Muthana ibn Haritha Shaybani was a tribal chief in north
Hijrah) Khalid set out from Yamama with an army of 10,000 men. But before doing so he wrote to Hormozd, the Persian governor
of the frontier district of Dast Meisan:
Submit to Islam and be safe. Or agree to the payment of the Jizya, and you and your people will be under our protection, else you will have only yourself to blame for the consequences, for I bring the men who desire death as ardently as you desire life.[6]
The tribal chiefs and their warriors (2,000 each) joined Khalid in his quest. Thus Khalid entered the Persian Empire with 18,000 troops.
Christian Arab
auxiliaries.
Khalid’s strategy
The
Khalid ibn Walid
to carry out this strategy successfully. There were two routes to Uballa, via Kazima or via Hufair, so Khalid wrote a letter to the Persian leader Hormozd from Yamama so that he would expect Khalid to arrive via the direct route from Yamama to Kazima and then to Uballa.
The battle
Expecting
Sassanid army was once again ordered to set off for Kazima. The Persians arrived at Kazima in a state of exhaustion.[citation needed
]
Sassanid army
before the battle. Khalid's strategy was to wear out the Sassanid army.
Hormozd at once deployed the army for battle in the normal formation of a centre and wings. The generals commanding his wings were Qubaz and Anoshagan. The men linked themselves together with chains as a sign to the enemy that they were ready to die rather than to run away from the battle field in case of defeat. This lessened the danger of a breakthrough by enemy cavalry, as with the men linked together in chains it was not easy for
Sassanid army was organized and trained for the set-piece battle, this tactic enabled it to stand like a rock in the face of an enemy assault. But the chains had one major drawback: in case of defeat the men were incapable of withdrawal, for then the chains acted as fetters. It was the use of chains that gave this battle its name.[7]
Hormozd had deployed his army just forward of the western edge of Kazima, keeping the city covered by his dispositions. Khalid deployed his army with the desert behind them, so that they could retreat there in case of defeat. The exhausted Persian army was unable to stand the attack for long and the Muslims successfully penetrated the Persian front in many places. Sensing defeat, the Persian generals commanding the wings, Qubaz and Anoshagan, ordered a withdrawal, which led to a general retreat. Most of the Persians who were not chained managed to escape, but those who were chained together were unable to move fast, and thousands of them were slain.
Aftermath
After the Battle of Chains, Khalid defeated the Persian armies in three more battles and captured his objective:
Muslim conquest of Syria
.
References
^Parvaneh Pourshariati, The Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire, (I.B. Tauris, 2011), 193.
Sasanian Empire