wished. The emphasis on fighting on foot is interesting: having horses or camels was very useful for mobility, reconnaissance and, in this case, seizing control of battlefield advantages such as the water supply, but battles were usually decided by foot soldiers fighting at close quarters. They would throw away their spears and fight with swords, often ending up by wrestling their opponents to the ground. The lack of stirrups, at least in the early conquests, probably gave the foot soldier a comparative advantage. The Syrian army of the late seventh and early eighth centuries, which was victorious in this battle as in many others of the period, seems to have specialized in fighting on foot in close formation. When the troops were attacked by cavalry, they would form a spear wall, kneeling with the ends of their spears in the ground beside them with the points sticking up towards the enemy. They would wait until the enemy were upon them, before rising up and jabbing at the horses’ faces. It required discipline and a good deal of nerve to do this, but as long as the line held, it was very effective. Such systematic tactics were foreign to the Bedouin traditions of warfare with their accent on mobility and individual courage, but they were probably employed in the later phases of the conquest by Muslim armies operating in the Maghreb, and Central Asia.
Two innovations in military technology became widely diffused during the course of the conquests. Stirrups 24 were unknown to the mounted warriors of the ancient world. Precisely when and where they were invented is not clear. There are wall paintings from Central Asia, probably dating from the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century, which show stirrups in use. Literary sources say that they were first used by Arab armies operating in southern Iran (mostly against other Arabs) in the 680s. By the eighth century they had been widely adopted. The importance of the coming of stirrups has been widely debated by historians. It has been suggested that in the Latin West they allowed the development of the heavily armoured knight with all the social and cultural results that flowed from it. It does not seem that this innovation had such far-reaching consequences in the Islamic world, though they would certainly have facilitated the long-range raids characteristic of the later phases of the conquests.
The second important military innovation of these early years of the conquests was the development of swing-beam artillery. Large pieces were known as manjanīq , smaller ones as arrda . 25 These engines were known before the Muslim conquests, the first well-attested example being their use by the Avars at the siege of Thessalonica in 597. These swing-beam engines were operated by men pulling down on ropes at one end of the beam so that the other end swung up very quickly and shot the missile from a sling attached to its tip. The only recorded use of siege artillery in the first phase of the Islamic conquests (632-50) comes from the account of the Arab assault on the Persian capital of Ctesiphon/al-Mada’in, where the Arabs are said to have used twenty such devices constructed by a renegade Persian engineer on the orders of the Arab commander, Sa c d b. Abī Waqqās. 26 It is striking that siege engines are not mentioned at all in the accounts of the Arab conquest of fortified cities like Damascus, or the great Roman fortress at Babylon in Egypt, but it is impossible to tell whether this is because they were not used or simply because the sources do not mention them. In the eighth century we hear of Muslims using them to breach the walls of Samarqand in 712, and this information is clearly confirmed by the finding of a graffito showing the technology at work. At the same time we are told of an engine operated by 500 men which brought down the standard on the Buddhist shrine at Daybul in Sind. In general, however, siege warfare seems to have been fairly basic;
Two innovations in military technology became widely diffused during the course of the conquests. Stirrups 24 were unknown to the mounted warriors of the ancient world. Precisely when and where they were invented is not clear. There are wall paintings from Central Asia, probably dating from the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century, which show stirrups in use. Literary sources say that they were first used by Arab armies operating in southern Iran (mostly against other Arabs) in the 680s. By the eighth century they had been widely adopted. The importance of the coming of stirrups has been widely debated by historians. It has been suggested that in the Latin West they allowed the development of the heavily armoured knight with all the social and cultural results that flowed from it. It does not seem that this innovation had such far-reaching consequences in the Islamic world, though they would certainly have facilitated the long-range raids characteristic of the later phases of the conquests.
The second important military innovation of these early years of the conquests was the development of swing-beam artillery. Large pieces were known as manjanīq , smaller ones as arrda . 25 These engines were known before the Muslim conquests, the first well-attested example being their use by the Avars at the siege of Thessalonica in 597. These swing-beam engines were operated by men pulling down on ropes at one end of the beam so that the other end swung up very quickly and shot the missile from a sling attached to its tip. The only recorded use of siege artillery in the first phase of the Islamic conquests (632-50) comes from the account of the Arab assault on the Persian capital of Ctesiphon/al-Mada’in, where the Arabs are said to have used twenty such devices constructed by a renegade Persian engineer on the orders of the Arab commander, Sa c d b. Abī Waqqās. 26 It is striking that siege engines are not mentioned at all in the accounts of the Arab conquest of fortified cities like Damascus, or the great Roman fortress at Babylon in Egypt, but it is impossible to tell whether this is because they were not used or simply because the sources do not mention them. In the eighth century we hear of Muslims using them to breach the walls of Samarqand in 712, and this information is clearly confirmed by the finding of a graffito showing the technology at work. At the same time we are told of an engine operated by 500 men which brought down the standard on the Buddhist shrine at Daybul in Sind. In general, however, siege warfare seems to have been fairly basic;
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