Islam History
Muthana ibn Haritha, a new convert to Islam after the Prophet(s)'s death, from the north eastern Arab tribe called Bakr was sent on a campaign in Iraq with Khalid ibn al-Walid and later took over the command. After the victory in the so called Battle of the River of Blood at Ullais near modern Samawah in Iraq the two Muslim generals gave the enemy no respite and Hira was captured in May with only a small and in part locally recruited force. Hira was a Persian outpost but largely inhabited by Arabsand an important city in Iraq. It was also the first acquisition of the Muslims outside the Arabian Peninsula. Hira was spared military occupation and its Arab inhabitants were allowed to remain Nestorian Christains this sect was bitterly hostile to the Monophysite form of Christainity prevailing among the Egyptians Syrians, and Abyssinians on the payment of a large sum of .
Next year Khalid was suddenly ordered to go and take over the command of the Muslim armies in Syria who needed help and Muthana was left behind in charge of the campaign on the Persian front.
While the campaign in Iraq against the Sasnids was going on, at home
major apostasy was stamped out by the revolting tribes being brought
under control. Abu Bakr now turned his attention to the conquest of
Syrian and Palestine on the Byzantine frontier which he regarded as
more important. Through their commercial activities, the Arabs were
more familiar with, and interested in, this region than Persia, which
was largely unknown to them. Even the Prophet(s) in his lifetime showed
interest in it and sent an expedition under his adopted son Zayd ibn
Haritha, to the Syrian broder in 629. But the vastly superior Byzantine
army had no difficulty in crushing the raw soldiers of early Islam.
Zayd died fighting, and the expedition ended in diaster.
In 633 Abu Bakr organized three armies of 3.000 soldiers
eachg and put them under the command of Yezid ibn Abi Sufyan his
father, Abu Sufyan, the Makkan leader in battles against the
Muslims, was then governor of Najran and Hijaz Shurahbil ibn Hasana
and Amr ibn al As who was later to become famous for his conquest of
Egypt in 640.2 and three times its governor The first two columns
entered Jordan while Amr led his troops to south-eastern Palestine, and
near Gaza he annihilated in February a small army under
