17. The Upset Victory at Yarmouk
The Arab and Byzantine armies spent months camped across from each other, while their leaders engaged in negotiations. The fighting finally began on August 15th, 636, and lasted for five days of attritional warfare. During that stretch, the Arabs remained on the defensive, and withstood repeated, but often poorly coordinated, attacks. On the sixth day, Khalid ibn al Walid drew his opponents into a large-scale pitched battle that ended with the Byzantines retreating in disarray. Retreat turned into rout when Khalid unleashed his cavalry, who charged with a fortuitous sandstorm at their back. Many panicked Byzantines fell to their death over a steep ravine.
The Byzantines lost an estimated 40,000 men, while the Arabs lost about 5,000. Nearly a Millennium of Greco-Roman influence and rule of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa came to an end, as the successors of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar were replaced by the successors of Muhammad. Syria was forever lost to the Byzantines, to be followed soon thereafter by Egypt and North Africa. Thereafter, those territories formed the core of the Arab and Islamic world, while the Byzantines found themselves confined to today’s Turkey and the Balkans.