[158] The way out, however, could have been only partially closed, for reinforcements reached the Romans without hindrance. The ravine was probably passable at some points, though, on the whole, a sufficient defence against the Arabs.
[159] The country is well described by Laurence Oliphant in his Land of Gilead, and the picture at p. 87 gives an admirable idea of the gorge surrounding our battle-field. ‘The Yermûk,’ he says, ‘at this point is just sinking below the level of the plain through which it has been meandering, and in the course of the next mile plunges down, a series of cascades, into the stupendous gorges through which it winds, until it ultimately falls into the Jordan below Gadara.’ The grand old military road, still bearing traces of wheeled carriages, bifurcates five and twenty miles south of Damascus. The right branch leads S.W. to Palestine, crossing the Yermûk at Gadara; the other continues to run south towards Jerash and Bostra, and so onward till it is lost in the Hajj or pilgrim-route into Arabia. The latter was the road always traversed by the Saracen armies as they marched into Syria and Palestine; and I assume that the battle was fought at a point some 30 miles east of Gadara where this road crosses the Yermûk. The same road northward leads to Jâbia (Tell Jâbieh); and Jâbieh became the grand base of operations both for Syria and for Palestine; for Palestine was never approached from Arabia but by this circuitous route. The Arabs, we are told, do not use the Roman road, because probably it is in so rugged and ruinous a condition. But they always use the bridges when passable; and Mr. Oliphant tells us of an ‘old Roman bridge of nine arches, one of which has fallen and has not been repaired,’ over the Yermûk in this vicinity, p. 87. The researches now being prosecuted to the east of the Jordan may throw farther light on this great battle-field, the site of which it may be possible yet to identify.
[160] Some authorities represent the transfer as a punishment for the surreptitious visit to Mecca; but this is at variance with the terms of the order, as well as opposed to the whole tenor of Abu Bekr’s forbearing treatment of Khâlid.
[161] The numbers of Khâlid’s column are variously stated at 9,000 and 6,000; and again as low as 800, 600, and 500. But the smaller numbers are probably intended to indicate only that part of his force which formed the flying column in his adventurous march across the desert: the rest, I assume, followed more leisurely and by an easier route. In point of fact, 6,000 returned the following year to Irâc, though they had been thinned by the Syrian campaign.
Some put the march of Khâlid a month earlier. Ibn Ishâc says that before leaving, Khâlid despatched the sick and infirm, with the women and children, to Medîna, with the last consignment of royal prize, as if he apprehended insecurity during his absence.
[162] The great sea of red sand has been spiritedly described by Lady Anne Blount in her Pilgrimage to Nejd; her route (reversed) was the same as Khâlid’s, from Irâc as far as Corâcar, only her circuit led her farther south to Hâil, and nearer the mountain range of Ajâ and Selma.
[163] Such is the received account of this extraordinary march, the memory of which is also preserved in contemporary verse. Ibn Ishâc speaks of twenty camels, which would have gone but a little way. Other accounts give the number of camels at so many per hundred lances, without mentioning the strength of the column. As before explained, Khâlid probably took the perilous route with only the lighter part of his force, leaving the bulky and heavy portion to follow by the ordinary road, along the Wady Sirhân, after he had cleared the Bostra approach. The lips of the camels were slit or cut off (according to other accounts bound up) to prevent their ruminating and the consequent digestion and assimilation of the water in their stomachs.
[164] They emerged at Suwâ near Tadmor, and forthwith fell upon the Beni Bahra, a Christian tribe, a portion of which was engaged in the defence of Dûma the year before. Here again we have the bacchanalian death-song of Horcûs mentioned before. We must receive the account of Khâlid’s circuit even after the passage of the desert, with some reserve. He is said to have plundered Cariatein and Huwarein on the way from Tadmor; to have made terms with the Beni Codhâa at Cussum; then to have passed over the ‘Mount of the Eagle’ (so called from his halting on it with the Prophet’s black flag), within sight of Damascus; to have plundered Marj Râhat, and a convent in the Ghûta or plain of Damascus, killing the men and taking the females prisoners; and so on to Bostra, which, after some opposition, came to terms. If this be all true, he may have at Bostra formed a junction with the body of his column left behind at Corâcar. But it is all very vague, and with a dash of the marvellous.
Ibn Ishâc gives a somewhat different account. He mixes up former victories (e.g. the capture of the forty Christian youths, of Aly’s slave-girl, &c.) with this campaign; and he makes the storming of Bostra to follow the junction with Abu Obeida. I find no authority whatever for the romance of the taking of Bostra as given by Ockley and followed by Gibbon.
[165] In the silence of Byzantine chroniclers we must make the best of the figures. 80,000 were ‘prisoners,’ either simply so or in chains; 40,000 were ‘chained together to fight to the death;’ 40,000 were ‘tied by their turbans;’ and 80,000 free and unencumbered. In the Armenian general Bahân we recognise the Βάαν of Theophanes; a rare (one might say a unique) coincidence.