Battle of Dara

Dara is the name of a vast fortress built during the reign of the emperor Anastasius. It was a contentious project, Rome and Persia had a serious conflict at the end of the 5th century and there had been agreed a lasting peace settlement that defined a frontier between the two states. Part of the settlement stipulated that there would be no offensive deployment in the frontier zone.

The construction of Dara, including the damming of a river to provide a large and secure water supply, combined with the advanced design of the fortifications, added to its situation so close to the frontier, caused the wars that errupted during the reign of Justinian I. The Romans claimed it was a defensive outpost, the Persians interpreted it as an offensive base.

The fortress and its construction marks an interesting historical point. Traditionally, historians have associated the change in the military policy of the Roman Empire (including the construction of Dara) with the emperor Justinian I. If one sees the remains of the fortress, and estimates the time taken to construct such a large edifice, the change in policy has to be brought much further back - to the reign of Anastasius. Evidence for this can be suggested by the fact that the fortress was operational during the early part of Justinian I's reign.

If one follows the history of the region from 495 to 630, one can see that the wars between Rome and Persia, leading to the final campaigns of Emperor Heraclius in the late 6th and early 7th century, have a continuity not often remarked upon by historians. They were two competing superpowers, with completely separate religions, customs and societies. The final campaigns of Emperor Heraclius, fought in the Caucasus mountains, and then south along the Euphrates river, eventually led to the sack of the Persian capital at Ctesiphon and the consequent destruction of the entire political and social fabric of the Persian empire.

A footnote to the end of those procedings is that among the auxiliary troops mobilised by both sides during the campaigns were separate sections of a previously disunited and militarily untrained group of tribes from the desert litoral - the Arabs.

Mohamed, who had very probably visited Constantinople in his youth (his father was a caravan trader), succeeded in uniting the Arabs under a single command, equipped them with a fresh interpretation of Judeo-Christian principles and made use of their newfound military skills and traditions. The Arabs invaded both the Roman Empire and the remains of the Persian Empire and the rest, as they say, is history.

One of the key episodes in the sequence of events that led to this outcome, in my view, was the policy to construct the fortress at Dara. The importance of the battles that were fought to secure the location of Dara during the Persian wars, between Justinian and Khosroes, Emperor of Persia, and his successor, Khosroes II can hardly be overestimated.