On the 9th of November, Romanos II, the legitimate Macedonian heir, ascended to the Purple. As I've mentioned previously, Romanos II took an arguably more expansionist policy than the "glorification-through-victory" policy of his father. Before his death, Constantine VII had been putting together a fleet and army to attempt another conquest of Crete; certainly the failures of his 949 expedition would have weighed heavily on the planning and execution of this attempt. The leadership of the role was desired, for example, Basil Lekapenos wrote a naval treatise (the Naumachika of Basil Lekapenos) on the specifications and capabilities of the ships of the Byzantine navy in an attempt to secure this amphibious action. However, this plumb job was given to Nikephoros Phokas. The choice seems obvious, as Nikephoros was the most experienced general of the Romans and the four previous failed expeditions were evidence that this was a job for a professional soldier, despite the risks of making one other man too powerful. Interestingly, Romanos II's promotion of Leo Phokas to Domestic of the West and the change of Nikephoros from Domestic to Domestic of the East could maybe be seen as a counterbalancing of power, but that doesn't really make sense, as the Phokas family loyalty would win out. Crete is the largest island in the Aegean, but to take Crete, you really had to just take its capital, Chandax, which was the only walled settlement of any strategic value - I make this statement based on the fact that nowhere else of importance is mentioned.
I could talk about the narrative events that occured throughout the siege, but, in a way, I've already done that. Below is the link to a video that I researched, animated, and narrated on this event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=264Kfd5g0IY
It's seven minutes long and called "The Byzantine Conquest of Crete, 960-961" for anyone who can't make the link work. Have you watched it? Good, so you're all up to speed on the events that happened in the siege.
(For anything further Wikipedia has some very good detail of what Leo the Deacon states too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Chandax )
I'll give a brief recap and then use it as a platform to talk around the subject. Crete had been taken from the emprie in the 820s and there had been four previous attempts to retake Crete between then and the 960s. Most notably, there was a failed attempt in 949 by Constantine VII, Romanos II's father. This attempt and the attempt in 911 are important as we have the full breakdown of the number of ships and soldiers from which Theme that the Byzantines used, which is interesting. Further, the failed 949 invasion would clearly have loomed large in the minds of military establishment. As we've said before, Bardas Phokas was Domestic of the Schools from 945 and Nikephoros was arguably second-in-command of the land armies, by heading the Anatolikon Theme. It seems that Nikephoros was able to secure more men and materiel from Romanos, whether from Nikephoros being a more competent administrator or from Romanos being more eager, and a large expedition was put together.
I've said in my video that this is likely 40,000 soldiers in total of whom 8,000 are soldiers and 32,000 supporting staff (e.g. rowing the ships, sailors for the blockade etc), let's talk about a comparison. When Justinian sent an invasion force to take North Africa in A.D. 533, there were around 20,000 soldiers and some 80,000 supporting staff. I personally haven't read the sources for the time period, but for Basiliscus' failed invasion of Africa in A.D. 468, with the utterly disastrous naval battle at Cap Bon, was meant to have 100,000 soldiers and 400,000 supporting staff. This is where I've taken the 4:1 ratio from that I used, but it's fundamentally a guess on my part so be aware of that. Let's talk about the numbers too. Basiliscus commanded reportedly many hundreds of thousands, which was essentially the combined force of the East and essentially the Italian peninsula - this bankrupted the East for a decade and was absolutely the point of no return for the West. Justinian with the resources of the East (at a fundamentally healthy time of its existence) could put together an expedition of a hundred thousand with a 1-2 years of planning. The diminished Byzantine state of essentially Anatolia and Greece again spent about 1-2 years planning and could put together forty thousand. I can accept these numbers as being intuitively consistent.
With all that said, Nikephoros reached the island, setting up a naval blockade of Chandax, as its on the coast. From there, he may have had to fight his way off of the ships or not, depending on which sources you believe. There's a curious anecote in Leo the Deacon about Pastilas, an officer of the Nikephoros Phokas' army, leading some "picked men" and attempting to secure the island, but becoming drunk and being ambushed. Then, Nikephoros is said to have done what they couldn't and successfully secure the island. This story could be almost entirely made up for literary effect or it could be true - more likely, it's there to highlight Nikephoros Phokas' positive characteristics that he was always vigilant and sober and able to control his men, unlike the scoundrel Pastilas. As it happens, this isn't entirely made up, Theodosius the Deacon describes Pastilas, at a later point in the siege, being dispatched by Phokas to deal with Cretans outside the walls, but he's ambushed and killed - no getting drunk this time. Nikephoros was said to have built a comprehensive circumvallating wall with a ditch and palisade around Chandax to protect his forces and really tighten the noose on the siege. I must admit that I've not seen this happening in Byzantine histories before or after this event, but I'm not an expert; it's certainly a product of the instilled disclipline and size of this force that this was done. Sort of reminds me of the good old fashioned Roman times...
I'd like to emphasise the effort that Nikephoros put in to training and encouraging his men throughout the eight months of siege,. All of the sources describe his attention to detail, vigour, and care for the common soldiery, keeping them active, partly by building that aforementioned wall, and letters between Crete and the capital are mentioned by Pseudo-Symeon and Theodosius. This was especially useful as grain ships were needed to support the forces over the 960-961 Winter, which was bitterly cold.
On March 6th 961, Nikephoros launched a massive assault. Using stone-throwing equipment (meaning proto-trebuchets) to suprress defenders on the wall and presumably to have damaged any cladding beforehand, siege engineers sapped underneath portions of the wall and burnt out the supports leading to a collapse of a long section of wall. The extensive training worked, as the army was not repulsed before this could happen. The army stormed the city and Nikephoros did what he could to prevent uncessary civillian deaths - the success of this action isn't recorded by Leo the Deacon. Regardless, Nikephoros' retainers secured the Emir of Crete and his son, Anemas, who would convert to Christianity and die fighting for John I Tzimiskes in 971. Chandax was taken and Crete was reconquered for the Byzantine Empire.
Saturday, June 8, 2019
Sunday, June 2, 2019
On Sieges and Warfare
I've been doing some thinking and what I want to do is discuss the topics broadly and stay tightly focussed to the narrative. This is like mixing custard and port, maybe a very good chef could make it work, but I don't think I'm up to it. You might be able to tell that this specifric blog will be more conversational, in an attempt to less conversational in the narrative blogs.
This blog will be a deeper dive into warfare and Nikephoros. How does one carry out a siege? There are a time-tested few methods to carry out a siege.
The first is to break in before the enemy know that the siege has started, which is effectively the optimised outcome and something that Nikephoros would pull off at least once, at Manbij/Hierapolis. This is sort of the finesse move and it requires aggressive officers, a fast-moving army, and to actually visit the city/fortress in question. That's a one trick pony and can hardly be relied upon, although it's never hurts much to try it.
The second approach is probably Nikephoros' favourite strategy; I jokingly think of it as the "one-week-wonder"; take your army and rock up to a city, spend a week patrolling around the walls and look for weak spots, and, if you find a weak spot, take the city with an assault (e.g. Aleppo 962). But this is where it gets clever in the horrifyingly awesome way that medieval warfare often is. If you fail to take the city, you loot and burn the suburbs (the city outside the walls), displace the citizenry, cause mayhem, but you take measurements of the walls, notes on specific equipment that you may not have, but could the next time. The sources somewhat suggest that this happened at Mopsuestia from 964 to 965, but as, William Garrood writes about the conquest of Cilicia, the sources become confused by the intensity of Byzantine activity so there are also vagueries. Regardless, the next time that you come back, the city should be a bit easier to take; to some extent, sieges can be split over multiple seasons or even years. I suggest looking into the 1148 Siege of Damascus for an example of where one week of prior scouting would have changed the course of events. If you're interested in the "short-format" siege, the fortified hillside city of Carcasonne was impenetrable; I've been there and those walls simply could not be stormed by anything other than tens of thousands. During the Albigensian Crusade, the city lasted no more than two weeks because their internal water source was incapable of sustaining them.
Implicitly, cities are tough nuts to crack and not all cities are created equal; the best commanders in history still took many months to resolve some sieges. Occasionally, the best action to take when besieging is to sit there for months and to starve out the defenders. Simultaneously, the attacker can use this time to prepare siege works - Nikephoros Ouranos describes tunneling under walls as the most effective way to take cities, which is how the histories describe Nikephoros Phokas' actions. The prolonged siege isn't a disaster for an attacker, as long as they take the city. If one spends five months and fails to take the city, then that sets up a much poorer situation.
Accordingly, what's the most important aspect of a protracted siege in pre-modern times? I argue that it's the season the siege starts in because you want to have access to the surrounding harvest to feed your army and deny your opponents their ability to store their harvest inside walls. The Siege of Chandax started in July 960 and harvest season is roughly Autumn, which sounds like appropriately good planning.
The final method for sieges works better during civil wars, due to the similar cultures and/or languages, which is bribing locals/defenders to open gates.
Let's flip this, what does a defender see. A defender sees that they have soldiers, morale, water, food, and let's call it the strength of the barrier between them and the attackers. If any one of those five hit zero, the city will surrender or be taken (the attackers usually heavily outnumber the defenders so when the walls are breached then the attackers take the city almost every time). The reverse is true though. If the attacker's morale, water, food hit zero (or the number of soldiers drop to below the level of the defenders), then they will abandon the siege. This explains why defenders sally during sieges, as usually there comes a point where there's an excess of defenders for the quantity of (usually, but not exclusively) food in the city and lives are risked to sure up one of the city's failings. It's obviously why sallies are taken and siege towers/trebuchets are burnt because it's more valuable to risk lives than it is to allow the walls to be overcome.
Sometimes, cities surrender earlier. At Tarsos 965, Nikephoros crushed the undoubtedly smaller army the Tarsiots put on the field to prevent him from besieging the city. Nikephoros then attempted to storm the walls, but was repelled. Only after that did the city sue for peace on not unreasonable terms, which was that the citizenry could choose to leave with their belongings. What essentially happened here was that the morale of the city dropped to zero - they could have held out for a month or two more probably, but to what end? For the record, I don't hold it against a general for attempting to storm the walls and failing once, I will begin to hold it against them if they continue to dripfeed their forces into unfavourable situations, such as Witiges early during the 537-538 Siege of Rome.
Leo the Deacon, if I'm not mistaken, claims that he had taken sixty cities and fortresses by the time he became emperor in 963. John Skylitzes claims that, by the time Nikephoros died in 969, he had taken one hundred. It was a lot of grueling work to invert the border region, but one that Nikephoros shined at. The Caliphal border region were known as the "thughur" and the Caliphate, before the start of its collapse had fortified those border cities far beyond the resources of the individual cities - Tarsus is describe as having a double-wall.
To put it simply why I think Nikephoros Phokas was the best commander of his age is because he trained and equipped the armies to a much higher standard than any of his recent predecessors and appropriately selected aggressive and competent officers who he could work with. Whether he was present or not, he set up a system that drew out the forces of Sayf al-Dawla or the Tarsiots or any number of other small emirates and cities and eliminated them at a low cost to his armies. His aggressive year-round multi-year campaigns turned a semi-professional force into a crack military that was unrivalled even after his time for some thirty years. He could wield this incredible army, in a landscape where the enemy forces had been wiped out, to start cracking cities and fortresses open, a task that so many commanders struggled at, but one that Nikephoros had the mindset for.
This blog will be a deeper dive into warfare and Nikephoros. How does one carry out a siege? There are a time-tested few methods to carry out a siege.
The first is to break in before the enemy know that the siege has started, which is effectively the optimised outcome and something that Nikephoros would pull off at least once, at Manbij/Hierapolis. This is sort of the finesse move and it requires aggressive officers, a fast-moving army, and to actually visit the city/fortress in question. That's a one trick pony and can hardly be relied upon, although it's never hurts much to try it.
The second approach is probably Nikephoros' favourite strategy; I jokingly think of it as the "one-week-wonder"; take your army and rock up to a city, spend a week patrolling around the walls and look for weak spots, and, if you find a weak spot, take the city with an assault (e.g. Aleppo 962). But this is where it gets clever in the horrifyingly awesome way that medieval warfare often is. If you fail to take the city, you loot and burn the suburbs (the city outside the walls), displace the citizenry, cause mayhem, but you take measurements of the walls, notes on specific equipment that you may not have, but could the next time. The sources somewhat suggest that this happened at Mopsuestia from 964 to 965, but as, William Garrood writes about the conquest of Cilicia, the sources become confused by the intensity of Byzantine activity so there are also vagueries. Regardless, the next time that you come back, the city should be a bit easier to take; to some extent, sieges can be split over multiple seasons or even years. I suggest looking into the 1148 Siege of Damascus for an example of where one week of prior scouting would have changed the course of events. If you're interested in the "short-format" siege, the fortified hillside city of Carcasonne was impenetrable; I've been there and those walls simply could not be stormed by anything other than tens of thousands. During the Albigensian Crusade, the city lasted no more than two weeks because their internal water source was incapable of sustaining them.
Implicitly, cities are tough nuts to crack and not all cities are created equal; the best commanders in history still took many months to resolve some sieges. Occasionally, the best action to take when besieging is to sit there for months and to starve out the defenders. Simultaneously, the attacker can use this time to prepare siege works - Nikephoros Ouranos describes tunneling under walls as the most effective way to take cities, which is how the histories describe Nikephoros Phokas' actions. The prolonged siege isn't a disaster for an attacker, as long as they take the city. If one spends five months and fails to take the city, then that sets up a much poorer situation.
Accordingly, what's the most important aspect of a protracted siege in pre-modern times? I argue that it's the season the siege starts in because you want to have access to the surrounding harvest to feed your army and deny your opponents their ability to store their harvest inside walls. The Siege of Chandax started in July 960 and harvest season is roughly Autumn, which sounds like appropriately good planning.
The final method for sieges works better during civil wars, due to the similar cultures and/or languages, which is bribing locals/defenders to open gates.
Let's flip this, what does a defender see. A defender sees that they have soldiers, morale, water, food, and let's call it the strength of the barrier between them and the attackers. If any one of those five hit zero, the city will surrender or be taken (the attackers usually heavily outnumber the defenders so when the walls are breached then the attackers take the city almost every time). The reverse is true though. If the attacker's morale, water, food hit zero (or the number of soldiers drop to below the level of the defenders), then they will abandon the siege. This explains why defenders sally during sieges, as usually there comes a point where there's an excess of defenders for the quantity of (usually, but not exclusively) food in the city and lives are risked to sure up one of the city's failings. It's obviously why sallies are taken and siege towers/trebuchets are burnt because it's more valuable to risk lives than it is to allow the walls to be overcome.
Sometimes, cities surrender earlier. At Tarsos 965, Nikephoros crushed the undoubtedly smaller army the Tarsiots put on the field to prevent him from besieging the city. Nikephoros then attempted to storm the walls, but was repelled. Only after that did the city sue for peace on not unreasonable terms, which was that the citizenry could choose to leave with their belongings. What essentially happened here was that the morale of the city dropped to zero - they could have held out for a month or two more probably, but to what end? For the record, I don't hold it against a general for attempting to storm the walls and failing once, I will begin to hold it against them if they continue to dripfeed their forces into unfavourable situations, such as Witiges early during the 537-538 Siege of Rome.
Leo the Deacon, if I'm not mistaken, claims that he had taken sixty cities and fortresses by the time he became emperor in 963. John Skylitzes claims that, by the time Nikephoros died in 969, he had taken one hundred. It was a lot of grueling work to invert the border region, but one that Nikephoros shined at. The Caliphal border region were known as the "thughur" and the Caliphate, before the start of its collapse had fortified those border cities far beyond the resources of the individual cities - Tarsus is describe as having a double-wall.
To put it simply why I think Nikephoros Phokas was the best commander of his age is because he trained and equipped the armies to a much higher standard than any of his recent predecessors and appropriately selected aggressive and competent officers who he could work with. Whether he was present or not, he set up a system that drew out the forces of Sayf al-Dawla or the Tarsiots or any number of other small emirates and cities and eliminated them at a low cost to his armies. His aggressive year-round multi-year campaigns turned a semi-professional force into a crack military that was unrivalled even after his time for some thirty years. He could wield this incredible army, in a landscape where the enemy forces had been wiped out, to start cracking cities and fortresses open, a task that so many commanders struggled at, but one that Nikephoros had the mindset for.
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Paths of Armies Past - A.D. 958-959
It's difficult to know how to treat this time period, let's say late 957-959, with respect to Nikephoros. I've been through various secondary narratives and it's fair to say that Nikephoros doesn't seem to do a lot. Leo Phokas, John Tzimiskes, and even Basil Lekapenos all have a bit of time in the spotlight here, but Nikephoros doesn't.
Now, it's worth again that we struggle to know the size of various Byzantine actions so, whilst my annotated timeline states:
December 959: Leo raided Cilicia (Tarsos and al-Haruniyyah) to Diyar Bakr (as far as Cyrrhus/Qurus) and defeats Sayf (returned by February)
Leo may have only been leading one-two thousand men on a quick smash and grab or he could have been leading ten thousand. The optics of each are slightly different. The first is that damage is dealt, but this isn't driving the war, the second would be much more so that this was a very decisive action. I find myself at odds with this, as the contemporary/somewhat contemporary authors praise Nikephoros' military ability:
John Skylitzes, Romanos II the Younger, 4: "In this year (e.g. the year 960) Romanos sent the magister Nikephoros Phokas (who had already been promoted domestic of the scholai for the East by the emperor Constantine and had achieved many victories against the Saracens of the East, completely subduing Karamenes, emir of Tarsos, Chamdan, emir of Aleppo and Izeth, emir of Tripoli) against the Saracens of Crete.
Skylitzes is a somewhat anti-Phokas source on the whole. There's far less aggrandising of Nikephoros in Skylitzes than in Leo the Deacon, Nikephoros motives are made out to be more selfish, and a greater quantity of scorn on his policy is shown. Despite that, Skylitzes is attributing many victories to Nikephoros personally in this time period. We just don't know what they are, this will happen again at other points too. An example is in Nikephoros' letter to the calpih al-Muti, written in 964, which I've seen translated as, "At the battle of Kleisoura your warriors fled like a herd of animals..." I've checked in every way I can, there is no other record of any specific "battle of Kleisoura", but that would seem to just be a flaw in our other sources.
An element of this is that this timespan is still during the reign of Constantine VII, who had been under the thumb of the former admiral Romanos Lekapenos for twenty-five years. Constantine was hardly going to invest so much power into one individual that they could challenge him and so he spreads out the commands moreso perhaps. An example is the command he gives to the currently small-player Basil Lekapenos, a loyal eunuch who could never pose any threat to any person in power, except for ousting Joseph Bringas, couping Nikephoros II, reportedly poisoning John I, and finally sidelining Basil II. This could explain the lack of verifiable actions that Nikephoros had, as a political move. Or he could be training the armies still, in time, we'll talk about Nikephoros' military manuals and the references to training soldiers in the histories.
If I'm saying that Nikephoros was denied some of the limelight here by Constantine VII, the flipside is that Romanos II will soon be in charge. The young headstrong fun-loving emperor with a need to secure his own victorious credentials would invest increased amounts of consolidated power into one individual, Nikephoros, for the most spectacular campaigns that Byzantium had seen for several hundred years.
To go back to the chronology, our next military action is recorded to have occured in May 958: John Tzimiskes captures Dara and Nisibis and wins a crushing victory against the Naja al-Kasaki, Sayf's leading general, killing 5000 out of 10000 and capturing 2500 more. In the autumn of 958, he was joined by Basil Lekapenos' force and together they storm Samosata and the fortress of Raban. John and Basil win another battle (taking place between 18 October and 15 November 958) against Sayf al-Dawla with over 1700 of Sayf’s cavalry being captured.
This was one of the more significant set of events in the war and it gives us the title of our post, as Roman armies hadn't ranged as far as Dara in about three hundred years. For completeness, I will link you to my videos on the A.D. 530 Battle of Dara fought by Belisarius, as one of my previous history projects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgTE_nE9LpA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3sO1TR4ngM
That, along with Leo's raid we mentioned at the beginning, takes us to the death of Constantine VII, who died on the 9th of November A.D. 959. Constantine's son, Romanos II, is about to come take the purple and, with that, we will come to Nikephoros taking Crete.
Now, it's worth again that we struggle to know the size of various Byzantine actions so, whilst my annotated timeline states:
December 959: Leo raided Cilicia (Tarsos and al-Haruniyyah) to Diyar Bakr (as far as Cyrrhus/Qurus) and defeats Sayf (returned by February)
Leo may have only been leading one-two thousand men on a quick smash and grab or he could have been leading ten thousand. The optics of each are slightly different. The first is that damage is dealt, but this isn't driving the war, the second would be much more so that this was a very decisive action. I find myself at odds with this, as the contemporary/somewhat contemporary authors praise Nikephoros' military ability:
John Skylitzes, Romanos II the Younger, 4: "In this year (e.g. the year 960) Romanos sent the magister Nikephoros Phokas (who had already been promoted domestic of the scholai for the East by the emperor Constantine and had achieved many victories against the Saracens of the East, completely subduing Karamenes, emir of Tarsos, Chamdan, emir of Aleppo and Izeth, emir of Tripoli) against the Saracens of Crete.
Skylitzes is a somewhat anti-Phokas source on the whole. There's far less aggrandising of Nikephoros in Skylitzes than in Leo the Deacon, Nikephoros motives are made out to be more selfish, and a greater quantity of scorn on his policy is shown. Despite that, Skylitzes is attributing many victories to Nikephoros personally in this time period. We just don't know what they are, this will happen again at other points too. An example is in Nikephoros' letter to the calpih al-Muti, written in 964, which I've seen translated as, "At the battle of Kleisoura your warriors fled like a herd of animals..." I've checked in every way I can, there is no other record of any specific "battle of Kleisoura", but that would seem to just be a flaw in our other sources.
An element of this is that this timespan is still during the reign of Constantine VII, who had been under the thumb of the former admiral Romanos Lekapenos for twenty-five years. Constantine was hardly going to invest so much power into one individual that they could challenge him and so he spreads out the commands moreso perhaps. An example is the command he gives to the currently small-player Basil Lekapenos, a loyal eunuch who could never pose any threat to any person in power, except for ousting Joseph Bringas, couping Nikephoros II, reportedly poisoning John I, and finally sidelining Basil II. This could explain the lack of verifiable actions that Nikephoros had, as a political move. Or he could be training the armies still, in time, we'll talk about Nikephoros' military manuals and the references to training soldiers in the histories.
If I'm saying that Nikephoros was denied some of the limelight here by Constantine VII, the flipside is that Romanos II will soon be in charge. The young headstrong fun-loving emperor with a need to secure his own victorious credentials would invest increased amounts of consolidated power into one individual, Nikephoros, for the most spectacular campaigns that Byzantium had seen for several hundred years.
To go back to the chronology, our next military action is recorded to have occured in May 958: John Tzimiskes captures Dara and Nisibis and wins a crushing victory against the Naja al-Kasaki, Sayf's leading general, killing 5000 out of 10000 and capturing 2500 more. In the autumn of 958, he was joined by Basil Lekapenos' force and together they storm Samosata and the fortress of Raban. John and Basil win another battle (taking place between 18 October and 15 November 958) against Sayf al-Dawla with over 1700 of Sayf’s cavalry being captured.
This was one of the more significant set of events in the war and it gives us the title of our post, as Roman armies hadn't ranged as far as Dara in about three hundred years. For completeness, I will link you to my videos on the A.D. 530 Battle of Dara fought by Belisarius, as one of my previous history projects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgTE_nE9LpA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3sO1TR4ngM
That, along with Leo's raid we mentioned at the beginning, takes us to the death of Constantine VII, who died on the 9th of November A.D. 959. Constantine's son, Romanos II, is about to come take the purple and, with that, we will come to Nikephoros taking Crete.
Friday, April 12, 2019
Up to Adata 957 - Intensification in the East
They came to you trailing chain mail as if they were riding horses with no legs.
Ode on the Reconquest of al-Hadath, Al-Mutanabbi
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Sayf al-Dawla is an honourific epithet that translates to "Sword of the Dynasty", where the Dynasty in question is the Abbasids. (I mentioned this to an Arabic speaker and they translated it as "Sword of the State", take your pick) Sayf al-Dawla's full name was Ali ibn Abu'l-Hayja 'Abdallah ibn Hamdan ibn al-Harith al-Taghlibi, where the important bit for you to remember is the Hamdan portion, which is where we get the name, "the Hamdanids" from. At some point, I will refer to the conflict between the Byzantines/Romans and the Hamdanids or between Nikephoros and the Hamdanid Emir of Aleppo, Sayf al-Dawla, so keep that in mind. If you ever pick up a copy of Skylitzes, Sayf al-Dawla's name is given as "Chamdan".
Sayf al-Dawla is probably one of the more tenacious generals that the Romans faced. He didn't defeat them in a major battle and then run roughshod over the empire, ala the Yarmouk, but this isn't the era of major piched battles. Roman pride had given way to Byzantine cunning, and not because they'd really learnt that they weren't invincible or anything like that, but let's consider the state of fortification in the region. When Pompey the Great came through there was obviously fortification, but nothing like the "thughur" (fortified caliphal border region) that the Byzantines faced and indeed themselves possessed when these two major empires butted up against eachother in a consistently active theater. Armies don't fight too regularly, because if I were to send my big combined army at you then you hold onto your forts with skeleton crews and you send two or three raiding parties elsewhere and sack my countryside. The slight issue here is that there's very few "named" battles, like the famous A.D. 530 Battle of Dara, and so you can't just count battles won and battles lost for who's a good general and who's not. Besides, John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Malborough, only fought arguably four major battles, but forty-odd sieges, so we're going to tackle the problem of generalship in a more measured way than is often seen.
Anyway, what makes Sayf al-Dawla's work even more impressive is that, from A.D. 951-956, he was not only defeating the Romans consistently, but also putting down rebellions in his own territory. I call them rebellions; the actual impression I get is that these are the Bedouins who either raid with him, when he seemed strong, or raided his lands, when he seemed weak, such as after the "dreadful expedition" of A.D. 950 where Leo Phokas ambushed and defeated Sayf. You may have noticed my phrasing there, "the impression I get" - let me explain. There are events which I know occur, as they're in narrative histories by Professors Kaldellis, Whittow, and Treadgold, but the sources have either never been translated into English, such as the Arabic writings of Yahya of Antioch, or they've been translated into English, but only recently and they're very pricy, such as that book of sources I found whilst writing the last blog. Unfortunately, the period between 955 and 959 is just one of those things where I won't be able to supply you with too much detail for the time being so let's face into it so we can get to Crete, Aleppo, Cilicia and the rest.
Spring 956, Sayf al-Dawla launches a lightning raid into Byzantine lands on hearing that John Tzimiskes was mustering a force to attack Amida or Martyropolis. Sayf's raid flowed around any fortresses that were too difficult to take and looted anything valuable in their path. Tzimiskes moves to occupy the pass throguh the Anti-Taurus mountains, now in Sayf al-Dawla's rear, and so trap Sayf in Anatolia, which would presumably allow a larger army to arrive and squash the Emir. Sayf and his army, having gathered their fill, move to strike at Tzimiskes before his forces could be reinforced further. My impression is that Sayf possessed a larger force than Tsimiskes and the narrow pass would act to bolster Tzimiskes' defence. The rain was torrential with the sky dark and footing slippery. Pyrrhically, Sayf's army smashes through, routing John's forces and killing 4000 of the Romans. If I'm not mistaken, Tzimiskes took a sword blow during the fight, but his armour saved him, before he escaped with the remnants of his army. This was a classically aggressive Tzimiskes move that probably pushed the generally correct Byzantine counter-strategy to occupy the passes in the rear of a raiding enemy too far. Sayf returns home, having been away for not much longer than three weeks, heaped with plunder, dripping with the musk of victory. This is arguably the high point of Sayf al-Dawla's long career; from here, it's only really down for Sayf and the Hamdanids.
Later that year, Leo Phokas raided into Syria and captured Sayf's cousin, Abu'l-Asha'ir, who was repairing a fortress in the region. Constantine VII would famously place his boot upon Abu'l-Asha'ir's neck during a triumph. In September, Sayf would respond by successfully raiding around Tzamandos, but his absence in Cilicia allowed a Byzantine counter-response. Basil Hexamilites, admiral of the Cibyrrhaeoton Theme, burned the Tarsiot fleet with Greek fire, possibly in a naval engagement rather than in harbour, and then proceeded to disembark marines and also burn the suburbs of Tarsos, with suburbs meaning the areas outside the walls of the city. Let's look at 956 in retrospect. That we think we know, there were two successful Byzantine raids, one by land and one by sea, and a third planned, but pre-empted by Sayf who himself raided Roman lands twice. That's a somewhat absurd level of activity to track on both sides, no wonder the sources struggle. Who's the aggressor in all of this? You tell me.
Now, where is Nikephoros, our man of the hour, in all of this? I honestly couldn't tell you for certain. He was probably doing the three things, which are very necessary, but not noteworthy. Firstly, I have the impression that he was co-ordinating strategy behind almost all the actions here. Secondly, he would have been training the main army, which had been routed by Sayf for several consecutive years, and that one wouldn't again risk immediately. As Nikephoros himself would write in the Praecepta Militaria, an army that's seen defeat in three skirmishes cannot hope to win a battle. I say how about an army that seen defeat in three battles? Thirdly, one assumes he had a hand in logistics between the capital and the frontlines.
It's June 957 and the main Roman army is heading towards Hadath (Adata) under Nikephoros. His father had been in this position three years ago and had reportedly lost 3000 men there; Al-Mutanabbi, Sayf's court poet, wrote this:
death [in battle] ruled over them;
The oppressed did not perish and the
oppressor did not live.
I'll share another portion:
33. On every day that the Domesticus advances [against Sayf al-Dawlah], his nape blames his face for advancing.
34. Does [the Domesticus] not recognize the scent of the lion until he can taste it—[don’t] even cattle know the scent of the lion?
35. And the emir’s devastating attacks left [the Domesticus] bereft of his son, his son-in-law, and his grandson.
36. He came to thank his friends for his escaping the swords’ edges, for their skulls and wrists preoccupied the swords.
Nikephoros besieges and takes the important city of Adata, but realises that he cannot hold it and so razes the city and fortifications to the ground. Sayf is approaching, looking to engage Nikephoros in a decisive battle and win the war with a dice roll. Nikephoros isn't quite playing the same game. Nikephoros manages to bribe the officers of Sayf al-Dawla's Turkish mercenaries to betray him. The plot is uncovered, and Sayf sets his Daylami troops with a longstanding grudge onto the unsuspecting Turkish forces in the camp. Sayf would survive this plot, but reportedly would execute one hundred and eighty of them and mutilate two hundred more. In a fury, Sayf al-Dawla would execute his prisoners and return to Aleppo, his army in no fit state to fight. A credit to Nikephoros' military intelligence; see, who needs to fight battles when you can win the war by actually pulling that off?
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