Archive for November, 2015

Khalid ibn al-Walid – Islam’s greatest General …

Posted on November 27, 2015. Filed under: From a Services Career, Personalities, Uncategorized |

Karl von Clausewitz has opined that, among the qualities of a great General, energy in the conduct of war, is the greatest. In this context a Persian historian has written that like Hannibal, “Khaled neither slept and nor did he let others sleep. Nothing was hidden from him”.

Commanding the forces of the nascent Islamic State in the first half of the Seventh Century, Khalid won over a hundred battles and was never defeated. He was the first ever to conquer the whole of Arabia and then went onto conquer Iraq and Syria, which were parts of the Persian and Roman Empires.

From a clan that initially opposed and defeated Muhammad, Khaled converted and became a follower. Such was his ferocity in battle that in an early battle he is said to have broken half a dozen swords in the fighting when he assumed command after three superiors had been killed. Possibly the steel of the Arabs of that era was brittle!

Khaled was the architect of early Muslim military doctrine and a pioneer of every tactic that Muslims used during their conquests.

He utilized the individual skill of the Bedouin warrior on a large scale by forming them into regular units. He formed units of champions for personal challenges to enemy officers and to kill enemy commanders.

His greatest achievement was to convert Arab tactics into strategy. The Arabs had been mere raiders and skirmishers. He turned skirmishing tactics into a concentrated force by skirmishing a massed enemy to the death.

He engaged whole armies and made a large battle break up into separate and distinct skirmishing battles. After exhausting the enemy, he would launch his cavalry from either flank. His horse cavalry was a light force armed with 5 meter lances. They could charge at speed and hit-and-run. Their lightness made them very effective against the heavily armed Romans and Persians.

He used extreme methods and annihilated his enemies rather than merely defeating them. The severity of the slaughter was only rivaled by the Mongols, Centuries later. However he showed his humanity when he returned the daughter of the Persian Emperor – without ransom when it had been offered – after her husband had been killed in battle..

Ala Hannibal, he had exceptional eye for terrain and once he trapped an entire Byzantine army between three deep ravines having secretly captured the only escape route.

In his Persian campaigns, he never entered deep but always kept the Arabian desert behind him. Only after the strong Persians were routed did he penetrate deep and capture the regional capital.

In their mobility, Khalid’s armies were the forerunners of the Mongol hordes which ravaged some six centuries later. Tactics were identical though one used horses and the other camels. The difference was that the Arabs did not use mounted archers but gained surprise through maneuver.

In one night attack Khaled came from three directions and destroyed Persian camps in a 100 sq km area. Once he maneuvered around a Byzantine army appearing from four directions. This later became one of the classic maneuvers of the Mongols.

Six Centuries later a classic confrontation between the advancing Mongols, who by 1300 AD had established the greatest ever contiguous land empire, did not take place after their advance elements had been checkmated by the horse cavalry of the Arabs. Unfortunately before their main force could reach, the  Mongols were called back due to a succession issue. This happened a second time and then the Mongol Empire began to break up. 

Khalid never blundered into any battle. He relied on intelligence reports from spies that he would hire from local population and pay liberal rewards.

As regards his tenacity, the great Gibbon narrates that once he had not been able to capture a fort even after several attempts. Crest fallen, he had ordered a retreat when he espied an eagles nest high on a wall. This made him pause and think that if an eagle could reach there, so could he and went on to make another serious attempt and his tenacity was rewarded.

At the zenith of his career in 636 AD, he was suddenly and abruptly dismissed seemingly without cause and without murmur – sharing the fate of the Hannibals, Scipios, Rommels, Guderians and Pattons of the world.

The Pakistani Main Battle Tank is named KHALED