Battle of Carthage (698)
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| Battle of Carthage | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Muslim conquests | |||||||
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| Combatants | |||||||
| Umayyad Caliphate | Roman (Byzantine) Empire | ||||||
| Commanders | |||||||
| Hassan bin al-Nu'man | Ioannes the Patrician and Tiberius Apsimar | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 40,000 | Unknown | ||||||
| Casualties | |||||||
| Unknown | total loss of a territory | ||||||
| Byzantine-Arab Wars |
|---|
| Mu'tah – Tabouk – Dathin – Ajnadayn – Yarmouk – Nikiou – 1st Siege of Constantinople – Syllaeum – That Al-Sawari – Carthage – Constantinople |
The Battle of Carthage was fought in 698 between the Roman Exarchate of Africa and the armies of the Umayyad Caliphate. The Romans (Byzantines) had already lost Carthage once to Islam. The basileus (emperor) Leontius sent the navy under the command of Ioannes the Patrician and the strategos Tiberias Apsimar. They entered the harbor and successfully recaptured it and the city in a stunning surprise attack. The citizens of the city rejoiced and the Arab forces fled to Kairouan. As Gibbon writes, "the Christians landed; the citizens hailed the ensign of the cross, and the winter was idly wasted in the dream of victory or deliverance."
The emir Hassan Ibn al-Numan was in the midst of pacifying the lands of Tamazgh (as it is called by the indigenous peoples) or Maghreb (Arabic for the west) but withdrew from campaigning in the field to confront the renewed Roman challenge to the emerging caliphate. At Kairouan, he began plans to re-take Carthage the following spring. It is estimated that he headed a force of 40,000 men. The Romans sent out a call for help to their traditional allies, the native Amazigh, and even to their enemies the Visigoths and the Franks. Despite having re-taken the city, the Romans were in disarray due to the bitter inner fighting that characterized medieval Romania and sapped much of its strength. The previous exarch Gennadius had been a traitor to the Christian cause, defecting to the Muslims and becoming their vassal. The king of the Visigoths, Witiza, sent a reputed force of 500 warriors in order to help defend Carthage, perhaps to help check the rising Muslim threat which, so close to Visigothic Hispania, was lopping off large chunks of the Roman empire.
Hassan, enraged at having to retake a city that had not resisted the Roman take over, offered no terms except to surrender or die. The emperor Leontius, infamous for his harsh reaction to failure, had also given his forces instructions of victory or death. The Romans did sally forth and presented battle to the Arabs directly, but were defeated. They later preferred to continue to incite revolt through the Amazigh princes. The Roman commander John decided to wait out the siege behind the walls of Carthage and let the Arabs exhaust themselves, since he could continue to be resupplied from the sea. The defenders were faced with Hassan's overwhelming force deployed in ferocious attacks as his men continuously tried to scale the walls with ladders. The Arabs combined their land assault with an attack from the sea, that caused John and Apsimar to fear being trapped within the city. Yet, determination of the defenders resulted in the second and final great destruction of Carthage. The Romans retreated to the islands of Corsica, Sicily and Crete to further resist Muslim expansion and await the emperor's wrath.
[edit] Battle of Carthage Aftermath
John the Patrician was later murdered after a conspiracy at the hands of his co-commander, Tiberius Apsimar. Tiberius Apsimar then, instead of taking the logical step of returning to Africa to fight the Muslims, sailed instead to Constantinople. After a successful rebellion he rose to the throne as Tiberius III, and was later deposed by former emperor Justinian II, now known as the rhinometus. The conquest of Tamazagh-North Africa by the forces of Islam was now nearly complete. Hassan was triumphant but soon would be humbled by the determined Kahena and her united Amazigh-Roman forces who would drive Hassan and his men from Tamazgh-North Africa all the way to Egypt, now called Al-Masr by the Muslims. Hassan would have to wait for five long years before the calipha would give him more troops, to exact his revenge on the Kahina and her Jewish berbers.
