Between 688-689, Emperor Justinian II of Constantinople (r. 685-695, 705-711) reconquered lands in Thrace and Macedonia that had been occupied by Slavic tribes. In a curious move, the emperor then decided to immediately utilize those former Slavic enemies as a fighting force for his empire. He pulled together thousands of Slavic fighters, fully equipped them with imperial armor and weaponry, and appointed a commander to lead the group. Justinian II was evidently proud of this newly recruited force and deployed them on the eastern Anatolian front against the Umayyad Arabs, breaking a relative peace between the two sides that had been in place since Mu’awiya (r. 661-680)—founder of the Umayyad Dynasty—had to end his failed siege of Constantinople in 678, during the reign of Justinian’s father, Emperor Constantine IV (r. 668-685).
Emperor Justinian II loaded his Slavic army onto ships and transported them by way of the Black Sea to the vicinity of the major coastal city of Sebastopolis, near the Armenian theater of war. The emperor likely meant to use the Slavic army as an infantry force for his campaign, as he also summoned cavalry from the nearby garrisons to support the Slavic troops at Sebastopolis. Justinian’s deployments were completed around 692, and he formally declared war on the Umayyads, ruled at the time by Abd al-Malik (r. 685-705). These details, including the creation of the Slavic force and the subsequent deployment of troops at Sebastopolis, were recorded by the chronicler, Theophanes (c. 750s-818), who wrote, “In this year [Sep. 692-Aug. 693] Justinian made a selection from the Slavs he had resettled. He levied 30,000 men, armed them, and named them the ‘special army.’ Their commander was named Neboulos. Justinian, confident in them, wrote to the Arabs that he would not abide by the peace which had been agreed upon in writing. Taking up his special army and all the thematic cavalry, he traveled by sea to Sebastopolis” (Theophanes, Chronographia, entry for Annus Mundi 6184).
Faced with the emperor’s written warning and the mobilization of the imperial military, the Umyyads matched the emperor’s actions by deploying their own forces to the Sebastopolis region. Yet, as the two sides readied for war, diplomats tried to keep the peace intact. According to even Constantinople’s own records, the Umayyads attempted to convince Justinian II to stand down and continue abiding by the peace arrangements that had been in place for over a decade. Nevertheless, the diplomatic efforts collapsed and the two sides went to war. Theophanes, writing with the perspective of several decades-worth of bitter hindsight, dramatically described the military standoff:
“…Arabs did not choose to break the peace, but imperial guilt and indiscretion forced them to do so. They armed themselves and went to Sebastopolis, though they first swore to the Emperor that they had not perverted what the two sides had agreed upon with oaths…But since the Emperor would not tolerate hearing any such thing, being instead eager for battle, they dissolved the written peace treaty and rushed against the Romans. They hung a copy of the treaty from a spear to go before them in place of a banner” (Theophanes, Chronographia, entry for Annus Mundi 6184).
With war irrevocably begun, the Umayyad diplomats and envoys in the Sebastopolis region changed tactics from peacetime diplomacy to wartime intrigue. Instead of conversing with the emperor and his representatives, the Umayyad messengers now started investigating the loyalty of the recently-conquered and newly-recruited Slavic troops that Emperor Justinian II was relying upon during the Sebastopolis mission. Suffice it to say, many of the Slavic warriors still held a grudge against the emperor, and the vast majority of them were eager to turn against Constantinople. Detecting these sentiments, the local Umayyad commander was able to win over to his side the vast majority of the Slavic warriors that had been brought to the region, and the ensuing mass-defections made Justinian’s campaign a lost cause. Following the massive shift in the balance of power on the battlefield, the Umayyads inflicted a decisive defeat on the remaining forces of Emperor Justinian II, which subsequently allowed the Arabs to impose their rule on Armenia and other nearby regions. On the Arab commander’s recruitment of the Slavic forces, and the brutal imperial retaliation after the defeat, Theophanes wrote: “He sent him a purse loaded with nomismata and, deceiving him with many promises, persuaded him to desert to the Arabs with 20,000 Slavs. Then Justinian massacred the remaining Slavs (and their wives and children) at Leukate, a precipitous place by the sea on the gulf of Nikomedia. In this year [Sep. 693-Aug. 694] Sabbatios the prince of Armenia, after learning of the Roman defeat, surrendered to the Arabs. Also, inner Persia (known as Khorasan) came under their control” (Theophanes, Chronographia, entries for Annus Mundi 6184 and 6185).
A few years later, in 695, Emperor Justinian II would be dethroned and facially mutilated. The most direct causes of his overthrow are usually attributed to the emperor’s overly despotic tendencies and the financial strain that he imposed on the empire. Nevertheless, the abysmal debacle at Sebastopolis did nothing to help the emperor’s reputation, prestige and standing in the empire. In Justinian II’s absence, the freshly renewed war between Constantinople and the Arabs would continue. Notably, Abd al-Malik’s Umayyad forces overran the imperial holdings in Africa, conquering the provincial capital of Carthage in 697.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Solidus of Justinian II, dated between 685-95, [Public Domain] via the MET, on top of an illustration of The Upper Section of the Column of Arcadios in Constantinople, copied by Melchior Lorck (1526 – 1583), [Public Domain] via the SMK National Gallery of Denmark).
Sources:
- Theophanes, The Chronicle of Theophanes, translated by Harry Turtledove. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
- The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, edited by Oliver Nicholson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Justinian-II
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abd-al-Malik-Umayyad-caliph
