ISLAM AT WAR

A History

George F. Nafziger
and Mark W. Walton

CONTENTS

Introduction vii

1. Birth of Islam: Islamic Expansion and Muhammad as
Battlefield Commander 1

2. The Great Conquests 15

3. Islam and the Crusades 37

4. The Sword and India: The Moghul Conquest 51

5. Egypt in the World of Islam 63

6. The Muslim Conquest and Loss of Spain 81

7. The Rise of the Ottoman Empire 91

8. The Sick Man of Europe: The Balkans and the Fall of the
Ottoman Empire 109

9. The Sword and the Sea: Muslim Navies, Lepanto, and Malta 141

10. Mullahs and Machine Guns: Colonial Wars in the Middle East 153

11. Mullahs and Missiles: Islamic Wars since 1945 171

12. Islam and Jihad: For It Is Ordained unto You 207

13. Dying for God: The Assassins-Past and Present 235

14. Conclusion 255













INTRODUCTION

On September 11, 2001, America suddenly discovered the Islamic world.
The word jihad became commonplace in the spoken American lexicon.
An unknown people with unusual customs and even more unusual ideas
struck at the American heartland and secured our undivided attention. Yet,
despite the thousands of words spoken by the media since September 11
the history of the Islamic world has barely been exposed to our view. And
we are even less aware of what has motivated this attack on our peace
and tranquility.

Many in the Islamic world see the events of September 11 as a military
operation. Surely Osama bin Laden did. Many will be surprised to discover
that this is not the first blow struck by the Islamic world against the
Christian world or the West, nor the worst blow. It is merely the latest.
Indeed, a large part of the Islamic world's history revolves around armed
conflict, much of it with the Christian and Western worlds. War has been
part of the Islamic world since the Archangel Gabriel first spoke to Muhammad,
and it is the principal process by which Islam spread throughout
the world.

It is the intent of this work to explore that ancient and rich military
history. It begins with Muhammad, the first Muslim warlord, and follows
the first world superpower, the Ottoman Empire, as it rose from the obscurity
of the central Asian steppes and vanished at the stroke of a pen in
1918. It explores the history of suicidal religious zealots that fought the
crusaders in 1100 and their modern counterparts driving airplanes into
buildings filled with innocent civilians.

It was not the intention of this work to provide a detailed, scholarly
examination of the military history of the Islamic world. Such a work
would be far too massive to be anything other than the work of a lifetime.
Instead, this survey touches on the high points of Islam's military history.
It also seeks to set straight the record on the military nature of Islam,
which has been broadly represented as being a peaceful religion. It certainly
has a peaceful side to it, but its military history is so rich and so
long that any attempt to suggest that it doesn't exist is a disservice to the
truth.
Chapter 1

BIRTH OF ISLAM: ISLAMIC
EXPANSION AND MUHAMMAD AS
BATTLEFIELD COMMANDER

Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but
it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and
it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah
knoweth, ye know not.

Koran, Surah II, 216

Muhammad was born, it is thought, in the year A.D. 571, at Mecca. The
name given him by his mother is lost to history, but not the name given
him by his peers-Muhammad. His father, Abdullah, died before his birth,
and his mother, Aminah, a member of the Yathrib tribe of Medina, lived
only until he was six. The honor of raising Muhammad fell to his grandfather,
Abd-al-Muttalib, and when he died it fell to his uncle, abu-Talib.

Legend relates that at the age of twelve Muhammad accompanied his
uncle on a caravan journey to Syria and that during the course of this trip
Muhammad met a Christian monk that legend identifies as Bahira.

From this encounter he may have learned some of the tenets of the Christian
faith. Little else is known about Muhammad's youth except that some
years after the trip he went into the service of a wealthy Meccan widow
named Kadijah. So faithfully did the young man transact her business,
and so excellent was his demeanor, that she married her young agent.