Battle of Mosul (731)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Battle of Marj Ardebil
Part of the Second Khazar-Arab War
Khazar warrior with captive, based on reconstruction by Norman Finkelshteyn of image from an 8th-century ewer found in Romania (original at [1])
Khazar warrior with captive, based on reconstruction by Norman Finkelshteyn
Date 731 CE
Location Outside Mosul
Result Arab victory
Belligerents
Khazar Khaganate Umayyad Caliphate
Commanders
Barjik Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik (?)
Strength
100,000, according to al-Tabari  ?
Casualties and losses
 ?  ?

The Battle of Mosul was a battle that took place during the Second Khazar-Arab War between the armies of the Khazar Khaganate, led by the khagan's son Barjik, and the Umayyad Caliphate, whose commanding general may have been Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik. After the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Marj Ardebil, the Arabs made a last-ditch stand outside Mosul to halt the Khazar incursion into Iraq, which threatened the Umayyad capital at Damascus. According to Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, the Khazar commander erected a throne overlooking the battlefield on which he mounted the severed and preserved head of al-Djarrah ibn Abdallah, the former Umayyad governor of Armenia defeated at Marj Ardebil. The Arabs, enraged by this desecration, fought harder than expected, and Barjik himself was killed. The Khazar army withdrew north of the Caucasus, abandoning their conquests in Azerbaijan and Arran.

[edit] See also


[edit] References

  • Kevin Alan Brook. The Jews of Khazaria. 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006.
  • Douglas M. Dunlop. The History of the Jewish Khazars, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954.
  • Peter B. Golden. Khazar Studies: An Historio-Philological Inquiry into the Origins of the Khazars. Budapest: Akademia Kiado, 1980.
  • Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982.