of the Sassanians was little more that the usual border raid. Under Khalid ibn-al-Walid, later to become one of the great generals of Islam, a force of Arab Horsemen swooped down on the village of Hira, just west of the lower Euphrates River. After extracting a very small tribute, the Arabs withdrew to make a forced march across the Syrian desert to Ajnadain. At that time the Persian ruler was Rustam, the regent for the youthful Yazdegerd III. Rustam sent out a counter raiding force. The following year, these Persian cavalrymen routed a band of Arabs in the so-called Battle of the Bridge. Hira again came under Persian control. It was, however, the last Persian victory over the Arabs. In a few months the new military power of the Moslems would destroy two armies of the Byzantine Empire and overrun both Palestine and Syria. Persia would have to deal with its western neighbor on a live-or-die basis.
634 C.E. - The Battle of Ajnadain
Under the caliphate of, first, Abu-Bakr and then Omar I, large forces of Moslem cavalry burst out of Arabia to invade both Syria and Persia. The attack toward Syria was checked at Ajnadain, southwest of Jerusalem, by a Byzantine army under Theodorus, brother of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. However, the Moslem general Khalid ibn-al-Walid made a dramatic forced march from Hira across the Syrian desert with reinforcements. The combined Arabian force of some 45,000 troops routed the more numerous Byzantine army on July 30, 634. Khalid pressed on northward toward Damascus.
635 C.E. - The Battle for Pella
After the Moslem victory at Ajnadain, Khalid ibn-al-Walid led his Arabian horsemen northward past Jerusalem toward Damascus. In northern Palestine the retreating Byzantine army made a stand at Pella on January 23, 635. But for the second time the hard-riding Arabian cavalry routed their opponents. It was the first victory under the caliphate of Omar I. Khalid then pressed on toward Damascus.
635 C.E. - The Battle for Damascus
From his victory at Pella, in northern Palestine, Kahlid ibn-al-Whalid took his Arabian horsemen into Syria. As the Moslems approached Damascus, the Byzantine garrison threw up a strong defense. When the Arabs began to besiege Damascus, Emperor Heraclius ordered one of his generals, named Werdan, to relieve the city. There followed a swift series of maneuvers that established Khalid as one of the best generals of his era. He began pulling away from Damascus to meet Wurdan, but as he did so the garrison sallied out to attack his rear. Khalid wheeled quickly and smashed this assault with heavy losses to the Byzantines. Then he turned back to confront and drive off the Werdan relieving force. The energetic Moslem turned again to lock Damascus in a siege that forced the city to surrended on September 4, 635. An Arabian column rode 85 miles to the north to take Emesa as well.
636 C.E. - The Battle of Yarmuk River
To throw back the Arabian invasion of Syria, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius sent two armies into the field - one from the north, the other from the Palestine coast. The Arabian general Khalid ibn-al-Whalid pulled back his Moslem cavalry to the valley of the Yarmuk, an eastern tributary of the Jordan River. Here he received reinforcements from Medina and from some tribes of Syrian Arabs, to bring the Moslem strength to about 25,000 warriors. The combined Byzantine force, under Theodorus Trihurius, was twice as large, but much of it was composed of Asiatic auxiliaries. On August 20, 636, the Moslems opened the battle with their usual slashing cavalry attacks. Although the first forays were beaten off, the Islamic horsemen continued to strike until the Byzantine lines collapsed, at the end of the day. In the rout that followed, the Imperial forces suffered enormous losses; some 4000 Moslems were killed.
The defeat broke the Byzantine power in southern Syria and in Palestine. The Moslem wave swept on to Damascus without opposition. Here the capital of Islam was established for the next hundred years. Before pushing on to northern Syria. The Moslems then turned back to attack Jerusalem.
C.E. - The Battle of Kadisiya
The growing power of the Arabian Moslems made certain a showdown clash with the empire of Sassanian Persia, to the east. The Persian moved first. In the spring of 637, Rustam, regent for Yazdegerd III, took an army of about 100,000 men across the Euphrates River to Kadisiya, near the present Hilla, in Iraq. Expecting the Persian attack, Caliph Omar I sent forth 30,000 Arabian cavalrymen under Sa'ad ibn-Abi-Waqqas.
The battle began with the usual series of cavalry rushes by the Arabs. But the huge Persian force held its ground and then counterattacked with elephants, which terrified the Arabian horses. Sa'ad was barely able to prevent a route at the end of the first day's combat. Fighting resumed the second day, although the slashing Moslem attacks inflicted heavier casualties than were received. On the third day Sa'ad was reinforced by some veterans of the Syrian campaign who knew how to fight elephants with arrows and javalins. The beasts were wounded and then stampeded back through the Persian lines, opening holes for the Arabian cavalry to charge through. The Moslems pressed home their attacks throughout the day and during the night (called the "Night of the Clangor"). At daybreak a sandstorm began blowing in the faces of the stubborn Persians. Rustam sought personal safety by swimming across a canal running to the Euphrates. He was caught and beheaded. The Persian army then disintegrated, taking terrible losses from the Arabians, who gave no quarter. Moslem losses in the battle totaled 7,500 killed. In the booty captured by the Arabs was the jewel-encrusted sacred banner of Persia.
Sa'ad crossed the Euphrates in pursuit. Yazdegerd offered to yield all territory west of the Tigris River. When the Arabs scoffed at this, the Persian emperor abandoned his capital at Ctesiphon, which was promptly occupied and sacked. He later made two other attempts to halt the Moslem invaders, but the decisive battle of the Arabian-Persian War had already been fought at Kadisiya.
The Battle at Jalula
The Persian army beaten at Kadisiya was rallied by Emperor Yazdegerd III six months later at the entrance to the mountains 50 miles north of Madain. After looting the rich capital of Ctesiphon, the Arabian army of Sa'ad ibn-Abi-Waqqas rode north in pursuit. At Jalula the Moslem cavalry began the slashing attacks that had proved so effective against the heavier-armed but demoralized Persians. Again Yazdegerd's horsemen broke and fled, losing heavily in the rout. The Moslems pushed on to invade and occupy central Persia. It would be four years before Yazdegerd could organize another army to defend his country against the invaders.
