Raoh 说:
jacobhinds 说:
The Byzantines and Sassanids had plenty of chances to take on the rashidun caliphs (whose soldiers were armed very similarly to the Byzantine ones from very early on, mind you
That's not true.
The Caliphate armies were mostly composed of Light Infantry and Light Cavalry, whereas the Byzantines and Sassanids had that, plus Catarphracts, War Elephants, Heavy Infantry, and generally better equipment. Both empires had centuries of large scale warfare experience, as well.
The eastern romans didn't use war elephants, their infantry were mostly auxiliaries hired case-by-case from europe (the later crusaders were one of these auxiliary groups), and cataphracts were of limited use against raiders.
The sassanids were similar; their armies had been whittled down after almost a century of war, and by the time the rashidun arrived there was almost nothing left besides mercenaries and auxiliaries, who had a tendency to flee the battle the minute it wasn't going their way.
The "centuries of large scale warfare experience" were punctuated by poorly organised and inefficient militaries. The Byzantines were around for almost 1000 years, a period that saw them fielding the best armies in the middle east, and the worst, often fluctuating several times per century.
Raoh 说:
It's easy for you to say they could have dealt with the Caliphate, but only in hindsight. They clearly never considered them as a legitimate threat, otherwise they would've steamrolled the Arabian Peninsula.
This is a video game mentality. The arabian peninsula and its inhabitants are impossible to conquer, mainly because nomads can't be conquered/subjugated if you can't catch them. The hijra is a semi-nomadic region on the red sea where the rashidun caliphate began, but even that was of no value to anybody, even the Ottomans, Abbasids and Umayyads, who conquered everything around the arabian peninsula.
It's like saying that the song empire should've just conquered all of siberia to prevent the mongol invasion. It's a fact that they knew the mongols were coming (they conquered parts of iran before they went for china), but a settled state cannot take on nomads for several reasons.
The Byzantines were decadent idiots for a lot of their history, and their armies were pitifully bad on countless occasions. It's no coincidence that the periods of territorial decline in the Byzantine empire are accompanied by rubbish dynasties or infighting.
