August 20 - Battle of the Yarmuk

As promised, two Byzantine battles today, and needless to say two crushing defeats, one by the Bulgar Tsar Simeon I in 917, and the other and far more significant one ( No offence, my Bulgarian friends!), by the Arab Caliph Omar in 636. The Wikipedia article actually claims that it was one of the most significant battles in world history, and who am I to argue?

On August 20, 636, during the reign of Emperor Herakleios ( reign. 610-641), a Byzantine army was defeated at the battle of the Yarmuk, a small river near Galilee in Palestine, by an Arab force, commanded by Khalid ben Walid.
The consequences of the outcome of the battle for the Middle-East were nothing short of dramatic, it marked the end of centuries of Roman rule in Syria and Palestine, soon to be followed by Egypt and the rest of North-Africa; and the beginning of the unstoppable expansion of the Arab Caliphates and the religion of Islam.
It�s rather tragic that the battle fell into the last years of Herakleios I remarkable thirty-one year long reign. It spoiled his otherwise excellent record.
When the son of the Exarch of Carthage began his rule in 610, the Empire was on the brink of collapse. While the Balkan provinces were overrun by Slavs and Avars, the Sassanid Persian King Khosrau II had conquered the entire east of the Byzantine Empire, from Syria in 613 to Egypt in 619. Only in 622, during a short break of hostilities on the Balkan fronts, Herakleios was ready to counter the Sassanid advances. He went to the East, prepared his troops for a final onslaught, made valuable allies in the Khazars, a Turkic people, campaigned for almost four years in Armenia and Syria, whilst at the same time both the Avars and the Persians were besieging his capital Constantinople behind his back. Both failed, as besiegers of the city usually did, and in 627, Herakleios could deal the final and decisive blow to Khusrau�s Empire in the battle of Niniveh.
The East was recovered and the saviour of the Byzantine Empire could have rested on his well deserved laurels, hadn�t it been for the Arabs.
This formerly rather quiet and tribal nomadic people had been united and inspired by the teachings of the founder of Islam, Mohammad, and under his successors were now bursting out of the confines of the Arab peninsula. Under the second Caliph Omar they had captured Damascus in 635 and Herakleios sent a huge army into Syria to halt their advances. He was too ill by now to take to the battlefield himself, and his army was commanded by two of his generals, Theodore and Baanes, when they met the Arab forces under Khalid ben Walid on the Yarmuk River in August 636.
After an indecisive beginning, the battle soon turned in the Arab�s favour. If a sandstorm that blew in the Byzantines� faces or the fact that the Ghassanid, Christianised Arabs from the Yemen, mercenaries went over to the Arabs during the battle, was the decisive factor, is open to debate. In any case, about the eventual outcome were no doubts, the Byzantines were routed, suffering enormous casualties.
Herakleios learned about the fate of his army in Antioch, for a last time he went to Jerusalem, and then returned to Constantinople, where he died, mentally and physically exhausted, but still witnessing the loss of the Empire�s Eastern and African provinces.
The Arabs took Jerusalem in 628 and went on to sweep through the remaining Byzantine provinces of Northern Africa until they reached Spain, but that�s another story.



Arab conquests after 636

What else happened on the day?


917 The Bulgar King Symeon I defeated the Byzantine army of Constantine VII in the battle of Anchialus, thus confirming his rule in Bulgaria. After a peace treaty he was awarded the title �Caesar� (Tsar) by the Byzantine Emperor.    

1619 The first African slaves arrived to North America aboard a Dutch ship. It docked in Jamestown, Virginia, with twenty human captives amongst its cargo.

1940 Stalin�s greatest rival , the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded in his exile in Mexico City by an assassin's ice-ax.

1998 The United States military launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum is destroyed in the attack

Full list:

Wikipedia

Edited by Komnenos

If a sandstorm that blew in the Byzantines� faces or the fact that the Ghassanid, another Turkish nation, mercenaries went over to the Arabs during the battle, was the decisive factor, is open to debate

 

i think the Ghassanid were Christan Arabs not another Turkish nation.

 

 Today also began the battle /20-26 August/ of Shipka!

The major battle from Russo-Turkish war /1877-1878/.

More info:

http://www.abvg.net/Shipka/

Today had the Stalinist constitution accepted in Hungary in 1949.