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Abdullah Ahmad 
The Sword of Allah: Khalid bin Al-Waleed: His Life and Campaigns 
by
Lieutenant-General A.I. Akram,
Book available fom Feroze Sons Publishers in Lahore, Pakistan
www.swordofallah.com
 
 
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Author
Lieutenant-General A.I. Akram, Rawalpindi, Pakistan in his own words:
Muslim history is replete with great military achievements and glorious feats of arms. Inthe annals of war there are no battles which surpass, in brilliance and decisiveness, thebattles of Islam; no commanders who surpass, in courage and skill, the gifted generals of Islam. The sword has always held a place of honour in Muslim culture. And yet very littleis known in the world today about the military history of Islam. There is not a singlework by a trained military mind, written after proper research and a thoroughexamination of the ground, describing in detail the famous battles of Islam. In fact therehas been no real research. There is a void.
 
I became conscious of this void in early 1964 when I was Chief Instructor at the Staff College, Quetta. Having always been a keen student of Military History, which subject Iused to direct, among others, at the Staff College, I felt that I was perhaps better qualifiedthan many Muslim soldiers to undertake the task of filling this gap in literature. Thewhole of Muslim military history would take several hundred volumes, but at least abeginning could be made; and I decided to accept the challenge. I would start at thebeginning; and I would describe the campaigns of Khalid bin Al Waleed (may Allah bepleased with him).
 
I found that a good deal of material was available on the early battles of Islam, but it wasall in Arabic. Not all early Muslim historians have been translated; and where translationsexist, they are often inaccurate and sometimes downright dishonest. For such researchone would have to know the language in which the original accounts were written. So Ilearned Arabic.
 
I then prepared a bibliography to include all the early historians, but excluded from it allwriters, Muslim or Christian, who lived and wrote after the Tenth Century. Since thelatter obtained all their information from the former, I decided to concentrate exclusivelyon the early sources and thus avoid being influenced in any way by the opinions andconjectures of later writers. The preparation of the bibliography was relatively easy; thereal problem was the procurement of the books, for these were not available in Pakistanand their cost in Arab countries was considerable. In this matter, however, I was helpedout by certain friends who very generously donated the books as a contribution to thisproject. These friends, who have all been my students at Quetta, are: Brigadier Majid HajHassan of Jordan, Brigadier H.U. Babar of Pakistan, and Majors Naif Aon Sharaf andAbdul Aziz Al Sheikh, both of Saudi Arabia. I thus came to possess an excellent libraryof early Muslim historical works; and with the acquisition of this material my researchbegan.
 
One of the most difficult tasks which faces any scholar dealing with such research is theabsence of geographical data. Geography forms the physical basis of military strategyand no military history is possible without knowing, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, the geographical conditions prevailing at the time. I was fortunate to acquire
 
3two excellent geographical works of the early Muslim period: Al Alaq-w-Nafeesa by IbnRusta and Al Buldan by Yaqubi, which explain in considerable detail the physical andpolitical geography of the time. From these works I was able to reconstruct the terrainconditions and pinpoint accurately the locations of many places which no longer exist. Ittook me several weeks of concentrated study to solve this problem and prepare the mapswhich are included in this book.
 
In my quest for maps I was also helped by Brigadier Majid Haj Hassan of Jordan andBrigadier H.U. Babar of Pakistan. And the last, though by no means least, of mygeographical aids was a historical atlas of Iraq prepared by Dr. Ahmad Sousa of Baghdad-an excellent piece of research which covers much more than Iraq in its scope.
 
Although the giants of historical literature in the first few centuries of the Muslim erawere almost all Muslims (as indeed were the giants of most branches of literature), I wasanxious to study some early Western authors as well in order to know their version of events, especially with regard to the Muslim conquest of Syria. I was able to discover twoByzantine historians, viz Nicephorus and Theophanes, both of the late Eighth and earlyNinth Centuries, but unfortunately could not find any translations of their works inlanguages which I know. I therefore decided to rely for the Western point of view on thecelebrated Edward Gibbon whose work: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, isundoubtedly a monumental contribution to history, his anti-Muslim prejudicenotwithstanding. It only gives a bird's-eye view but I had to be content with that in theabsence of other detailed, reliable Western literature.
 
While avoiding all books written after the Tenth Century for reasons already stated, Inevertheless studied certain later authors for help in matters of geography, so that I couldcollect all possible data which would make this book more accurate. I made extensive useof the famous Mu'jam-ul-Buldan by the Twelfth/Thirteenth Century scholar, Yaqut. Andof Twentieth Century geographical works, the one of greatest help to me was The MiddleEuphrates by Alois Musil, a Czech scholar who travelled extensively in Iraq and Syria inthe second decade of this Century and carried out a thorough study of the geography of the region traversed by the Euphrates.
 
Having completed my study of the books and the preparation of a first draft, I took leaveof absence from the Army and in early August 1968, set out from Pakistan. I first spentsome time in Europe, mainly in London and particularly in the British Museum, lookingfor works on Muslim campaigns against the Byzantine Empire. I could not find anyEnglish translations of early Western writers, but did get some useful references from theMuseum's library.
 
In late August I landed at Beirut, and now began my tour of the battlefields of Khalid binAl Waleed. I would see the lands over which Khalid marched, the places where Khalidfought his battles, and the sands on which the blood of his enemies had flowed in rivulets.In Lebanon I had no other work than to locate Abul Quds, a place where Khalid rescued atrapped Muslim column; and having located this place, I travelled by road to Syria.
 
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