Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik ( – 24 December 738) was an Umayyad prince and one of the most prominent Arab generals of the early decades of the 8th century, leading several campaigns against the Byzantine Empire and the Khazar Khaganate. He achieved great fame especially for leading the last Arab siege of the Byzantine capital Constantinople.
Maslama launched his military career leading the annual summer raids against the Byzantines in Anatolia. By 709, he was governor over Qinnasrin (northern Syria), the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia), Armenia, and Adharbayjan, giving him control over the Caliphate's northern frontier. From this position, he launched the first Arab expeditions against the Khazars across the Caucasus. Maslama's brother, Caliph Sulayman, appointed him to lead the campaign to capture Constantinople in 715, but it ended in disaster for the Arabs and he was ordered to withdraw by Sulayman's successor, Umar II, in 718.
After his brother Yazid II () came to power, Maslama was sent to suppress the revolt of Yazid ibn al-Muhallab in Iraq. Although successful, Maslama was recalled in 721, due to the Caliph's concerns over Maslama's growing power as governor of Iraq. Maslama was excluded from the line of succession because his mother was a slave concubine, but he secured the accession of his other brother, Hisham (). Under Hisham, Maslama resumed the campaigns against the Byzantines and the Khazars, with mixed results. In 732, he was replaced by his cousin, the future caliph Marwan II ().
Maslama was granted extensive estates by his brothers, investing considerable sums to reclaim and develop agricultural lands in Balis, the Balikh valley, and the marshlands of southern Iraq. The estates were inherited by his descendants, but were mostly confiscated by the Abbasid dynasty after they toppled the Umayyads in 750. Nonetheless, out of respect for Maslama's battlefield reputation, his descendants were largely spared from the Abbasids' wide-scale persecutions of the Umayyad family.
Family background Maslama was a son of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan () and half-brother of the caliphs al-Walid I (), Sulayman (), Yazid II () and Hisham ().. Maslama himself was excluded from the line of succession as his mother was a slave concubine. Around 691, Abd al-Malik arranged Maslama's marriage to al-Rabab, the daughter of the Qaysi tribal chief Zufar ibn al-Harith al-Kilabi, as part of the settlement to end Zufar's revolt against the Umayyads.
First command in the northwestern frontier Campaigns against the Byzantines
Maslama is first mentioned as leading, along with his nephew al-Abbas ibn al-Walid, the annual summer campaign (; pl. ) against the Byzantine Empire in 705. His first major expedition was the 707–708 campaign against the Byzantine city of Tyana in southeastern Asia Minor, which was launched in retaliation for the defeat and death of the distinguished general Maimun the Mardaite the year before. The siege lasted through winter and the Arab army faced great hardship, but after the Arabs defeated a Byzantine relief force in spring 708, the city surrendered. A few months later, in the summer, Maslama led another expedition into Asia Minor and defeated a Byzantine army near Amorium, while in 709 he raided into the region of Isauria.
In the same year, Maslama was appointed military governor of the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia), Armenia and Adharbayjan, succeeding his uncle Muhammad ibn Marwan. This he added to the post of governor of Jund Qinnasrin in northern Syria, which he already held during his father's reign. His governorship of Qinnasrin was not as well-documented by early Arabic chroniclers as his other posts. Together, command of these provinces effectively gave him complete control of the Caliphate's entire northwestern border. From this position he launched several campaigns against the Byzantines, devastating Galatia and sacking Amaseia in 712, and taking Melitene in 714.
War with the Khazars Maslama was also the first to establish the Caliphate's presence north of the Caucasus, leading to the commencement of direct conflict with the Khazars. Sources date the resumption of the conflict as early as 707 with a campaign by Maslama in Adharbayjan and up to Derbent (known in Arabic as Bab al-Abwab, 'Gate of Gates'). Further attacks on Derbent are reported by different sources in 708 by Muhammad ibn Marwan and the following year again by Maslama.
In 713/14, Maslama led an expedition which captured Derbent, reportedly after a resident showed him a secret underground passage. The Armenian historian Łewond claims that the Arabs, realizing that they could not hold the fortress, razed its walls. Maslama then drove deeper into Khazar territory. The Khazar confronted the Arabs at the city of Tarku but, apart from a series of single combats by champions, the two armies did not engage for several days. The imminent arrival of Khazar reinforcements under the general Alp' forced Maslama to quickly abandon his campaign and retreat to Iberia, leaving his camp with all its equipment as a ruse.
The early Muslim sources generally credit Maslama with leading the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in 713, though his nephew Abd al-Aziz ibn al-Walid is also cited as the leader that year. Leadership of the and the annual Hajj were both prestigious commands, which under the Umayyads were almost exclusively held by prominent members of the dynasty.
Siege of Constantinople
From 715 Maslama was the leading general in the plans of his brother, Caliph Sulayman, to conquer the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, as Sulayman himself was too ill to lead the campaign in person. Maslama led a huge army, which sources report to have numbered 120,000 men and 1,800 ships. In late 715, the Arab vanguard crossed the Taurus Mountains into Byzantine territory, Maslama following in spring 716 with the main army and the fleet. The Arabs' plans were aided by the recurrence of civil strife, which had plagued the Byzantines since 695; Emperor Anastasius II was overthrown by Theodosius III in 715, who was in turn opposed by the strategos of the Anatolic Theme, Leo the Isaurian. Maslama hoped to use the divisions among the Byzantines for his own benefit and initiated contacts with Leo, but the latter used the negotiations to outwit the Arab general and occupied for himself the strategic city of Amorium, which Maslama had intended to use as his winter base. As a result, Maslama marched further west, to the coastlands of the Thracesian Theme. There he spent the winter, while Leo marched against Theodosius in Constantinople, which he entered in March 717.
In early summer 717, Maslama with his army crossed from Asia into Europe over the Dardanelles, and proceeded to besiege Constantinople from land and sea. His navy, however, was soon neutralized by the use of Greek fire, and as his army was unable to overcome the city's land defences, the siege continued into the winter, which was especially severe that year, with snow covering the ground for three months. Maslama had brought along many supplies, but they either soon ran out or were lost—Arab accounts make much of Leo tricking the Arab general yet again during negotiations into handing over or destroying a significant part of his hoarded supplies—and the army began to suffer from hunger and disease.
In spring, reinforcements arrived in the form of two large fleets from Egypt and Ifriqiya, but a large part of their crews, who were mostly conscripted Christians, went over to the Byzantines, and Leo's navy destroyed or captured the Arab fleets. The Byzantines also defeated an Arab army marching to aid the besiegers through Asia Minor, while Maslama's troops contended with attacks by the Bulgars as well, costing them many men. The siege had failed, and the new Caliph, Umar II (), ordered Maslama to retreat. On 15 August 718, after thirteen months of siege, the Arabs departed.
Governorship in Iraq After his failure at Constantinople, Maslama was dispatched to Iraq to quell the Kharijites, an Islamic sect opposed to the Umayyads. Following Umar's death and the accession of his brother Yazid II in 720, he was tasked with suppressing the mass Iraqi revolt led by Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, whom he defeated and killed in August 720. As governor of Iraq, a major provincial office whose authority extended over the eastern half of the Caliphate, Maslama championed the Qays in their factional conflict with the Yaman, whose interests Ibn al-Muhallab had represented. Maslama dismissed all the Yamani sub-governors of Iraq and the eastern provinces and voided all the orders Ibn al-Muhallab had issued while in office. Maslama soon fell out of favour with the Caliph, who resented and feared his power as governor of Iraq, as well as his interference in the caliphal succession: Maslama favoured his brother Hisham over Yazid's son al-Walid. Yazid recalled Maslama from his post, ostensibly because he had failed to deliver his provinces' tax haul to the caliphal capital, Damascus, and replaced him with Maslama's Qaysi protege, Umar ibn Hubayra al-Fazari.
Second command in the northwestern frontier Raids against Byzantium and the sack of Caesarea Maslama then disappears from the sources and re-emerges in 725, shortly after Yazid's death and the accession of Hisham, who sent Maslama to replace the veteran general al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah al-Hakami in the Caucasus front against the Khazars. Initially, however, Maslama was mostly active in the Byzantine front, and the war against the Khazars was delegated to al-Harith ibn Amr al-Ta'i. In winter 725, Maslama led an expedition against Asia Minor from Melitene, which culminated in the sack of Caesarea on 13 January 726. Along with the capture of Gangra by Abdallah al-Battal in 727, this was one of the major successes of Arab arms against the Byzantines in the 720s. A few months later, he also led the otherwise unremarkable northern into Byzantine territory.
Fighting the Khazars, 727–728
Maslama's attention was then diverted to the Khazar front, where 726 had seen major Khazar invasions into Albania and Adharbayjan. Both sides escalated their commitment in 727: Maslama for the first time confronted the himself. The Arabs took the offensive, probably reinforced with Syrian and Jaziran troops. Maslama recovered the Darial Pass and pushed into Khazar territory, campaigning there until the onset of winter forced him to return to Adharbayjan.
A second invasion in the following year, ended in what the historian Khalid Yahya Blankinship calls a "near disaster". Arab sources report that the Umayyad troops fought for thirty or forty days in the mud, with continuous rain, before defeating the on 17 September 728. The impact of their victory is questionable, however; Maslama was ambushed by the Khazars upon his return, and the Arabs abandoned their baggage train and fled through the Darial Pass to safety.
After this campaign, Maslama was replaced as governor yet again by al-Jarrah. Despite his energy, Maslama's campaigns failed to produce the desired results; by 729, the Arabs had lost control of northeastern Transcaucasia and were again on the defensive, with al-Jarrah having to defend Adharbayjan against a Khazar invasion. He is then recorded by the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes the Confessor as having been responsible for the sack of the fortress of Charsianon in late 730, but Arab sources credit Mu'awiya ibn Hisham for this act.
Third command in the northwestern frontier In the Caucasus, the situation quickly deteriorated after Maslama's departure. While al-Jarrah campaigned north of the Caucasus, the Khazars swung behind him and attacked his main base, Ardabil. Hastening to relieve the city, al-Jarrah was defeated and killed, and his army practically annihilated in a battle outside the city on 9 December 730.