The First Arab Expedition against Amorium

The chronology of Byzantine history in the middle of the seventh century is obscure and confused. Among the unsettled problems is the date of the early Arab raids into Asia Minor after the Arabs completed their conquest of Palestine and Syria in 640. The scanty Greek and Oriental Christian sources need supplementation from the Arabic ones. Although Charles C. Torrey published his edition of the Futūḥ Miṣr or History of the Conquest of Egypt, North Africa and Spain by Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam more than fifty years ago, Byzantinists do not appear to have consulted the important section on Egypt which has not been fully translated into a western language. Yet Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam, who was born c. 798-9 and who died in 871, is a significant and early historical authority. He provides a short reference to an Arab expedition against Amorium in the year A.H. 23 (A.D. 644): ‘… according to Layth b. Sa’d [and] he said ‘Wahb b. ‘Umayr was commander of the forces of Egypt in the Amorium expedition [fī ghazwati ‘Ammūriyata] in the year twenty-three and the commander of the forces of Syria [was] Abu’l-A’war al-Sulamī’.’