The battle of Dhat al-Sawari

The question that ʿUmar ﵁ did not wish to ask

Before we come to this battle on the Lycian coast, we must go back to a letter sent years earlier from Medina, to an answer that came back from Egypt, and to a decision that ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ took in his Khilafah and that he did not wish to leave behind for his successor. Suyuti ﵀ records this episode on page 166 of his Tarikh al-Khulafa, in a short digression that he calls An observation and that he places among the reports of the conquest of Cyprus in 27 AH. The passage is of great weight in its brevity, because it shows us why Islamic seafaring came to its unfolding only in the Khilafah of ʿUthman ﵁, and not earlier.

It was Muʿawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan ﵁, in those years governor of Syria, who had repeatedly put the matter to ʿUmar ﵁. The Byzantine navy made raids along the Syrian coast from its bases on Cyprus and Rhodes, it fell upon harbour towns, it ran landings against the Muslim garrisons, and it kept the Muslim trade routes in uncertainty. Muʿawiyah ﵁ had asked ʿUmar ﵁ for permission to undertake a campaign by sea, in particular against Cyprus, which served as a springboard for the Byzantine fleet. ʿUmar ﵁ had hesitated, for he had not wished to decide the matter out of his own judgement. He had addressed a letter to ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁, who was at that time governor in Egypt and who knew the Mediterranean Sea at close hand, with one question: describe to me the sea, and describe to me the man who travels upon it.

The answer of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ is recorded word for word by Suyuti ﵀ on page 166, and it deserves to be reread. ʿAmr ﵁ was a master of Arabic eloquence, and in this answer he unites a whole knowledge of the sea within a short span.

When ʿUmar ﵁ read this description, he wrote back to Muʿawiyah ﵁ with the terse words that Suyuti ﵀ narrates in the same passage.

These words of ʿUmar ﵁ were not spoken out of fear, nor out of a lack of trust in the warriors. They were spoken out of the vigilance that had marked him in all his decisions. He was, as Suyuti ﵀ recorded in his general characterisation of ʿUmar ﵁, a Caliph ﵁ who never exposed the community to a risk that he had not first weighed. The sea was unknown to him, and its great creation mounted by a small creation was too uncertain for him. He let the matter rest, he commanded the Muslim armies to the east and the south, over the established roads. The sea front waited.

The decision of ʿUthman ﵁

What ʿUmar ﵁ had refused, ʿUthman ﵁ granted in his Khilafah. Suyuti ﵀ mentions on page 166, in the same Observation passage, that Ibn Jarir has said: Muʿawiyah ﵁ carried out the campaign against Cyprus during the time of ʿUthman ﵁, and its population concluded a treaty with him on the basis of the jizyah. It is the transition that we see in this passage: what had been postponed under ʿUmar ﵁ was set in motion under ʿUthman ﵁. Muʿawiyah ﵁ asked permission anew, and this time he received it.

ʿUthman ﵁ imposed one condition, and Suyuti ﵀ narrates it elsewhere in the sources from which he draws: no one would take part in the sea campaign under compulsion, only volunteers. Whoever did not wish to set foot on the sea did not need to set foot on it, and whoever volunteered was taken in. It was a condition that honoured the spirit of ʿUmar’s ﵁ hesitation, and that at the same time cleared the way for what in the years that followed would grow into one of the greatest maritime undertakings of the seventh century.

In the year 27 of the Hijra, which corresponds in the Gregorian reckoning to 647–648, Muʿawiyah ﵁ set sail from the Syrian harbours. Suyuti ﵀ mentions this on page 166. He adds that ʿUbadah ibn as-Samit ﵁, the Sahabi ﵁ of the Ansar who on the night of al-ʿAqabah had sworn allegiance to the Prophet ﷺ, was present at this expedition, and that his wife Umm Haram bint Milhan al-Ansariyah ﵂ was with him. Having arrived on Cyprus, she fell from her mount, and she died there as a shahidah. The Prophet ﷺ had years before supplicated for her that she would be of this first fleet. Suyuti ﵀ mentions that she was buried on Cyprus. She was the first martyr of the Islamic sea front, and her grave became for the Muslims a sign that the sea did not remain foreign land but became Islamic land.

What began in 27 AH with the expedition to Cyprus developed in the years that followed into a fleet that could challenge the Byzantine mastery of the sea for the first time. Shipyards rose in Akka, in Tyre, in Sidon, shipbuilders were recruited from the Arab seafaring tribes, recruits came from Egypt under ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ibn Abi Sarh ﵁, governor of that region, and recruits from Syria under Muʿawiyah ﵁. Two young naval powers sailed out separately against Byzantine positions, and they would in the year 34 of the Hijra for the first time fight a great battle together.

What Suyuti ﵀ does not record at length in his chapter

This is the moment to name the strict limitation of our article, a limitation we have maintained in all the articles of this period. Suyuti ﵀ does not record in his Tarikh al-Khulafa, in the chapter on ʿUthman ﵁, the detailed description of the battle of Dhat al-Sawari. He names the sea front, he names the outcome of the sea campaigns, he names the commanders, but he does not go phase by phase into the approach, the deployment, the tactics and the outcome. For whoever wishes to view the battle in its full phases, we have composed in the cycle of Siera Kaart a separate map and battle-story, on the basis of the narrations of Tabari ﵀ and Ibn Kathir ﵀, in which each phase can be followed with geographical precision and with the chronology of the six phases. In this article we hold to what Suyuti ﵀ gives us about the years 27 to 34 of the Hijra with respect to the sea front, and to the strict historical placing of the battle of Dhat al-Sawari within the broader series of conquests of those years.

The commander: ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ibn Abi Sarh ﵁

ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ibn Abi Sarh ﵁ had been the governor of Egypt since the year 27 of the Hijra. Suyuti ﵀ records his appointment on page 166 with the brief notice that ʿUthman ﵁ dismissed ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ from Egypt and appointed ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ﵁ over that region. ʿAbdullah ﵁ was the foster-brother of ʿUthman ﵁; they had been suckled together by the same wet-nurse. His history was one with sharp edges. He had been one of the scribes of the revelation in the Meccan years, he had withdrawn from that in a crisis of faith, he had returned to Islam in the years after the opening of Mecca through the mediation of ʿUthman ﵁ himself, and he had been accepted by the Prophet ﷺ. In his Egyptian years he proved a commander of exceptional courage and organisational ability. He was the man who led the first great campaign in North Africa and whom Suyuti ﵀ mentions on page 166: he opened North Africa to Islam, both in the plains and in the mountains, and every man in the army received a thousand dinars, and some say three thousand.

It is the same ʿAbdullah ﵁ to whom ʿUthman ﵁ then entrusted the leadership of the sea campaign that found its culmination on the Lycian coast in 34 AH. He gathered the Egyptian fleet in the harbours of Alexandria, he had his shipbuilders assisted by the Coptic craftsmen who in the centuries before had built the Byzantine fleet and who now stood in Egyptian service, and he sailed northward to unite with the Syrian fleet under Muʿawiyah ﵁. The combined fleet, according to the counts narrated in the broader sources, numbered about two hundred ships. Against them would come a Byzantine fleet of five hundred to seven hundred ships, under the personal leadership of the emperor Constans II, who had himself sailed out from Constantinople to stop the Islamic advance at sea.

The Lycian coast

The sea region where the two fleets met in 34 AH lies off the southwestern coast of what is today called Turkey, at the height of the old Lycian harbour town of Phoenix, which in our time is called Finike. The Lycian coast is a coast of narrow harbours, high cliffs and sudden winds. The towns of Phoenix, Patara, Myra and Andriake had in the centuries before housed the Roman fleets, and now they housed the Byzantine successors of those fleets. It was here that Constans II chose his meeting point. He hoped to drive the Islamic fleet, which sailed up from the south, into the corner in the bay of Phoenix, and there to force it to surrender by the superiority of ships.

What Constans II had not foreseen was the tactic that ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ﵁ had prepared. The Byzantine fleet was built for the ramming and for the bow technique at a distance. Its great galleys had heavy metal rams at the prow, and its crews were trained in building up a formation in which they could finish off the opponent at a distance with arrows and with Greek fire. ʿAbdullah ﵁ realised that he was at a disadvantage in both respects, for he had smaller ships, fewer archers, and no Greek fire. What he did have was an army of warriors who knew no superiors in the man-to-man fight. The Arab soldiers, grown up in the desert and trained in the jihad campaigns of the past twenty-five years, were unbeatable in close combat with sword and spear. The only question was: how would he get them onto the Byzantine ships, without first having to endure the Byzantine rams and arrows.

The tactic of the ropework

What ʿAbdullah ﵁ devised was a tactic that had not been applied on this scale before in the naval history of antiquity. He ordered that the Muslim ships, once in the line of battle, would be lashed together with ropework, prow to prow, stern to stern, in clusters of five, six or seven vessels. The clusters would behave in the water like floating fortresses. No ram could drive them apart, for as soon as a Byzantine galley rammed one Islamic ship, it would be held fast by the ropes to the adjacent ships, and would itself fall into a comparable grip. Once held fast, the fighting would no longer be conducted at sea but on the deck, and on the deck the Arab soldiers would have their advantage.

It was a bold choice. It meant that the Muslim fleet gave up its freedom of manoeuvre, and that it would not be able to flee if the fighting went unfavourably. But it also meant that the Byzantine fleet, with all its superiority in number, could not wage the fight for which it was built, and that it was forced to enter the fight for which it was not trained.

The approach

In the spring of 34 AH the Islamic fleet sailed out from the Levantine harbours. Suyuti ﵀ mentions the chronology of this year on pages 166 and 167 within the framework of the broader administration of ʿUthman ﵁. It was the same year in which the inhabitants of Kufa drove Saʿid ibn al-ʿAs ﵁ out of their city and set Abu Musa al-Ashʿari ﵁ in his place. It was the same year in which in Medina the first signs became visible of what in 35 AH would lead to the siege of the house of ʿUthman ﵁. The Islamic empire stood at a double-edged moment: within its borders the tensions began, beyond them it shifted its borders into the Mediterranean Sea. It is in this paradox that the battle of Dhat al-Sawari takes its place: a great victory at the outer frontier, in a year in which the centre was already wavering.

The fleet sailed westward along the Cyprian coast, grazed past Rhodes, and reached the Lycian waters in the early summer. Scouts brought word that Constans II already lay with his fleet in the bay of Phoenix. ʿAbdullah ﵁ had his ships gather at a distance of a few miles to the south of the bay, and he gave his commanders the order to make the ropes ready. In the night before the battle he had his men recite Surah Yasin, and in the morning, before the first encounter, he led the Fajr prayer on the deck of his flagship.

The encounter

What happened in the bay of Phoenix we relate in detail in the battle-story linked above this article. It suffices here to sum up the broad line. The two fleets approached one another. The Byzantine fleet formed its customary crescent-moon formation, with the heavy galleys in the centre and the lighter ships on the wings. The Muslim fleet sailed straight at the Byzantine centre, and at the moment that the first ramming began, the Muslim sailors threw out the ropes and bound their ships to one another and to the Byzantine ships that had meant to ram them.

In an instant the nature of the battle changed. What should have been a sea battle became a man-to-man fight on a floating battlefield that stretched across the whole bay. The Muslim warriors leapt onto the Byzantine decks. The Byzantine marines, trained to defend their position behind a row of shields, were not prepared for the thrust and had no room to withdraw. For four to six hours the fighting was conducted with sword and spear. The Byzantine wings tried to intervene, but they could not penetrate to the core, because the lashed-together mass of ships formed an impenetrable blockade. Toward the end of the day the Byzantine fleet was broken. Constans II withdrew with his flagship and with a small squadron, and sailed northward in the direction of Cyprus, while behind him hundreds of his ships had either sunk, or been taken, or lay as wrecks on the seabed.

It is from this aftermath, in which the masts of the Byzantine ships drifted on the sea like the stubble of a burned cornfield, that the battle received its Arabic name: Dhat al-Sawari, the battle of the masts. In the Arabic sources it is narrated that the survivors, returning from the bay, told that the masts of the enemy covered the sea itself.

The women and the Prophet ﷺ

The presence of Umm Haram bint Milhan ﵂ in the first Cyprus campaign under Muʿawiyah ﵁ in 27 AH is mentioned by Suyuti ﵀ on page 166 with remarkable emphasis. He narrates that she fell from her mount and died as a shahidah, and that she was buried on Cyprus. And he adds what in her case is the essence: the Prophet ﷺ had years before supplicated for her that she would be of the first army that sailed out to sea. It is a detail attached in the chronology of the sea front to her person alone, and that with its single sentence in the text of Suyuti ﵀ expresses a whole theology of the sea front: what was not carried out under ʿUmar ﵁ was not out of a lack of courage, and what was carried out under ʿUthman ﵁ was not out of a lack of caution. Both Caliphs ﵃ acted according to the vigilance that their office required, and in both cases their action accorded with a prophecy that the Prophet ﷺ had uttered.

What was accomplished in Dhat al-Sawari in 34 AH was the fulfilment of the second prophecy of the Prophet ﷺ that bore upon this. In the broader narrations it is mentioned that the Prophet ﷺ had said to Umm Haram ﵂ that a first army of his ummah would cross the sea, and that a second army would follow after her. The first army was that of Muʿawiyah ﵁ in 27 AH, and the second army was that of ʿAbdullah ﵁ in 34 AH. Between those two years lay the work of the shipyards, the work of the shipbuilders, the work of the organisation of an Islamic naval power. And over all of it lay, for the believers who read this history, the knowledge that the Prophet ﷺ had already foreseen this development in his lifetime.

The martyrs and the spoils

Suyuti ﵀ names in his treatment of the sea front no list of martyrs for Dhat al-Sawari, because he does not treat the battle in a separate passage. What he does do, and what is of great importance in his method, is the recording of the general prosperity that flowed from the victories of those years. On page 166 he writes, in the passage that immediately follows the opening of Khurasan, that the revenues of ʿUthman ﵁ became abundant, that wealth came to him from every direction, and that he established treasuries and let provisions flow abundantly. Dhat al-Sawari was part of that wave of victories that filled the treasury in Medina, for the Byzantine sea-gold, which in the centuries before had financed the imperial fleet, came this time into the hands of the Muslim conquerors, and was transferred by ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ﵁ to Medina by way of Egypt.

The question of which of the Sahaba ﵃ and the tabiʿun attained martyrdom in the sea battle has been treated in the broader narrations, and we name here no names that are not explicitly given in Suyuti’s Tarikh al-Khulafa. That the sea campaign exacted its toll admits of no doubt, and that it demanded of the Muslim sailors and sea-soldiers an unprecedented readiness to sacrifice admits of no doubt either. But Suyuti ﵀ preserves the conciseness that he always keeps in his work, and we do the same.

The sea front after 34 AH

What Dhat al-Sawari had established in 34 AH developed in the years that followed into a lasting Islamic presence in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Cyprus, which had come under treaty in 27 AH and in the years thereafter counted at times as an ally of Byzantium, at times as a neutral island, at times as a target of new campaigns, was slowly incorporated into the Islamic sphere of influence. Rhodes would in later years be taken under Muʿawiyah ﵁ as Caliph ﵁, and the Lycian and Cilician coasts became open to Muslim landings. What had been postponed under ʿUmar ﵁ had under ʿUthman ﵁ grown into a new order of power, and seafaring formed from then on a part of the Islamic instruments of war that the community had acquired for good.

The consequences

Suyuti ﵀ does not record the battle of Dhat al-Sawari in a passage of its own in the chapter on ʿUthman ﵁. He does record, on page 166, the general character of the naval offensive and the transition of Cyprus to the jizyah of the Byzantine province. And he records on page 166, in the passage about the revenues from the conquests, that when these vast provinces were taken, the revenues of ʿUthman ﵁ became abundant, and wealth came to him from every direction, until he established treasuries and let provisions flow abundantly. Dhat al-Sawari made this wealth a reality at sea. The Byzantine empire that in the hundred years before had held the mastery of the sea in the eastern Mediterranean uncontested lost this mastery in a single day, and would not be able to regain it in the centuries that followed.

For Constans II the battle meant a personal defeat of an unprecedented magnitude. He returned to Constantinople with the knowledge that his Anatolian coasts now stood open to Islamic landings. He resumed in the years that followed the attempts to hold off the Muslim fleets, but none of those attempts restored the position he had held before 34 AH. In the strategic history of the seventh century, Dhat al-Sawari forms the turning point at which the sea was no longer a Roman sea, and at which it fell for the first time since the Punic wars under the rule of a power from the south.

What Suyuti ﵀ offers us in this history

We have in this article held to the strict limitation: the narrative body follows what Suyuti ﵀ recorded in his Tarikh al-Khulafa on pages 165 through 167 about the sea front, about Cyprus, about Umm Haram ﵂, and about the commander ʿAbdullah ibn Saʿd ﵁. For the extensive phases of the battle of Dhat al-Sawari we have referred to the battle-story based on the narrations of Tabari ﵀ and Ibn Kathir ﵀. What remains to us is the summary that Suyuti ﵀ offers implicitly through his choice of narrations: the community that under Abu Bakr ﵁ had begun to expand over land, that under ʿUmar ﵁ had shifted its borders as far as the Euphrates and the Nile, expanded under ʿUthman ﵁ its borders into the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. It did so with the vigilance of two Caliphs ﵃ in its memory, and with the courage of a third Caliph ﵁ who took the matter in hand.

In the next article we return from the sea to Medina, to the treasuries of ʿUthman ﵁ that were overflowing, to the criticism voiced by the Sahaba ﵃ over the distribution of that wealth, and to the first signs of what in 35 AH would lead to the siege and the martyrdom.