Battle of Mosul (731)

Infobox Military Conflict

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caption="Khazar warrior with captive", based on reconstruction by Norman Finkelshteyn
conflict=Battle of Marj Ardebil
partof=the Second Khazar-Arab War
date=731 CE
place=Outside Mosul
result=Arab victory
combatant1=Khazar Khaganate
combatant2=Umayyad Caliphate
commander1=Barjik †
commander2=Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik (?)
strength1=100,000, according to al-Tabari
strength2=?
casualties1=?
casualties2=?

The Battle of Mosul was a battle that took place during the Second Khazar-Arab War between the armies of the Khazar Khaganate, led by the khagan's son Barjik, and the Umayyad Caliphate, whose commanding general may have been Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik. After the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Marj Ardebil, the Arabs made a last-ditch stand outside Mosul to halt the Khazar incursion into Iraq, which threatened the Umayyad capital at Damascus. According to Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, the Khazar commander erected a throne overlooking the battlefield on which he mounted the severed and preserved head of al-Djarrah ibn Abdallah, the former Umayyad governor of Armenia defeated at Marj Ardebil. The Arabs, enraged by this desecration, fought harder than expected, and Barjik himself was killed. The Khazar army withdrew north of the Caucasus, abandoning their conquests in Azerbaijan and Arran.

ee also

*Battle of Mosul

References

*Kevin Alan Brook. "The Jews of Khazaria." 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006.
*Douglas M. Dunlop. "The History of the Jewish Khazars," Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954.
*Peter B. Golden. "Khazar Studies: An Historio-Philological Inquiry into the Origins of the Khazars." Budapest: Akademia Kiado, 1980.
*Norman Golb and Omeljan Pritsak, "Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century." Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982.