Khalid ibn Walid, a Profile of a Warrior

all right so the talk tonight is going to be about a specific person which is unusual for austin school lecturers usually i do some like overwhelmingly large event that's unwieldy um in this case the person is named khaled ibn walid he was a 7th century arab he was actually born probably sometime around 592 so end of the 6th century but most of his life is in the 7th century and experiences taught me and for those of you who've had me before that i should never start my stories at the beginning i need to start my stories way before the beginning so so that's what i'm going to do and that's in part because i want to make sure that i ground him firmly in the period that he's in like i i want to make sure that there's a good understanding of why what he does is so interesting and also just sort of a sense of why it matters i'm going start also by making a completely subjective statement that when it gets on the austin school youtube channel we'll draw a bunch of ire and i'll probably get a stream of nasty comments but i like that so uh and it is this that palette abnormal elite was one of the three greatest warriors of all time and that's one of the reasons why i want to cover him is because i just want to do a profile in a person who uh if if you're interested in warfare it totally embodied warfare so this is a talk about war and and i'll probably also get a little bit of flack for over glorifying war which is cool too i'm okay with that as well um when i for the record when i was at the university of maryland university college in their history department we were trying to create a war history department so this is part of my mental illness um so having said all this i want to start by actually attacking the way history is taught in the united states and uh the reason is is because of the way we structure western civilization courses so if you take western civ 1 and western civ 2 the general idea in most of the textbooks are set up this way is that western civ 1 will cover everything till 14 92 or 1648 whatever arbitrary year they picked to stop western civ 1 and then western civ 2 will be everything since 1648 so in other words we're going to spend 16 weeks talking about the first 5 000 years of western civilization and then we're going to spend 16 weeks talking about the last 350 which is based on two really big flaws the first is sort of a proximity bias because the last 350 years or closer to us they therefore must be more important which is definitely wrong for example the outcome of the battle of actium in 31 bc i guarantee you has way more impact on your day-to-day lives than uh the outcome of the british one of the british defeats there were multiple in afghanistan in the 19th century but the defeat in afghanistan in the 19th century was it in the last 200 years there were the british have been beaten four times two times in the 19th century um and so it's closer to you but it has a much smaller impact than that event 2 000 years ago the battle of actium and so for the first problem is this bias is wrong the second problem with this bias is its racist implications it is a profoundly racist bias because what it attempts to do is distill western civilization into a history of how cool white people are as opposed to actually looking at western civilization for what it was which was not a color-based endeavor and if anything it was founded by brown people so then it it's sort of an attempt by french british and english scholars to capture something that they didn't create make it theirs and then divorce it from its creators and i can prove this to you really simply in fact when you take that western civ one class weeks one and two cover mesopotamia and egypt in fact your class is probably structured like this week one was mesopotamia week two was egypt every professor is different every university is different but probably weeks 3 4 5 and 6 were greece and then maybe 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 or rome and then 15 was the medieval period which is a thousand-year span of time covered in one week and then week 16 the first part of the modern so if they went to 1648 they went to that right in that last week the reason why this is rooted in in a profound form of racism is because of the following the class admits that western civilization was created by iraqis and egyptians it starts in mesopotamia in egypt it admits that and then and then it pretends that western civilization got up and ran away and began inhabiting italy and germany and england and never again ended up in the middle east which is preposterous because all the middle east could ever do as the founder of western civilization is simply evolve its western civilization do you see what i'm saying it it's not like it could lose it it is it it just evolved differently than italy or germany or england but it doesn't make it any less western sieve and so the way we teach western civ one where we do one week maybe maybe two weeks on the medieval period actually takes us to the next level because i'm going to talk about an event that takes place in that we act as if the medieval period which we call the dark ages only took place in europe and in fact we've renamed the birthplace of western civilization the middle east as if it's in the east when it's clearly not in the east since it birthed western civilization right and then we ignore everything that was happening in the middle east during the medieval period and let me just give you an idea of what was happening in the middle east during the medieval period so while europeans had no indoor plumbing and no paved roads and their life expectancy was 40 and the way they took care of their waste was they would do it in a chamber pot and fling it into the street the middle east had indoor plumbing that brought fresh water in and took sewage water out the middle east had streets that were lit up at night with oil lamps in part because i want to set the mood show you the technology that was available at the time and then tell you why what follows falls it's the battle of khadgai uh i didn't actually so i filled up this map i was having the hardest time finding a map i was at the point where i was going to make a map but i was running out of time and then i thought you know what i got to find something and i kept digging and digging and digging in the googles and i and i believe this is a po the man who made this map is polish uh if you're not polish i'm so sorry i just guessed um but it's okay because most of the names are in either the persian names or the roman name uh if i'm wrong forgive me but it's somewhere right in there so what is today the southern end of turkey a little bit to the east just north of syria the reason that battle took place is because of what a guy named gaius julius kaiser did you guys incorrectly call him julius c caesar i'm gonna do it too because it's fun who doesn't like to mispronounce things on purpose caesar decided his family was going bankrupt that the best way that he could solve the bankruptcy was to start an illegal war with the celts living in gaul conquer them and then plunder their resources and enslave them and so that's what he does and he becomes fabulously wealthy and he saves his family from bankruptcy he was part of a secret illegal arrangement with two other men the three men were in the senate there were two patricians and a plebeian the senate always wanted a plebeian on board and the plebeian of course was pompey magnus the most famous plebeian to be in the senate and then caesar who is a patrician and another guy named crassus nobody ever remembers classes crassus and pompey hated each other's guts and there was a little bit of fear that maybe a civil war would break out so to prevent the civil war crassus pompey and caesar got together and created this secret little power arrangement so that they could control the senate and then basically the three of them would rule rome and everybody would pretend somebody else was doing it not cool crassus sees what caesar does sees how wealthy caesar becomes and goes wow i want this crassus was the governor of syria so he thought who's the nearest rich what's the nearest rich place i can go conquer and he went it's persia let me attack it and so he took uh forty thousand romans and they marched from syria into the persian empire and they met at karhae forty thousand romans uh 32 000 infantry and they were heavy infantry right think of roman legionnaires with the interlocking shields and the spears called pilum and they had a little gladius a little a little short sword and they would march in tight ranks heavily armored they were basically just a giant human wall pointy human walk because they had the spear sticking out and then about 4 000 light cavalry and about four thousand medium cavalry and they went and they they meet the persians that cut hay they mean eight thousand persians on horseback 8 000 infantry uh cavalry and which is what they had they had 8 000 cavalry and the persians that they met were light cavalry with bows and arrows so the romans were like oh we got this 40 000 versus 8 000 what are they going to do shoot arrows at us so the persians ride up and they fire arrows from horseback and the romans were like okay testudo testudo is where you take the shields they interlocked you could you could connect them together and so they locked them together this way and then the row behind them held the shields up like this and then the row behind them held their shields up so that they interlock to make a roof and a wall and the persian arrows bounce harmlessly off the top just it probably sounded loud but otherwise nobody's injured and so at this point the romans are chuckling they were like what are you gonna do just keep doing that you'll run out of arrows eventually and so then the romans march forward slowly and then persians turn around and fire another round of arrows at the romans and then they ride off so now the romans think okay well let's jason so they go out of testudo because you can't run like this you can't run holding a fort near you need to lower your shields so they lower their shields and they take off on foot running and they're chasing the 8 000 persian horse archers the persian horse archers turn around in their saddles and fire backwards nobody had ever done that in battle the romans are shocked they're so surprised by the thing they don't have time to pull up testudo and hundreds of romans go down this rattles the romans they're like whoa we can't just chase these guys okay we need to be a little more cautious and the persians start running up a hill so now the romans are slowly following after them and the persians turn around and shoot but because the romans have slowed down they go back into testudo and not many are injured they don't quite get into testudo in time so some of them do get injured and so it slows the romans down they're getting a little nervous about all of this but then the persians go over the top of the hill so now the romans are like well we might as well run i can't shoot through the hill so they start running and they run up the hill and just as they're cresting the hill to their shock and dismay the romans see one thousand cataphracts cataphracts were fully armored soldiers on top of armored horses the first time europeans will do that put a fully armored man on top of an armored horse is 14 centuries later at the end of medieval europe the persians were technologically 14 centuries ahead of any european society in terms of heavy cavalry one thousand qatar frauds was far superior to 8 000 roman cavalry because they were they were tanks there was almost nothing you could do to them and they're charging up the hill as the romans are charging down the hill so the romans charging down the hill are trying to stop and they're shouting to the guys behind them hey stop running but the guys behind them can't really hear them in part because there are some of them are on the other side of the hill but in part because of all the noise and the guys running down the hill can't stop running because if they do they'll get knocked down and trampled to death and so they're forced to run towards these cavalry units they can't get into formation and the cataphracts cut through them like a hot knife through butter it's a catastrophe romans are dying everywhere the cataphracts get to the top of the hill they turn around and come back through they get to the bottom of hill they turn around they come back through the romans are doing everything they can to try to create order and get back into combat formation and they can't do it eventually crassus's son who is up on the hill gets identified by one of the persian warriors they kill him cut off his head stick it on a spike and jam it into the ground so that its dad can see his head the romans are completely disheartened crassus comes up with a new strategy because while the cataphracts are going up and down the hill the horse archers return and they're just shooting arrows at the romans who can't get into formation let alone go into testudo and so the romans are getting hammered by arrows and cut to pieces by these heavy cavalry men and so he decides you know what we'll do we'll just fight this until the persians run out of arrows it's always a bad day when your goal is to get the other side to run out of ammo because they're shooting at you you know what i mean it's also a really bad day when the persians brought 1 000 camels loaded with 1 000 arrows each they had a million arrows and as the persian horse archers are firing the arrows the camels just ride up to them and hand them more for all intents and purposes a million arrows versus 40 000 men like the persians had an unlimited supply of ammo crassus's strategy is a disaster and the persians 9 000 soldiers are tearing these romans to pieces the only thing that saves the romans is the sun goes down and the persians and the romans basically call it they break up into camps to eat and cook and go to sleep in the morning crosses comes out and he says let's talk and the persian general his name is suret he's on horse and soren says there's nothing to talk about he had a stick with him he draws a line in the ground and he says this side is persian this side is rome that line is the euphrates river and crassus goes no and when he does one of the roman soldiers free freaks out reaches over and grabs surrend the reign of syren's horses and the fight starts again because the persians see that and they just swords come out and they and they just tear the romans to pieces again on the second day about 10 000 romans escaped about ten thousand romans were captured including crassus and twenty thousand romans were killed and we don't have real firm number but about 200 persians died when you outnumber the enemy five to one and they kill you at a ratio of a hundred to one that's a bad day that's bad they wait until the persian emperor shows up his name is orodes orodes brings crassus into his tent crassus was wounded he was in bad shape the persian surgeons were were treating him because they wanted to keep him alive so that auroras could have a nice conversation with him they kept them alive they bring him forward they have him get on his knees in front of the persian emperor and elrodes goes the most important thing in persian culture is to be a good host you are my guest in the persian empire you came here for gold i will provide they pried open crassus's mouth and they brought a pot of molten gold and they poured it down his throat that event triggers almost 700 years of back and forth warfare between the romans and the persians just back and forth if you were to take all the all the fights and stun them together the romans managed to keep so this is this is the border between the romans and the persians they managed to keep something like this for most of that time period because the romans had a fantastic navy in the mediterranean so every time the persians would capture syria or palestine or egypt or anatolia the romans could respond with their navy and deploy troops behind the persians and then that made it so the persians could never really hold any land to the west of their empire but as a general rule the persians usually what not always the romans sometimes beat up on them but in the third century one persian emperor a guy named shapoor beat three roman emperors and in fact so badly he captured one roman emperor with two whole intact roman legions he was the first emperor roman emperor ever captured alive in battle crassus was not an emperor he was a member of the senate and he was a governor but he wasn't an emperor the first captured roman emperor ever was emperor valerian in case uh you wanted to rome gets into really big trouble in fact so does persia they both get into really big trouble in fact all of western civilization gets into really big trouble and the reason is because of indonesian fishermen you know how they can go rogue they're so dangerous the indonesians had discovered there were a bunch of islands through the middle of the indian ocean and you could hop from island to island so even though they didn't have truly ocean worthy vessels they had vessels that were ocean worthy enough you could get between the islands and that made it so that you could start in indonesia and head towards africa crossing the indian ocean and you can island hop your whole way across and before they knew it they were on this really big island to the east of africa called madagascar and when they got there there were no humans living on madagascar they were just lemurs our ancestors but no humans and they went jesus set up a colony and they did and they began growing rice on the colony and as they grew this rice they began trading the rice with africa and before long africa itself began to grow the rice and as they traded with other people the rice began to spread across africa until it got to places like egypt and before you knew it rice was growing in mesopotamia and before you knew it rice is growing even in southern parts of europe the reason why this is a problem is because to grow rice you flood a field and when you flood a field you create a place for for mosquitoes to grow malaria malaria-burying mosquitoes and malaria ends up tearing up the entire region from spain to iran populations the life expectancies absolutely plunge if they were 40 45 they dropped to 20 25 and as a result rome's population goes into dramatic decline and so does iran's and they're just barely scraping by and then as if that's not enough there's there's an outbreak of the bubonic plague it's frequently called uh justinian's uh plague in the middle of the sixth century and it tears rome and persia to pieces the bubonic plague does this really weird thing where it looks like it it's on an 800 year cycle where it'll be dormant for 799 years it'll wake up tear through the human population for a year maybe two max and then go dormant again when i say terror through the human population the last bubonic plague outbreak which was 1348 killed 40 percent of europeans in a one year span of time it killed 60 percent of uh middle easterners and north africans in that same year so just put this in perspective we're running about a two percent fatality rate with covid not a 50 fatality rate um and then we want to play goes back to sleep for those of you uh doing the math real quick it's six and a half centuries we got a century and a half left and then it'll kick into high gear i'm assuming this pattern isn't going to go away i don't know why it would all of a sudden it's happened so many times now i think we're on four or five um so that's comforting to know so by the time we get to the 6th century a.d the populations of both the roman empire and the persian empire are dramatically reduced there are just simply fewer people living which means less food smaller armies and a terrible economy the romans are barely so some of you might be a little confused because you've been taught that rome fell in 476 and i want to just restate rome did not fall in 476 a.d rome fell in 1453 a.d and that's nonsense all rome did was reunify so there was only one emperor and the capital was constantinople which in this map is spelled with a k girl so um there was a roman emperor's name was mauricios but of course we mispronounced everything so i'll just say morris maurice morris morikios is so much better emperor mauricios had sided with a persian trying to become the persian emperor in the middle of a persian civil war his name was hussro the second and when mauricio's when hustlers succeeded he he felt like since mauricio had helped him so much he had to work with them and they became friends and then a roman general named focus isn't that a good name like what because you know like you're not you're distracted in your parent child's focus it's just the perfect name for a kid um general focus was really angry because mauricios had allowed a group of his me focus his men to get killed in an ambush and he he held this really nasty grudge eventually focus ends up in constantinople and he murders the roman emperor and makes himself the roman emperor so now focus in 602 a.d is the roman emperor crusoe the second the persian emperor is outraged that his friend mauricios has been killed like this and so jusro declares war on rome to avenge the death of his friend and to depose focus initially the persians have some successes but they don't last and the war sort of drags on and a bunch of nothing gets done and then um there's an uprising within the roman empire against focus that uprising is led by a man named heraclius and heraclius eventually takes over and becomes a new roman emperor the problem is is this war now has a life of its own and so even though focus is is taken out of the picture and then in fact kluster ii gets his way it doesn't matter anymore they're in the war they're just going to go ahead and fight it out and to make a long story a short a persian general his name was uh uh see where there's there's parts of the roman empire that are they have uh vertical lines through them shahbaz carved that chunk of the roman empire off and and began ruling it himself basically because he eventually himself rebels against the persians and so there actually ends up being three empires one empire that stretches from egypt to armenia ruled by shah bahraz the persian empire to the east and the roman empire to the west eventually heraclius makes a deal with shahbaz to try to make him the new emperor to end the war heraclius actually ended up raising shah bahraz's son his name was nikitas and he raised him as a christian and so emperor heraclius is thinking nicaitus will eventually become the christian ruler of the persian empire the the struggle between rome and persia will finally end and so he he pushes really hard backs chaparrazz finally takes over tisifon the persian capital in 628 so this war went 26 years he takes over the persian capital becomes the persian emperor he even mints a coin with his face on it and 40 days later is stabbed to death but the war ended so that was good it's just the goal wasn't achieved 6 28 and this is where the intersection takes place between the story i wanted to tell you in the in the background that i gave you in 610 in arabia so if you went right off the map to the south that's where mecca is and and then steven's going to scroll down for us right there where it says um there is a man who receives prophecy from the archangel gabriel and his name is muhammad and he becomes the prophet who will create islam i'm not going to give you the whole story but i just want to make sure that we're clear approximately what we're talking about in 622 the people of mecca kick him and his followers out so for 12 years he he built his religion in mecca he's kicked out by the meccans who hate his religion in part because they're worried that his religion is going to interfere with their prophets but also his religion might replace their religion when when the prophet muhammad created islam his original goal was to take christianity and judaism and reunite them he believed that it was a that it was an accident that judaism and christianity got separated and he believed he had received the word of god to fix that and put it back together but as time goes by he concludes that the christians and the and the jews don't want anything to do with his new religion and he realizes he's created a third abrahamic religion and it's separate he ends up in 622 doing the hijrah which takes him to yathrib which on this map is spelled yatrib and the the people there in yatrib take him in and eventually the city gets renamed medina nebi which means the city of the prophet today we just call it medina so if you look at a map off you won't see a thread on there a modern map you'll see medina that's that city in 625 the muslims are going to have a fight with the meccans the battle uhud and the meccans beat the muslims in 627 the meccans attack yathrib and they fight a battle called the battle of the trench khalid ibn walid was a soldier in both of those battles in 625 he was there when the meccans defeated muhammad and the muslims and he was fighting for the meccans against the muslims in 627 he's there again at the battle of the trench where the muslims defeat the meccans afterwards and we don't know exactly when but within two years he he switches sides and he converts to islam in 629 that's why i know it's within two years he's marching with uh soldiers from yathrib north so see where it says petra go to the east of that there's a city called or a town called muta and he marches towards muta with this army three thousand arabs three thousand muslim arabs and their goal is to attack the roman empire because they're in it see where it says were christian arabs who fought for the romans where it says those were christian arabs who fought for the persians so i'm gonna have to be careful here when i say arabs when i so i'm gonna i'm gonna try to remember to say muslim arabs so that you know i'm not talking about the christian arabs fighting for the romans or the persians right for the record there are jewish arabs too in the whole mix just to make it really complicated in any case they they march to the romans find out there's this muslim army coming towards them they don't they're not they don't take it very seriously but they take it seriously enough they dispatch a force to go meet them we don't know the exact size of the roman force i'm i would bet you like a dollar maybe a dollar ten that it was about 10 000 soldiers um his sources from the time period said it was a hundred thousand i find that really hard to believe because the romans were having so much trouble fielding of force and why would you bring a hundred thousand men to fight three three thousand men it seems unlikely but anyway the number is probably ten thousand maybe twenty thousand it's not a hundred thousand so the arabs are deployed the muslim arabs are deployed against christian arabs who are fighting for the romans and the romans outnumber them probably three or four or five to one maybe six to one maybe seven to one it's bad and they fight instead of running away like they should have and they they get the crap beat out of them and the muslim arabs are just in bad trouble and they keep retreating they keep retreating one commander after another dies finally the last commander turns to khalid and goes i want you to figure out how to get us out of here and hands him the banner to put him in command of of the arab army the muslim arab army and what khalid does is he'll take soldiers and he'll give them a banner and he'll have them sneak around a hill at night so they're behind the hill and then in the daytime he'll have them come over the top of the hill and then when they arrive where the arab army is he secretly sneaks them another banner they sneak around the back side of the hill and then they'll come over the top of it again and then he gives them another banner and then they'll go around the back of the hill and he'll come over the top so the romans watching this are like man look at all the reinforcements they're getting and it was just the same group of guys that just kept marching in a circle around this hill and then when the sun went down he would have each man set five ten campfires and then try to keep walking around in front of the campfire so the romans watching it would not only see a bunch of campfires they would see all these men walking in front of the campfires and he just kept doing these tricks and what it did was it kept the romans from attacking because the romans thought man i don't know how big that force is there's so many of them and he kept doing this until he finally got far enough away from the roman roman army he could just tell his men to ride let's run and they ran that is the only battle khalid ibn walid was in command of where he didn't win it was the first time he was ever in command and he was put in command after they had already lost in circumstances that were impossible to win the prophet muhammad will eventually capture mecca and when he does he'll own the western part of arabia and the very eastern part of arabia but not the rest of it and this is important because arabia had never ever ever in its entire history up until that moment been ruled by a single political entity not the arabians had never ruled arabia the persians had never ruled arabia the ethiopians had never ruled arabia the romans had never ruled arabia at one point the ethiopians had captured a piece of arabia the yemen uh one and then of course the persians have that chunk over there in the northeast and the romans had that chunk in the northwest but no one had ever ruled all of arabia as a single political entity the closest anybody had come in fact was the prophet muhammad when he died in 632 he had gotten such a big chunk he probably had about 40 percent of arabia he was replaced by a name guy named abu bakr abu bakr didn't take the title king he didn't take the title emperor he took the title follower of the messenger of god and became the ruler of this muslim-controlled chunk of arabia he he made two armies he sent one army from yatrib due east and he sent the other army south to yemen and his goal is to finally once and for all conquer arabia and rule it and actually he was ruling from mecca at that point the guy you put in charge of his army that went east was khalid and khalid will will do a series of battles against a heretic who is claiming to be the real prophet in in an event called the rhythm wars and khaled will win battle after battle after battle and by 633 arabia is unified so the campaign started in 632 it took less than a year and in part because of khalid's decisive victories in the center of arabia at that point there's argument amongst historians exactly what happened next did abu bakr order khalid to keep going or did he tell khalid to stop it's entirely possible either is true he doesn't stop that's the important thing whether he was told to stop or told to keep going he doesn't stop and he goes towards the very southern tip of iraq um so see where it says he's headed in that direction he ends up fighting a battle in what is today kuwait it's called the battle of the chains the persian general hormuz uh chains up his elite soldiers to show the the arabs that there is no retreat that the persians will fight to the death because they've made it so they can't retreat because they're chained together but also because khalid relied heavily on it on cavalry it would be impossible to do a cavalry charge through them because there are chains in between them so there's no way to get through when khalid like to what what the way battles went back then everybody did this the persians the romans everybody did this is they would send champions to go fight each other before the battle but what the arabs like to do was first poetry so they would get their best improv poet because they would improv they would improv right there they didn't they didn't have a poem written in advance and they would get that poet to shout to the other army of paul and the belief was that if you shot at a good enough poem you should the other side should give you the field and walk away and of course the person's like screw you we don't even speak arabic we don't know what you're saying so after the arab shouts this poetry at the persians who are annoyed khaled walks out and says i'm my champion i'll fight the persian champion that's a problem for the persian general then because if he doesn't go fight it's general versus gen if he doesn't make it general versus general it makes him look like a coward so the persian general goes okay let me fight and they go out and they fight and khaled willie kills him within like 30 seconds it's a really quick fight and so now the persians are going to go into the battle without their general and what khaled did was he just kept using his cavalry to do these charges against the persians that just kept them off balance kept them off balance until finally he broke up their order and what they should have done was they should have repositioned or they should have retreated a little bit and then repositioned but they can't because they're chained together and he swings his cavalry around the backside and starts harassing him and he tears them to pieces the estimate is that he brought 18 000 men against 20 000 persians the same persians who tore those romans to pieces almost 700 years prior and he walked away with a couple hundred uh killed and the persians lost and were killed or captured and then what he's going to do is he's going to work his way along the western bank of the euphrates river and his goal is the city that's labeled as herat there at the time it was called hera or at least the arabs called it hira and he's heading towards hira and he'll fight three more battles the rivers uh wallachia and i'm drawing ules wellagio lace in the river and one of the battles i don't remember which one i'm well slightly embarrassed but not really there's 50 battles dude i can't keep all this straight in my head at one of the battles one of the persian generals is like screw this because khaled kept going i'll be your champion and he walks out now the persian general is stuck doing the same thing and the first thing that happens in the opening moments of the battle is the persian general gets killed and so this persian general goes okay i bet that bastard's going to do this again so he buried a dozen persian soldiers in the battlefield right where he thought the challenge would take place with straws so they could breathe through it he buried them in the night so that in the morning they would come out and do the challenge and then what was supposed to happen is once the challenge started the 12 persian soldiers would jump up and they just murdered right there so khaled walks out the persian general walks out the twelve men jump up and one of khalid's cousins was in the army there the muslim arab army and he's like that's not fair and he runs out and joins khalid and the two men murder the 13 persians and then they destroy the persian army and he would use different tactics every time and one of the battles what he did was he had he'd snuck two cavalry units behind a hill and the persians were in between his men on the other side of the hill and his army and he just kept slowly backing his army up and making a circle a half circle out of it so the persians would kind of go into the middle and then he signaled his cavalry that came riding over the hill and attacked the persians from behind completely surrounded destroys them he captures hira and then on the way so see where says uh that is anbar the city of anbar in iraq in iraq today he's heading towards that place that's where he wants to go and he's going to fight three battles one after the other in succession and here's what he does so there were 60 000 persian soldiers in three separate armies 20 000 each and they're coming for him and by this time at this point he's down to 15 000 men because even though he keeps winning he's still taking losses so it's going to be four to one odds if he lets those three persian armies merge together and he's thinking i don't think i can beat sixty thousand men with fifteen thousand men so if i'm going to win i'm gonna have to attack them piecemeal i'm gonna have to hit each of the three persian units before they get together so he races his army as fast as he can towards the first one but first he cuts his army into three 5 000 man units and he and he tells them we're we're going to arrive at 2 a.m and he gives them a date like two weeks in advance and he says i need you at this location at this time on this day go and they take three different paths and they're gonna they're gonna come at this persian unit and he's guessing where he thinks that persian unit will have arrived to by that point i challenge you this is my challenge three of you you and two of your best friends get into three separate cars and you can use gps pick a spot somewhere on the other side of the us because it needs to be a long road trip right three days not i don't i'm not even gonna make it two weeks just three days so i don't care where you want to go washington or the other washington either way it'll work out to be about the same but make the three of you take three separate paths and then time it so that you arrive at the exact same moment bet you can't do it now take away gps and navigate at night trying to guess where you think the enemy army is going to be they're there when the three armies converge at the exact same moment they catch the persians sleep in their camp they tear them to pieces he's like all right one down two to go he looks at his men and goes this is where the persian army's gonna the next one's gonna be and he tells them i want you there this day this time go three different ways and the three units charge as fast as they can and they get there and the persian army is there and he destroys that one too i mean he tells his men all right we got one more one more and go and they arrive at the right time on the right day in the spot where the persians were at night and they wiped out the third 20 000 man unit with almost no losses they dispatched 60 000 men in a maneuver that i bet a contemporary military force would never be able to execute let alone three times in a row insane it shouldn't be removable he gets to where it says duro that's the city of firaz firaz was the border between the roman empire and the persian empire the persians of the romans hated each other's guts they had been fighting each other six six twenty eight plus 52 right it was 53 bc the battle of karhae but there's no year zero so you have to subtract one that's why i'm doing 52. so what what is 28 plus 52 80. for 680 years the romans and the persians had been fighting each other can you comprehend 680 years of war like i don't even know what that means what do you what does that even mean by the time khalid gets to firaz the persians the romans looked at each other and went we are no you are no longer the enemy we have a new enemy i don't know where these guys even came from because you have to remember at at this point in time the persians had been an empire for 1 200 years and the romans had officially been an empire calling themselves an empire for 600 years but they had been imperial for the 300 before that because even before rome was an empire it owned spain you know north africa it owned syria it owned turkey it owned greece right and so you have 900 years of imperial history for the romans and 1200 years of imperial history for the persians there's 21 centuries between those two empires and they're also technologically the most advanced civilizations on earth and they had massive populations compared to the arabs they're down because of malaria but the arabs don't have any rivers they don't have the agriculture capacity to support large populations the arabs are outnumbered they're out technology they're out monied they're out experienced they're out equipped and khalid in one year has captured iraq our military was there for eight years we didn't capture anything we captured ieds in the face so the persians go to romans they're like okay we're going to fight this one as allies right and the romans are like yes yeah we're good because in the meantime an arab army has attacked from this side and is trying to get to jerusalem and so the romans know that the arabs you're outnumbered you're out technology you're out money and you're facing two empires do you attack both at the same time that makes no sense but it's exactly what the arabs did they attacked the two oldest most powerful empires at the same time even though they were outnumbered by one let alone both and so the romans are like yeah yeah we'll work with you so at firaz the combined roman and persian armies which by the way was largely made up of christian arabs not not completely but there was a huge contingent probably about 50 000 christian arabs the combined persian roman army was 150 000 men against 15 000 muslimers so khaled arrives khalid is on the east bank of the euphrates the persians and the romans are on the west bank there's a ford and a bridge which isn't convenient if you're moving an army it's nice and so hallett is on the pilot needs the persians of the romans to cross the river to fight so he very politely backs his army up from the bridge in the ford and split it into three five thousand man units he'd like that and he put one up river one down river and then pull the other one away from the river and he just waited so the persians and romans start to cross the bridge and the they're also crossing the ford at the same time and he waits and he waits and he waits and then he does a prayer as he's waiting and he says god if you give me this victory i will go to mecca and i will do the hajj i know i'm going to die i know there's no way we're going to defeat 150 000 men today but that's what i will do i'll go i'll run and i'll do the hajj and uh and i'm actually happy that i get to die as a warrior here today when 50 000 persians and romans had crossed the euphrates he blew a horn the men that were up and down river attacked them by going along the riverbank and tried to then merge at the bridge in the ford so that they would cut the guys who had crossed off from the guys on the other side then what khaled did was he took the 5 000 men who against 50 000 and he has them charge into him and he had he had his men as thin as possible and then he backs his man up and then he charges again and then he backs his men up and he charges again and every time his horses go in to those men it compressed them a little bit it compressed them a little bit more so after a while the persians the romans are so compressed they can't move their arms they can't swing their weapons he's just compacted them together and they realize what he's done to them and they panic and they turn around to run back to the river to cross it fifty thousand men turning all at once to stampede you could hear the bones breaking and then the muslim arabs just went in and started killing them as they're running by the time the battle was done 200 muslim arabs were dead 50 000 persians and romans were dead what is this god's like okay i'm alive that's a surprise and so what he does is he he orders his men back to hiram so what he does is he says okay i need to arrive at hira i need to show up on top at the front of my army but i've got to now go to mecca to do this hajj so he takes his fastest horses and his best man and they race across the desert as fast as they can they get to mecca he puts on a hood so that nobody will see his face he quickly does the hodge he jumps back onto a horse and he rides as fast as he can he gets to the front of his army just as it's arriving at hira and he assumes the position as if he was there the whole time and he marches his men into the city and a few days later a messenger arrives from mecca sent by abu bakr khalif and it said you were spotted in mecca don't do that again abubak then orders him to invade syria so he's going to basically miss dura he's going to go south of dura and he's heading towards damascus that's his goal is to capture damascus because the muslim arabs are thinking if they capture damascus they'll get jerusalem in the aftermath because the romans will be there'll be an arab army north of the roman army and they won't be able to maintain their supply lines so they'll just simply retreat and that's how they'll capture jerusalem khaled takes his men across this really nasty chunk of desert in a logistical feat that would be hard to replicate with a contemporary army today he just takes his men through a spot that has no water and no food and he gets them across they show up in syria they come up to damascus and he captures the city at that point emperor heraclius is tearing his hair out trying to figure out what to do because all of this is a shock and a surprise nobody ever thought the arabs were a threat where is this even coming from so heraclius goes to antioch which is on that map as antiochea but it's antioch and uh they had renamed it uh theopolis which is city of god and he shows up and he's hunkered down in there and he gets together his generals and he decides to launch a counter attack and and what heracles idea is you send four roman armies and you catch the four muslim arab armies in four separate locations and you take them out piecemeal heracles does not want to ever have a situation where he's bringing all four of his armies together because he doesn't have the economy to support having that many men in one location there's just too few people the infrastructure has fallen apart word reaches that the muslims that there are these four armies now coming towards them the commander of the four armies is a guy named dubai abu abadim abu baider was told that he was in command and khaled was relieved of command he could still be a general but he would not be the guy in charge and the reason is is because the new khalif abu bakr only lived two years as khalif he's dead he's replaced by a guy named is khalid's first cousin and he doesn't trust khalid he thinks charlotte has political ambitions and so he's worried that if people like him too much because he's too amazing he'll eventually try to become the new caliph and he'll do a political coup so he demotes khalid and and but orders the arab armies to head over towards uh where it says al-jabir the problem is the the hassanites keep attacking them from behind and so the muslims try to figure out what to do they decide to hold a conference and then what they do is they ask an interesting question the commander and the question he asks is would you guys rather have halide in charge or me and everybody looks at looks at them like you know we feel guilty saying this but yeah challenge and he goes me too i would like to propose that we promote hallett to being in command unofficially because i'll be officially in command but but unofficially he'll be in charge and everybody votes yes and so he takes command of the army even though he can't because he's been demoted and uh he comes up with a plan and the plan is to head back a little ways towards damascus to get away from the ghassanids to a spot where the muslim army i don't know how i should do this should i aim myself like this it's weird talk to you with my back i'll do it this way so on the south end of the muslim army is this giant ravine and then there's a plateau it's called the plain of yarmouk and the ravine is the ravine of yarmouk and then across from the ravine is another ravine so you can't really use them as an army because you'd be falling off a cliff to go into them they're really steep so he's got his left flank his southern flank covered by this ravine and they just wait which now forces because now all four of the arab armies are in one location it forces the romans to bring their armies together which they didn't want to do the commander of the roman army is an armenian named vahan but a huge chunk of this roman army probably about a quarter of it was actually made up of arabs christian arabs so this is going to be an era versus arab fight at some core level vahan brings his army up and he puts it in between the second ravine in the west and the muslim army on day one he does a really light gentle probing attack just to try to figure out uh what he's up against how the arabs are going to respond to his attack he's just just going up and touching to figure out what's going on uh the arabs feel the pressure because they're outnumbered again now this isn't fiora's level outnumbered but it's still bad we don't know the exact numbers but it's probably in the ballpark that there were 120 000 romans and about 40 000 muslim arabs so the muslim arabs are outnumbered by about three to one and so bahan is just sort of checking things out because he knows these muslim arabs are good fighters he doesn't want to do anything risky on day one the sun goes down they disengage a few hundred people are wounded or killed it's not heavy casualties on day two vachan decides he's gonna have the roman left flank and the roman right flank hit the muslim army as hard as it can because he figures he's got the numerical advantage hit them as hard as you can so he orders that the muslim commander on the left is a guy named yazid and the muslim commander on the right is a guy named and an abu ubaidah is in the middle the guy who's supposed to be in charge and then khalid's in the back controlling everything and the weight of the roman army is so overwhelming both muslim flanks are collapsing and they're in full retreat and uh in the north on the muslim right flank the women so it's worth pointing something out that's actually really interesting women have always been an integral part of warfare in all times we pretend like we've just recently let women in the militaries the persians had an all-woman archer division the stories about the amazons that wasn't made up that mythology was based on a real event a rogue archer division of women we don't know why decided to go on a tear and attacked a bunch of greek city-states on the aegean sea and burnt their temples and set their on fire i cussed i said i wouldn't uh and they deserved it just for the record and then the greeks were so traumatized by this they they were like we were attacked by amazons and they were and it really did happen isn't that cool i think it's cool usually women were support staff they weren't in direct combat roles notice i didn't say it always i said usually for example the vikings fielded women the persians the vikings the armenians fielded women the romans did not ever field women they were against it but women still played a support role in their in the in roman legions and the arabs were the same they they did have some women warriors by the way just so we're clear but for the most part there were very few women who participated directly in battle in any case the women on amar ibn al-assad's side uh pull down the tents grab the posts and charge the men who are retreating and they shout at them you've you've shamed your wives and now you have a choice you can be killed by your wives or you can be killed by the romans bahan's blown away he can't believe that he attacked an army a third the size they broke it it rallied and pushed them back but he thinks i've got it i've killed enough of them this was a bloody enough affair i can probably break them the next day so the next day which is really day three at this point he decides to focus everything he's got on the the muslim right flank so he's going to ignore half the muslim army he takes everything and he smashes it in and sure enough the muslims are being pushed back and the women take the tent posts back and are holding a line against their own man and the arab men turn around and re-engage and they stabilize the situation khalid brings his cavalry units around and he smashes into the roman flanks that are attacking and they slowly push the romans back and day three ends right where it began von is now really upset because he can't comprehend how he's not moving this arab army but he thinks okay i think we're still in this so day four he decides to do the same thing push that same muslim right flank just hit him as hard as you can with everything you've got and the khalid this time had assumed this was going to happen so what he had done is he had redeployed his cavalry so that it would be able to respond more quickly and he manages to stabilize the flank even though it does start to collapse they do start to fall back and they manage to push the romans back and they stop day four right where they started day five vahan sends a guy to talk and he's he's ready to come up with a compromise like maybe you get jerusalem and we keep damascus something like that khaled goes oh the romans only talk when they're losing okay i'm gonna refuse to talk day six he took all his cavalry it was about eight thousand men out of his forty thousand men about eight thousand cavalry and he put all of them on his right flank when the when the sun came up he swung it around so now the romans are trapped between his army and the two ravines there was a bridge over the western ravine during the night he had sent 500 cavalry around through the plane they had snuck down into the ravine and they had captured the bridge and his goal is to get the romans to run towards the bridge because there's nowhere to go because the muslims actually have the bridge just the romans don't know and he comes swinging over the top and he smashes the roman left flank really hard he breaks the roman cavalry in it that was there and he breaks the roman army that was there it's the cavalry unit and the army start to retreat they're running in two other roman units sending them into disarray and then the romans tried to respond with heavy cavalry vahan sees what's happening he organizes cavalry he draws it in but it's heavy cavalry and it's slow khaled comes in with his light cavalry and he attacks them before they can get into more formation destroys them then he takes his cavalry and he slams it into the back of the roman army it breaks and goes into full retreat and that's how he took forty thousand men against a hundred and twenty thousand men at yarmouth and destroyed them fahan got away with with a cavalry detachment khalid grabbed his fastest horses and his best men and they took off and they chased general vahon and they caught up with him just outside of damascus and khaled lets his man tear up vahan's man until the only man standing is vaha and khaled told his men don't touch him and then he comes up to varhan and he says you are a man a man's man and so i'm gonna give you a man's death and they dueled one on one and he kills vahon and then khaled goes and recaptures damascus emperor heraclius holds a council and he asks his remaining generals what should we do and the generals tell them we've lost syria it's done there's nothing we can do about it and so heraclius gets on a ship and he says farewell syria you have been a lovely province and now you will be a lovely province for the arabs and he withdraws and that was the last time second to last time there was a roman army in syria they'll they'll get in one more time but they don't really keep it for long khaled in his army now returned to jerusalem which on this map is hiroshima in case you were wondering and when they get there um the romans have largely abandoned it the roman military has but there's enough people manning the walls that you can't get in so they are already stuck outside trying to figure out how to get inside so they can capture this holy city the archbishop of jerusalem a man named safranius by the way a christian arab a loyal roman citizen indicates he's willing to negotiate but only with omar abner the khalif or the khalif is all the way back in mecca it'll be weeks before he can be sent for and then return so they come up with a scheme and the scheme is since khalid is umar ibn khattab's first cousin he actually looks like him so they pretend khalid ibn waleed is the khalif they meet with safranius and while they're talking somebody had actually met omar ibn khattab i'm sorry had met khalid and knew that was khalid and so he tells the phoenix you're being duped it's not really the halif it's some other dude it's that general that that's been tearing us up his funniest is outraged he goes you lied to me and he calls off the negotiations for the surrender so now the arms are stuck getting the chalice sophronius comes out of the gates weeks later to meet the caliph because he sees the khalif's army arrive and as he's approaching he sees a man leading a camel at the front of the army so for the record the rich arabs the arabs who were good soldiers didn't usually ride camels they usually rode horses arabians and for those who don't know arabians are fast and agile and they have crazy personalities and so they're perfect for warfare camels are a little bit clumsy and slow they serve a purpose in warfare but you're better off on an arabian in any case the arab army is being led by a man leading a camel with a man on the camel so safronius he's got a giant red hat because he's also a cardinal right he's got gold tassels actual gold hanging from his hat he's covered in gold jewelry he's wearing red robes he's covered in perfume he's on electica the lectico was the couch that the romans would ride and then they'd have like four or eight men depending on how big it is carrying it and then he has two men one on each side fanning him of course right that's what jesus would want from his bishops that's exactly right and he's coming out on this lectica being found and he comes up to the guy on the camel and he says uh where is the caliph and the guy on the camel does like this he nods with his head at the guy leading the camel so stephonius turns to the guy leading the camera goes where's the caliph and the guy leading the camel says i'm the chalice and stephonius goes dude you're dressed in rags the guy's pants were or mended multiple times his shirt was mended multiple times and he goes no no i'm the khalif and zephonius goes you've just conquered iraq and syria and all of palestine minus jerusalem how is it you're so poor and the khalif goes well why would i collect wealth i'm we're not doing this war because i'm trying to plunder anything i'm a humble man with humble needs i just need good meal and then zephonius goes why are you riding the camel and omar goes uh that's my servant on the camel and we take turns so that neither one of us gets exhausted at this point sephoras is like oh what who just conquered us what are these marxists and so cephonius gets off the lectica because he's shamed off of the thing and he says okay i i want to talk to you about our surrendering the city to you and and the khalif says i have an idea let's walk to the city and i'll tell you what i was thinking the terms would be and then and then so we'll start there and support it goes yes of course and as they're walking says why don't we do this all roman politicians leave jerusalem you just go if you're a politician so if you're a top bureaucrat an officer and you can take anything you can carry so you can take gold as long as you can carry and sophonias goes okay uh i mean that's reasonable that's actually more than reasonable i just assumed you'd enslave them and take their goal i don't i don't see how anybody would be mad about that and then what else and the khalif goes oh no i was thinking that's it uh we we don't do anything else and sophonius goes wait a minute i am really confused so when us romans capture a city we enslave a segment we plunder the city probably a little bit too much raping too we might even burn some of it just for grins and giggles and then we declare it to be ours what about that we're not going to do any of that no plundering no raping no enslaving we don't do that stuff and then sephonius goes oh but you're going to like seize property in the city and so and the khalif goes no no we're not going to take anybody's property we're going to leave the city exactly like it is the only thing i want to do is eject the roman politicians with whatever they can carry and sophomores because there's nothing to negotiate yeah we surrender the city this instant i i don't understand actually they walk into the city khalid is one of the men following us all these guys they're on foot if they've got their horses with them they're leading their horses by the reins right because the leadership is on foot there's no way they're going to ride in they're walking and this is a holy city to them because jesus is holy to them because the jews were holy to them and so they see this as a holy city sophronius goes tell me about your religion as they're walking through the streets and so um starts telling about islam sophonias goes it just sounds like a variation of christianity i i feel like our religions are shockingly similar and um goes yeah because they are i mean we thought we were doing uh judaism 3.0 it never occurred to us that we were going to be received as being so different and uh he goes okay since you've given us such amazing surrender terms my alarm is going on and i can't turn it off and it's so embarrassing it's telling me to put my kids to bed i should have remembered to turn it off but it didn't occur he says you've given us such amazing surrender terms and because i feel such kinship with religion will you do me an honor will you come to my church and pray in your muslim way next to me as i pray in my christian way and um goes never and sophonias goes why he goes i'm the khalif the first place i pray in jerusalem is going to become a mosque the muslims will take it and they will create a place of worship for muslims and you will lose it and i don't want you to lose your church and sephonius goes oh uh okay what if we find an empty piece of jerusalem and we just pray there and omar goes yes i accept an empty piece something that nobody owns so they go and they find an empty lot and they pray the archbishop in his christian way the caliph in his muslim way side by side it is a mosque today that spot commemorating the first place that the first muslim god of prayed in in jerusalem he nailed it he he knew what was coming and he saved the church of the holy sepulchre for christians because that's the church cephronius wanted him to pray in at that point the khalif says i want to see the temple mount and sophonius goes why and goes because it's holy it's holy everybody it's holy the christians it's holy to jews it's only to muslims and sophomores goes nah we haven't been treating it as holy day anybody and um goes what do you mean and so sephora says so after we tore down the second temple of solomon when we conquered palestine we turned the temple mount into a garbage jump to punish the jews and so and the khalif goes what do you mean and stephonius goes yeah we've been there's like 500 years of refuse on that thing it's just a garbage dump and he goes show me they walk up to the temple mount and the khalif can't believe what he's looking at he falls on his knees and he begins clearing the garbage by his hands his army sees their leader on his knees clearing garbage and they run up and they start clearing the garbage themselves and they clear the garbage off the temple mount the caliph goes okay i want to meet some of the jews living in jerusalem and sophonius goes there are no jews in jerusalem and the khalifa goes what do you mean there's no jews in jerusalem the city is holy to the jews how could there be no jews and he says well us christians we pretty much murder them every chance we get we really hate jews in fact in the war we just did against the persians the jews sided with the persians and so we murdered 20 000 jews in jerusalem and completely purged the city of its remaining jewish population and omar ibn al-khattab goes no this is wrong you can't do this and so he turns to a convert to islam a jewish convert to islam and he says i need you to find me 80 jewish families that were willing to volunteer to move to jerusalem so we can re-establish a jewish presence in this city and that's how the muslims conquered jerusalem and that's the stuff that's left out of your history books isn't that crazy because isn't that an amazing story after jerusalem omar turns to khalid and goes i know you fought at yarmouk and i know you impersonated me i really hate you you're gonna go to mecca and you're gonna spend the rest of your days there you're not no more combat for you i'm retiring you i actually don't think he died in mecca he did leave but he never fought another battle that was it that was the end of his military career he was he died in bed at age 50. i don't know what was ailing him something got him and his final words were you cannot put your hand anywhere on my body without touching a combat wound i am covered in scars it was my dream that god would let me die as a man on the field of battle here i am in a bed dying like a cow and that's where i'm going to end this story

Channel: The Austin School

Views: 1,496,095

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Id: Ygi7KuSazn4

Length: 84min 51sec (5091 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/llArmaghanll]

I listened to this lecture. Professor seems to have a bias towards Islam and Muslims. Even though he explained about Khalid ibn Walid(R.A), he didn't keep his study purely objective and studied it with an open heart. So a non-Muslim or a Muslim who haven't read the history will get a wrong idea.