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.

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:

They tried to impose their will on her, but
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?