At the onset of the seventh century, Arabia was getting full. Population growth in Arabia was leading to raiding against the Levant and Mesopotamia, but the apparent strength of the Armenian Empire made expansion northwards difficult, if not altogether impossible. In central Arabia the Arab tribes had recently converted to Judaism, these tribes would turn their attention southwards to Arabia Felix. Once the the Jewish kingdom of Himyar had been based out of this region, but Aksum controlled the region. Under the leadership of Ishmael Al-Mutraqa, the central Arabian tribes would move southward, not as raiders, but as conquerors. Al-Mutraqa conquered Magan (modern day Oman) and then swept into Arabia Felix, defeating a much larger Aksumite force near Timna. The expulsion of Aksum at the hands of nomads was an embarrassing blunder for the Aksumite king, who followed up this humiliation with an invasion to retake Arabia Felix. Again, the Aksumites were defeated and the Aksumite king captured and held ransom. A sizable ransom was demanded, but none ever came. Back in Aksum, the king’s brother Zergaz declared himself king. Sailing had always been an important part of the southern Arabian culture and economy, and Al-Mutraqa combined that with the nomadic tradition of Ghazw. The combination these two traditions which would eventually give rise to extensive raiding and colonization by the Jewish Arabs, was originally meant for a specific military expedition, in with Al-Mutraqa sought a large scale invasion of Africa. His death in battle and the fracturing of the Arab supertribe through civil war after his death ended a united Arab attempt to take Aksum, but with the great Ghazw against Aksum uncompleted and with a massive Arab fleet still in existence, the foundations of the Arab Raiding Age were established. Piracy began to flourish and the Indian-Red Sea trade began to collapse under the increased pressure of piracy. Soon piracy gave way to sacking coastal cities for plunder. These early raids were primarily for economic enrichment similar to the original purpose of Ghazw, but eventually these expeditions became one of conquest. The Judaeo-Arab Ghazi began not only sacking coastal Somali and Indian cities, but holding them. The Ghazi raiders spread as far South as Madagascar and as far East as Sarandīb.
As time went on and the Bedouins of Central and Northern Arabia settled in the south and the coastal cities they captured in the Indian Ocean, the old Southern Arabian mercantile tradition began to return. As new states began to solidify in in Southern Arabia and Northern Arabia following the fall of the Armenian Empire, the waves of migration began to end and by around 750 AD the Ghazi Age came to an end.
While coastal India was being raided by the Jewish Ghazi, Northern India was falling under the rule of the Manichean Kartalid Empire founded by Alim Kartal Khan. Though Alim is remembered well in Indian history and his grandson, Demir Khan who who conquered most of India and believed in religious tolerance (despite slaughtering rebels by the thousands) is remembered as Demir the Great, the Katalid dynasty is often associated with the Indian Dark Age because of Yilmaz Khan. Yilmaz, son of Demir, inherited an empire that had rapidly expanded and had coffers that were nearly completely drained. To stop the state from hemorrhaging money, Yilmaz ended many of the building projects his father had started. Moving to quickly recover income lost in his father’s military expeditions and building projects, Yilmaz instituted the Idolaters Tax. Yilmaz was a religious man, who had been primarily raised by his mother who subscribed to an extremely iconoclastic sect of Manichaeism that had risen in popularity among the Teleut that had settled in India and he had come to see the rampant idolatry and corporealism of the the Hindu people to be an affront to god and a mocking of the Teleut ruling class. An Idolaters Tax was a way to both disincentives the Hindu worship of icons and refill the imperial coffers. The tax was poorly received and led to several revolts that were brutally put down by Yilmaz. In one such revolt, Yilmaz’s son, Arslan, was killed. Upon hearing of the death of his eldest son, Yilmaz grew even colder towards the idolaters and grew even more iconoclastic. He began tearing down Hindu temples that were hundreds of years old and burning Hindu manuscripts. A special tax apart from the Idolaters Tax was placed on the Brahmin. Many Hindu historians say that India was cursed by Yilmaz being blessed with a long life. In fact, Yilmaz would like to be 84 years old, putting down numerous rebellions over his lifetime, destroying countless, and ancient temples, and upsetting the caste system greatly. With Yilmaz’s death his 45 year old son, Alim II, became emperor and inherited imperial coffers swelling with money. Alim II launched an invasion of the Indo-Armenian Kingdom of Hndka, only to die of Typhoid fever while on campaign. Alim II’s death sparked a succession war between his two eldest sons and his younger brother which was compounded by several uprisings against the Idolaters Tax in the south. Arslan defeated his nephews, gaining the imperial throne, but faced an empire on the brink of collapse.
Across the Miaphysite world, a fissure was erupting between the Syriac Church and the Armenian Church. Increasingly the Catholicos in Vagharshapat a creature of the Armenian emperor, deposed and empowered as he saw fit. In 689, Emperor Geghard II attempted to have the Patriarch of Antioch arrested and replaced, but the Karravarich of Yegiptos interceded and had the troops sent to arrest the Patriarch arrested. Against this affront to Imperial authority, Geghard II went to war with Karravarich Hovannes, who had ruled over Yegiptos since Geghard’s father had appointed him Karravarich in 673. Hovannes enlisted the aid of the Ghassanid king against Geghard, a move that would not stave off the emperor and doomed the Ghassanid kingdom. In the ensuing war, the Ghassanid capital of Jabiyah was sacked by the Armenian emperor and Jewish Bedouins from the south moved in quickly to consume the devastated remnants. Near Jaffa Hovannes and Geghard met on the battlefield. Before the two could clash, Hovannes’ Tuareg mercenaries defected to Emperor Geghard II, spelling the end of Hovannes’ rebellion. The battle was a total victory for Geghard, who named his nephew as new Karravarich of Yegiptos. Yegiptos was brought more tightly into the Armenian Empire, for a time, but within a generation, the benign neglect that was a necessity of placing someone in charge of a region with so many resources created conditions where the Karravarichate of Yegiptos was virtually independent of the Armenian Empire.
The end of the Armenian Empire came suddenly and all at once. The movement of the Manichean Gaoche Khaganate west into the Pontic–Caspian steppes pushed the Ογurs west where they would go on to conquer the Balkans and the Pannonian Plain. The Alans were pushed southwards, invading the Armenia proper. Emperor Zhirayr marched his troops marched north of the Caucasus mountains in the sweltering summer heat and near the city of Balanjar, the Armenian Emperor and his troops would be set upon by the Alans. The exhausted Armenian force was annihilated and Zhirayr was killed. The Alans crossed the Caucasus and sacked Kapaghak, Partav, and Payakaran. Ultimately, the Alans would end up carving their own little kingdom in Tapuria. With Zhirayr’s death, his infant son Vartan became Emperor. Ruling in Vartan’s place was his mother Talin and the Catholicos. As the two failed to deal with the Alans, and the Gaoche began raiding south of the Caucasus mountains into the Armenian heartland, it all began to break down. In southern Iran, an uprising threatened to throw the Armenian Empire out of Persia. Zhirayr’s uncle Sahak, a general stationed on the Central Asian frontier declared Talin and the Catholicos unfit to rule in the Vartan’s name invaded Persia. Sahak put down the rebellion, that had spread to most of the Iranian Plateau, but as he moved to invade Armenia he was killed by an officer bought off by Talin. The sacking of the imperial capital and the flight of Talin and the infant emperor spelled the end of the Armenian Empire. Very quickly it spread that Talin and the child had been set upon by raiders and killed and equally as quickly three or four different Talin’s appeared with children claiming to be the Empress. Few of the Karravarichs acknowloged these pretenders as they tried to assert control over the each other and over the empire. In the wake of the collapse of the Armenian Empire, the Near East was covered in a patchwork of states ruled by an Armenian elite.
Despite never being direct targets for the Arab raiders, the city-states of Greece and Asia were dramatically affected by the near collapse of the Indian Ocean trade at the height of the Ghazi Age. Constantinopolis, thanks to its position grew even more economically powerful during this period. War between Constantinopolis and the Despotate of Mystras disrupted trade in the region and left the Mystras’ North African colony defenseless as it was menaced by Tuaregs. The governor of Cyrenaica sent messages to Yegiptos and to Romania asking for assistance, and it was the emperor in Narbo Martius who answered the call. Emperor Tiberius II was 35 years old when he ascended to the purple, and in the decade since he had become emperor he had turned back the Ογur invasion of the Po Valley and conquered a vast swath of Hispania. Tiberius II saw Cyrenaica as a jumping off point. Once Cyrenaica was secured he would take Yegiptos as his jewel. The wealth that would come from taking Yegiptos would fill the imperial coffers and then some. With Yegiptos bankrolling his empire Tiberius would be able to try and restore the Mediterranean to Romanian rule. Given the weak state of the Karravarishate of Yegiptos, it would have been fairly easy for Tiberius II to conquer it but not long after arriving in Cyrenaica, Tiberius II took ill with Malaria and passed away. Tiberius died without a son, there is speculation that he may have been gay, leaving the title of emperor to his brother, Mauricius, who was far more content with drinking and screwing his consorts than fighting for god, glory, and gold.
Luckily, with all the historical ISOT talk going around, it's the perfect time for me to post this! ^_^
