19. The Middle East’s Most Consequential Battle
No single battle has had a greater impact in shaping the Middle East than did the Battle of Yarmouk in 636. The train of events leading up to that engagement began in 634, when Arab tribal armies erupted from the sparsely populated Arabian Peninsula. Fired by Islamic zeal, they simultaneously attacked the era’s two superpowers, the Sassanid Persian Empire to the east, and the Byzantine Empire to the west and north. Within two years, the outnumbered Arabs had won a series of brilliant victories that shaped the Middle East forever after.
The Sassanid Empire fell outright, while the Byzantines lost their possessions in Syria, Egypt, and North Africa, and got pushed back to today’s Turkey. Of the Arab victories between 634 – 636, the most decisive was the Battle of Yarmouk in August of 636. It was fought along the Yarmouk River, southeast of the Golan Heights, near where the borders of today’s Syria, Jordan, and Israel meet.