The empire to 867

The successors of Heraclius: Islam and the Bulgars

In the same year that Heraclius went out into the themes, Muhammad made his withdrawal (hijrah) from Mecca to Medina, where he established the ummah, or Muslim community. Upon the Prophet's death in 632, the caliphs, or successors, channeled the energies of the Arab Bedouin by launching them upon a purposive and organized plan of conquest. The results were spectacular: a Byzantine army was defeated at the Battle of the Yarmuk River (636), thereby opening Palestine and Syria to Arab Muslim control. Alexandria capitulated in 642, removing forever the province of Egypt from Byzantine authority. The Arabs had, meanwhile, advanced into Mesopotamia, capturing the royal city of Ctesiphon and, eventually, defeating an army under command of the Persian king himself. So ended the long history of Persia under Achaemenids, Parthians, and Sasanians; further conquests were shortly to initiate that region's Islamic phase (see further Iran, history of: Iran from 640 to the present; Islamic world).

At least three aspects of the contemporary situation of Byzantium and Persia account for the phenomenal ease with which the Arabs overcame their enemies: first, both empires, exhausted by wars, had demobilized before 632; second, both had ceased to support those client states on the frontiers of the Arabian Peninsula that had restrained the Bedouin of the desert for a century past; third, and particularly in reference to Byzantium, religious controversy had weakened the loyalties that Syrians and Egyptians rendered to Constantinople. Heraclius had sought in 638 to placate Monophysite sentiment in these two provinces by promulgating the doctrine of Monothelitism, holding that Christ, although of two natures, had but one will. Neither in the East nor in the West did this compromise prove successful. The victorious Muslims granted religious freedom to the Christian community in Alexandria, for example, and the Alexandrians quickly recalled their exiled Monophysite patriarch to rule over them, subject only to the ultimate political authority of the conquerors. In such a fashion the city persisted as a religious community under an Arab Muslim domination more welcome and more tolerant than that of Byzantium.

The aging Heraclius was unequal to the task of containing this new menace, and it was left to his successors - Constantine III (ruled February to May 641), Constans II (641 - 668), Constantine IV (668 - 685), and Justinian II (685 - 695, 705 - 711) - to do so. This bare list of emperors obscures the family conflicts that often imperiled the succession, but gradually the principle was established that, even if brothers ruled as coemperors, the senior's authority would prevail. Although strife between Blues and Greens persisted throughout the century, internal revolt failed to imperil the dynasty until the reign of Justinian II. The latter was deposed and mutilated in 695. With the aid of the Bulgars, he returned in 705 to reassume rule and wreak a vengeance so terrible that his second deposition, and death, in 711 is surprising only in its delay of six years. From 711 until 717 the fortunes of the empire foundered; in that year, Leo, strategos of the Anatolikon theme, arrived as a second Heraclius to found a dynasty that would rescue the empire from its new enemies, the Arab Muslims and the Bulgars.

Three features distinguish the military history of the years 641 - 717: first, an increasing use of sea power on the part of the Arabs; second, a renewed threat in the Balkans occasioned by the appearance of the Onogur Huns, known in contemporary sources as the Bulgars; third, a persisting interest among the emperors in their western possessions, despite the gradual attrition of Byzantine authority in the exarchates of Carthage and Ravenna. Thanks to the control that the Arabs gradually asserted over the sea routes to Constantinople, they climaxed their earlier assaults on Armenia and Asia Minor with a four years' siege of the great city itself (674 - 678). Defeated in this last attempt by the use of Greek fire, a flammable liquid of uncertain composition, the Arabs signed a 30 years' truce, according to which they agreed to pay tribute in money, men, and horses. Lured by the unsettled conditions following Justinian's second deposition, they renewed their assaults by land and sea, and in 717 the Arabs were again besieging Constantinople.

On the Balkan frontier, meanwhile, the Bulgars assumed the role abdicated by the Avars after 626. A pagan people whom the Khazars had forced toward the Danube Delta in the latter part of the 7th century, they eluded Constantine IV's attempts to defeat them in 681. By virtue of a treaty signed in that year, as well as others dating from 705 and 716, the Bulgars were recognized as an independent kingdom, occupying (to the humiliation of Byzantium) lands south of the Danube into the Thracian plain. While the Bulgars had thus deprived the empire of control in the north and central Balkans, the Byzantines could take comfort in the expeditions of 658 and 688/689 launched, respectively, by Constans II and Justinian II into Macedonia and in the formation of the themes of Thrace (687) and Hellas (695); these moves were evidence that Byzantine authority was beginning to prevail along the peninsular coastline and in certain parts of Greece where Slavs had penetrated.

In the West, the situation was less reassuring. Monothelitism had evoked a hostile reception among the churches of North Africa and Italy, and the resulting disaffection had encouraged the exarchs of both Carthage (646) and Ravenna (652) to revolt. By the end of the century, Africa had been largely lost to Muslim conquerors who would, in 711, seize the last outpost at Septem. For the moment Sicily and the scattered Italian possessions remained secure. Constans undertook operations against the Lombards, and he apparently intended to move his capital to Sicily, before his assassination ended the career of the last Eastern emperor to venture into the West. In summary, Leo III in 717 ruled over an empire humiliated by the presence of pagan barbarians upon Balkan soil rightfully considered "Roman," threatened by an attack upon its Anatolian heartland and its capital, and reduced, finally, in the West to Sicily and the remnants of the Ravenna exarchate.

However dismal the military record, institutional and economic developments had permitted the empire to survive and were to provide foundations for greater success in the centuries to come. The themal system had taken root and, with it, probably the institution of soldiers' properties. Military service was a hereditary occupation: the eldest son assumed the burden of service, supported primarily by revenues from other members of the family who worked the land in the villages. This last was a task easier to accomplish at the end of the 7th century thanks to the colonies of Slavs and other peoples brought into the empire and settled in the rural areas by Heraclius, Constantine IV, and Justinian II. In the 8th and 9th centuries, other emperors, including Leo III, Constantine V, and Nicephorus I, were to continue the practice, thus ending the population decline that had long eroded the ranks of Byzantine society. There are unmistakable signs of agricultural expansion even before 800; and, at about that time, urban life, which had never vanished in Asia Minor, began to flourish and expand in the Balkans. To judge from the evidence of the Farmer's Law, dated in the 7th century, the technological base of Byzantine society was more advanced than that of contemporary western Europe: iron tools could be found in the villages; water mills dotted the landscape; and field-sown beans provided a diet rich in protein. None of these advances was to characterize western European agriculture until the 10th century. Byzantine agriculture enjoyed the further advantage of a highly developed tradition of careful farming that persisted even in the darkest days, enabling the peasant to make the most of the soil upon which he worked. The invasions had even provided a form of stimulus to development: having lost first its Egyptian granary and, later, its North African and Sicilian resources, the empire had to live essentially, although not totally, from whatever it could produce in the lands remaining to it. The invasions had also, in all probability, broken up many a large estate, and the small peasant holding seems to have been the "normal" form of rural organization in this period. Although collective village organization persisted in the form of the rural commune and, with it, certain collective agricultural practices, the state seems to have made little or no attempt to bind the peasant to the soil upon which the tax registers had inscribed him. While Byzantium remained a slave-owning society, the colonus of the later Roman Empire had vanished, and a greater degree of freedom and mobility characterized agricultural relationships during the 7th and 8th centuries.

So it was, too, in trade and commerce. After the loss of Egypt and North Africa, the grain fleets manned by hereditary shipmasters disappeared; in their place there emerged the independent merchant, of sufficient importance to call forth a code of customary law, the Rhodian Sea Law, to regulate his practices. Military and religious hostilities failed to check him as he traded with the Bulgars in Thrace and, through Cyprus, with the Arabs. Despite constant warfare, this was, in short, a healthier society than the late Roman, and its chances of survival were further increased when the sixth general council (680 - 681) condemned Monothelitism and anathematized its adherents. With Egypt and Syria under Muslim rule, it was no longer necessary to placate Eastern Monophysitism, and it seemed that doctrinal discord would no longer separate Constantinople from the West. Events were to prove otherwise.

The age of Iconoclasm: 717 - 867

For more than a century after the accession of Leo III (717 - 741), a persisting theme in Byzantine history may be found in the attempts made by the emperors, often with wide popular support, to eliminate the veneration of icons, a practice that had earlier played a major part in creating the morale essential to survival. The sentiment had grown in intensity during the 7th century; the Quinisext Council (Council in Trullo) of 692 had decreed that Christ should be represented in human form rather than, symbolically, as the lamb. The reigning emperor, Justinian II, had taken the unprecedented step of placing the image of Christ on his coinage while proclaiming himself the "slave of God." Evidence of a reaction against such iconodule (or image venerating) doctrines and practices may be found early in the 8th century, but full-fledged Iconoclasm (or destruction of the images) emerged as an imperial policy only when Leo III issued his decrees of 730. Under his son, Constantine V (ruled 741 - 775), the iconoclastic movement intensified, taking the form of violent persecution of the monastic clergy, the foremost defenders of the iconodule position. The Council of Nicaea in 787 restored iconodule doctrine at the instigation of the empress Irene, but military reversals led Leo V to resurrect in 815 the iconoclastic policies associated with Constantine V, one of Byzantium's most successful generals. Not until 843 were the icons definitively restored to their places of worship and icon veneration solemnly proclaimed as Orthodox belief. Even this brief summary suggests that the Emperor's fortunes on the battlefield were of no small moment in determining his attitude toward the icons, those channels whence superhuman power descended to man. An account of the age of Iconoclasm opens appropriately, then, with its military history.

The reigns of Leo III (the Isaurian) and Constantine V

Almost immediately upon Leo's accession, the empire's fortunes improved markedly. With the aid of the Bulgars, he turned back the Muslim assault in 718 and, in the intervals of warfare during the next 20 years, addressed himself to the task of reorganizing and consolidating the themes in Asia Minor. Thanks to the assistance of the traditional allies, the Khazars, Leo's reign concluded with a major victory, won again at the expense of the Arabs, at Acroenos (740). His successor, Constantine, had first to fight his way to the throne, suppressing a revolt of the Opsikion and Armeniakon themes launched by his brother-in-law Artavasdos. During the next few years, internal disorder in the Muslim world played into Constantine's hands as the 'Abbasid house fought to seize the caliphate from the Umayyads. With his enemy thus weakened, Constantine won noteworthy victories in northern Syria, transferring the prisoners he had captured there to Thrace in preparation for the wars against the Bulgars that were to occupy him from 756 to 775. In no fewer than nine campaigns, he undermined Bulgar strength so thoroughly that the northern enemy seemed permanently weakened, if not crushed. Even the venom used by the iconodule chroniclers of Constantine's reign cannot disguise the enormous popularity his victories won him.

In later centuries, the folk of Constantinople would stand by his tomb, seeking his aid against whatever enemy imperiled the city's defenses.

Constantine's weak successors

His successors all but let slip the gains won by the great iconoclast. Constantine's son Leo IV died prematurely in 780, leaving to succeed him his 10-year-old son, Constantine VI, under the regency of the empress Irene. Not much can be said for Constantine, and Irene's policies as regent and (after the deposition and blinding of her son at her orders) as sole ruler from 797 to 802 were all but disastrous. Her iconodule policies alienated many among the themal troops, who were still loyal to the memory of the great warrior emperor, Constantine V. In an effort to maintain her popularity among the monkish defenders of the icons and with the population of Constantinople, she rebated taxes to which these groups were subject; she also reduced the customs duties levied outside the port of Constantinople, at Abydos and Hieros. The consequent loss to the treasury weighed all the more severely since victories won by the Arabs in Asia Minor (781) and by the Bulgars (792) led both peoples to demand and receive tribute as the price of peace. A revolt of the higher palace officials led to Irene's deposition in 802, and the so-called Isaurian dynasty of Leo III ended with her death, in exile, on the isle of Lesbos.

In the face of the Bulgar menace, none of the following three emperors succeeded in founding a dynasty. Nicephorus I (ruled 802 - 811), the able finance minister who succeeded Irene, reimposed the taxes that the Empress had remitted and instituted other reforms that provide some insight into the financial administration of the empire during the early 9th century. In the tradition of Constantine V, Nicephorus strengthened the fortifications of Thrace by settling, in that theme, colonists from Asia Minor.

Taking arms himself, he led his troops against the new and vigorous Bulgar khan, Krum, only to meet defeat and death at the latter's hands. His successor, Michael I Rhangabe (811 - 813), fared little better; internal dissensions broke up his army as it faced Krum near Adrianople, and the resulting defeat cost Michael his throne. In only one respect does he occupy an important place in the annals of the Byzantine Empire. The first emperor to bear a family name, Michael's use of the patronymic, Rhangabe, bears witness to the emergence of the great families, whose accumulation of landed properties would soon threaten the integrity of those smallholders upon whom the empire depended for its taxes and its military service. The name Rhangabe seems to be a Hellenized form of a Slav original (rokavu), and, if so, Michael's ethnic origin and that of his successor, Leo V the Armenian (ruled 813 - 820), provide evidence enough of the degree to which Byzantium in the 9th century had become not only a melting-pot society but, further, a society in which even the highest office lay open to the man with the wits and stamina to seize it. Leo fell victim to assassination, but before his death events beyond his control had improved the empire's situation. Krum died suddenly in 814 as he was preparing an attack upon Constantinople, and his son, Omortag, arranged a peace with the Byzantine Empire in order to protect the western frontiers of his Bulgar empire against the pressures exerted by Frankish expansion under Charlemagne and his successors. Since the death of the fifth caliph, Harun ar-Rashid, had resulted in civil war in the Muslim world, hostilities from that quarter ceased. Leo used the breathing space to reconstruct those Thracian cities that the Bulgars had earlier destroyed. His work indicates the degree of gradual Byzantine penetration into the coastal fringes of the Balkan Peninsula, as does the number of themes organized in that same region during the early 9th century: those of Macedonia, Thessalonica, Dyrrhachium, Dalmatia, and the Strymon.

The new emperor, Michael II, was indeed able to establish a dynasty - the Amorian, or Phrygian - his son Theophilus (829 - 842) and his grandson Michael III (842 - 867) each occupying the throne in turn, but none would have forecast so happy a future during Michael II's first years. Thomas the Slavonian, Michael's former comrade in arms, gave himself out to be the unfortunate Constantine VI and secured his coronation at the hands of the Patriarch of Antioch; this was accomplished with the willing permission of the Muslim caliph under whose jurisdiction Antioch lay. Thomas thereupon marched to Constantinople at the head of a motley force of Caucasian peoples whose sole bonds were to be found in their devotion to iconodule doctrine and their hatred of Michael's Iconoclasm. Assisted by Omortag and relying upon the defenses of Constantinople, Michael defeated his enemy, but the episode suggests the tensions beneath the surface of Byzantine society: the social malaise, the ethnic hostility, and the persisting discord created by Iconoclasm. All these may explain the weakness displayed throughout Theophilus' reign, when a Muslim army defeated the Emperor himself (838) as a prelude to the capture of the fortress of Amorium in Asia Minor. It may also explain the concurrent decline of Byzantine strength in the Mediterranean, manifest in the capture of Crete by the Arabs (826 or 827) and in the initiation of attacks upon Sicily that finally secured the island for the world of Islam. Iconoclasm certainly played its part in the further alienation of East from West, and a closer examination of its doctrines will suggest why this may have been.