Marching Towards Hira - A Preview
“Women will no longer be able to give birth to the likes of Khalid bin Al-Waleed.”
--- Caliph Abu Bakr
“I know more about Khalid than anyone else, no man is luckier than he. No man is his equal in war. No people face Khalid in battle, be they strong or weak, but are defeated. Take my advice and make peace with him.”
--- Arab client-prince Ukayd to his Sassanid commander
2 miles from Walaja, 633 AD
“They can’t hold out much longer, keep pressing! Show these barbarians what happens when they defy their better! ” Captain Varsken shouted as he rode back and forth on his horse to rally his troops. His commander and uncle Andarzaghar followed behind him on his own mount, trying to persuade his young kinsman to return to the safer areas behind the raging front lines. “Varsken, please just stay away! We're not yet triumphant and I've never seen Arabs fight like these men are fighting.” Varsken laughed and slowed his pace to allow Andarzaghar to catch up with him. “Look around, Honored Uncle...”, he said with a wave of his hand, “..and you'll see that your plan is working as intended! Already they tire and we have three men for every one of theirs. Now that we are on the offensive, they will crack in minutes. Fools that these Arabs are, they have boxed themselves in for the slaughter! We have succeeded where Hormuz and Qarin have failed!” The old general frowned at his nephew, but the youth was right this time. Soon the line of Arabs would break, and trapped as they were by a ridge and a river, there would be nowhere for them to flee to.
Andarzaghar had been the military governor of Iraq for years and had even grown up there. Unlike many of his colleagues, he actually rather liked Arabs and knew much of their language and customs. His regard for the Christian Arabs amongst his troops made him the only Persian commander that the Iraqi Arab conscripts respected. When word came to the Imperial Capital of Ctesiphon that an Arab army of a scant fifteen thousand flying black banners had obliterated two seperate forces led by highly ranked commanders, the Shahenshah was beside himself with rage and ordered Andarzaghar to muster his army of forty thousand and link up with General Bahman to destroy them. Had he been given the choice, he would have preferred to wait for Bahman’s forces to arrive before fighting a decisive battle with these Arabs, but Andarzaghar was not given the luxury of waiting for reinforcement. A few days before Bahman was expected, an army flying that same unusual black banner he had been told of appeared over the horizon and camped a short distance from his soldiers tents. He was a little surprised; reports from the broken remnants of Hormuz’s and Qarin’s armies had said that the Arab interlopers numbered around fifteen thousand. There was at most ten thousand men arrayed against him now, and without even a single horseman amongst them. Though it was strange for an Arab army to lack cavalry, at which they were the equal of any Empire on earth, Andarzaghar assumed that the defeated soldiers from the other armies had made up tales to explain their ignoble defeat. Cautious and crafty, General Andarzaghar waited for the Arabs to attack him first, letting them grind themselves to dust against his hardened infantry, then he would counterattack and finish them off.
The Arabs on both sides clamoured for a duel before the battle and the general obliged them. It would be good for morale for them to see one of their enemies butchered. He called up a champion warrior from his army, a heavily armored Persian soldier with a bejeweled sword. An Arab met him in challenge, a tall and handsome man with a thick black beard and a shaved head in chainmail. After around ten minutes of intense battle, the Arab champion found the right opening and ran his opponent through with his sword. The Black Banner troops cheered and to mock the Persian, the Arab champion ordered his rations brought to him there on the field. Using the body of his felled opponent as a table, the warrior ate his meal on the dueling space, staring all the while at the two well-dressed Persian commanders.
As much as the spectacle of the battle unnerved him, Andarzagar still felt like he was in control of the situation. Just as the old Persian had planned, the barbarian general ordered his men to advance and the battle began. The foreign army struck at the well-armored Persians, but the Persians stood their ground like only Imperial soldiers could, repulsing all attacks. The black banner army fought ferociously, but there was far less of them than there were Persians. An old hand at the art of war, Andarzaghar could see clear signs of weakness and fatigue amongst the soldiers of the opposing force and cried out for his men to begin the counter-attack. Imperial troops screamed battle cries as they smashed into the lines of the Arabs; through what must have been will alone the Black Banners were able to hold them for some time, but the almost-inhuman stress they were under was impossible to maintain and they began to fall back. Andarzaghar launched assaults again and again, but instead of breaking like he had guessed they would, the Black Banners continued to fight with strength born of utter desperation. The general would have admired this level of discipline even in his own troops or in Roman legionaries, but to see this from barbarians was nothing less than astounding. He almost wished that the battle wasn’t going to end as decisively as it looked it would; he would have offered the Arabs who remained a place inside his own forces. This didn't seem likely though: the Black Banners seemed to have met the upper limits of stamina already and discipline wasn't enough to stop an onslaught like this. His nephew Varsken, raised in the imperial heartland and much less of an expert commander, shared none of Andarzaghar’s respect for his opponents. In fact, he thought his Honored Uncle was much too soft on the barbarians in his own command and cursed Andarzaghar’s name every time the court ladies back home gossiped about how his family was more Arab than Persian. No, he was only thinking about the promotions and riches that awaited him.
Varsken was snapped out of his daydreams about the marriage to a well-bred noble girl and lavish palaces that would soon be granted to him by his pleased Imperial master by General Andarzaghar rapping on his shoulder with the flat of his blade. “Ow, what is it, Honored Uncle?” he said in barely concealed annoyance. “Look…”, the older man said as he pointed to where one of the Arab soldiers was waving a red scrap of cloth high with a spear, “...what is he doing?” “I don't know, Uncle, maybe he's praying to his god for a quick death. I've heard that these Black Banner troublemakers are all some bizarre kind of Jew. I thought you were the….” Varsken’s words trailed off as the answer to his uncle's query revealed itself. From the ridge opposite the one that the barbarian army was being slowly pressed up against emerged two long lines of Arab cavalrymen coated in gleaming scale armor with lances and swords, their horses fresh and pawing at the ground in excitement. Bearing their own black war banners, the horsemen screamed a warcry in their tongue, some nonsense syllables that sounded like “Alevu Akabir” to Varsken’s ears, and charged the Persian rear. He turned to his uncle in fear as his troops panicked and the emboldened Arab infantry turned the tide of the Imperial attack. “What's happening?! Where did they come from! UNCLE!”
Andarzaghar didn't respond, he was a talented enough general to see that he had been outwitted. The initial Arab attack was only a lure to give the hidden cavalrymen enough space to charge the Persian rear and savage their lines. The positioning of the two Black Banner forces in relation to the opposite ridges meant that there was no escape from the circle of spears and swords closing around the panicking Persians who trampled and stabbed each other in the chaotic slaughter; he thought he had the Arabs trapped when all the while they had been trapping him. He quickly gathered the few Persian cavalrymen still alive and tried to fight his way through the reinvigorated Arab infantry to no avail. He locked eyes briefly with the swordsman who had raised the red signal flag, a man he now realized was the same one who had slain the Persian champion during the duel. A brief look of understanding passed between them, a momentary acknowledgment of the other's skill shared by men who had both devoted their lives to the craft of slaughter. Then the cavalryman battling next to Andarzaghar was gutted by an Arab rider and the general threw himself into the fray for the last time.
Afternotes
The pace of updates for a while will be a little slowed because my kid sister is recuperating from a surgery, but I thought I'd give you a look at some of the things I'm writing up. Abu Bakr's reign saw Khalid grab quite a bit of land in some spectacular battles, both in Iraq against the Persians and in Syria against the Byzantines, even though the big-name matches happened under Umar. Another not-so-secret goal of this TL is to showcase some of the quality generalship on both sides of the expansions. There's a tendency to regard the Muslim conquests as fait accompli due to the crippling of the Byzantines and the Sassanids after their wars, but I feel like that's a bit unfair to the Rashidun Army. Even with the weakened state of the Imperial war machines, Khalid's troops were still fighting much larger and better equipped armies of hardened veterans while far away from their home base. Any defeat in the early stages of the Syria or Iraq campaigns would have been disastrous for the Caliphate and perhaps given their opponents precious time to regroup. This doesn't happen because Khalid, Abu Ubaidah, and Al-Muthanna consistently outsmart their opposition and use their mobility in some dazzling ways. The explosive nature of the Rashidun conquests is due to a perfect storm of many factors, but one of those lucky factors was having intelligent commanders who could exploit the opening.