Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

610 21b. syria, palestine and mesopotamia
that, despite imperial aid, neither Antioch nor Berytus fully recovered from
these disasters. These were only the most destructive (and best recorded)
of many tremors at this period. The Persian conquests of Antioch in 540
and Apamea in 573 both resulted in widespread destruction and large-scale
deportations.
The end of expansion did not mean that the survivors were necessarily
impoverished, and it is possible that some individuals may have become
more prosperous as they took over vacant land, but it did mean, as in
Europe after the Black Death, that many marginal lands were lost to settled
agriculture.
The early seventh century saw dramatic changes in the political status of
the Byzantine Near East. From 603 Khusro II began his great offensive,
ostensibly to avenge the deposition of the emperor Maurice the previous
year. This invasion was much more far-reaching than any of its predecessors.
80 Edessa was taken in 609, Antioch in 611 and Jerusalem and Tyre in
614, a campaign in which the Persians were allegedly helped by an uprising
of the Jewish population. Persian rule lasted until 628, when Heraclius
defeated the Persian armies in Iraq and caused them to withdraw from the
Roman near east. The historical sources for the Persian conquest are very
poor and the archaeological evidence is not much more helpful: apart from
a set of polo goal-posts in the hippodrome at Gerasa, there are no monuments
which can be ascribed to the period of Persian rule with any certainty.
The extent of the destruction they caused is also problematic, and
the nature of the evidence makes it impossible to distinguish damage done
by the Persians from that which resulted from the Muslim conquests from
632 onwards. 81
The Muslim conquest is often seen as a major rupture in the historical
continuity of the area, but there is in fact little evidence of widespread
destruction. The Arabic sources for the conquests, though full, are often
confused about chronology and contain numerous topoi, so the detail on
specific conquests needs to be treated with some caution, 82 but the general
outlines are clear. The earliest Muslim raids seem to have begun in 633, the
year after Muh · ammad’s death. The invaders avoided confrontation with
large Byzantine forces but took over much of the land on the fringes of
the desert. Probably in 634 Khālid b. al-Walīd arrived with reinforcements
from Iraq, and the Muslims began to besiege and take urban centres
including Bostra, Scythopolis and Damascus. This provoked a response
from the Byzantine authorities, and Heraclius despatched units of the
imperial army. However, these were defeated at the battles of Ajnadayn,
near Pella, and the Yarmuk between 634 and 636. After this, the way lay
80 A somewhat lurid narrative account of the Persian conquest is given in Stratos (1968) 107–11.
81 For the problems of assessing the impact of the Persian invasions, Schick (1992) 107–19; Schick
(1995). 82 See North (1994).
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