For most of my young life, the Christians had been on the defensive. Antioch and Alexandria had fallen to the Sassanids. And then the Christians suffered the ultimate humiliation when the fire worshipers conquered Jerusalem and stole the sacred relics of the Church, including what was alleged by their priests to be the True Cross of Jesus. The Byzantines had been demoralized until the rise of the Emperor Heraclius, who had valiantly fought back against the Persians and expelled the invaders from the holy city.
The victorious Heraclius had rallied his people to take the fight to the enemy, and the Byzantines had attacked the very heart of the Persian empire, marching down the length of the Tigris River and sacking the Sassanid palace at Dastagered. Heraclius had nearly achieved his goal of taking the Persian capital at Ctesiphon, but the Persian defenders had destroyed the ancient bridges over the Nahrawan Canal, frustrating his advance. Heraclius had returned triumphantly to the seat of his own empire, but his victory was ultimately hollow. Though he had succeeded in pushing back his ancient adversaries, his army was broken by the constant warfare and the Byzantine treasury depleted.
The Sassanids were in even worse disarray, and the Persian king, Khusro, was overthrown and murdered by his own son Kavadh, who negotiated a shaky truce with the Byzantines. I remember when I first heard the news of Khusro’s death from a Yemeni merchant in the marketplace of Medina. I had smiled behind my veil, for Khusro had rejected my husband’s call to Islam, tearing up his letter in contempt. As the Messenger had prophesized then, his kingdom had been similarly torn in two.
The grand political events to the north provided interesting gossip, but they had been of little practical interest to the Muslims in the early years, as survival had been our primary focus. But now that Islam was established as the sole ruling force over a united Arabia, we could no more ignore the empires on our borders than they could us. These two great nations-Persian and Byzantine-had exhausted each other through centuries of warfare, and the rise of a new state in their midst presented an unexpected and dangerous threat to their delicate balance of power. Neither of the empires had the resources or energy to engage us directly, whatever threats may have rumbled from their envoys, and they were forced to use proxies in their effort to keep us in check. The Byzantines had tried to ally with the Jews of Khaybar, forcing my husband to conquer the city and use it as a defensive shield to the north. And the false prophet Musaylima was rumored to have received financing and training from the Persians to the east. But with the defeat of these quislings, the day was fast coming when our forces would come into direct contact with those of the rival empires.
And then one warm morning, a year after my husband had died, that day came. Acting upon orders from my father, Khalid sent an army of eighteen thousand men from Yamama into the fields of Persian Iraq, claiming them for Islam. The Persians responded with a force of nearly twice that size, led by elephants armored in steel. The Sassanid army was a terrifying juggernaut, the likes of which the Arabs had never before encountered, and the Arab swords and spears looked like toys compared to the mighty honed blades of the ancient Persian empire. But Khalid knew that this monstrous foe had one weakness. Mobility. The heavily shielded horses and elephants could not march for long under the hot desert sun without succumbing to exhaustion, and so he utilized the hit-and-run tactics the Messenger had perfected at Khaybar. The Muslims would ride out into the field and engage the front lines of the Persians, and then escape back into the wilderness, having goaded their adversaries into pursuit. The farther the Muslims drew the soldiers of Persia into the sands, the slower and more confused they became. By the time the Persian general Hormuz realized his tactical error, it was too late.
Khalid led the Muslims in one final charge, during which the tired and bewildered Sassanids used a standard defensive tactic that had worked for them in the past but would lead to tragedy that day. The Persian soldiers linked themselves together with chains to hold back Khalid’s cavalry. They stood united like a rock in the face of the Muslim charge. This tactic had been successful against Byzantine soldiers, who had decided that a frontal attack against the chain was nothing less than suicide. But the Persians did not understand that the guarantee of death on the battlefield did not deter Muslims but only encouraged them with the promise of eternal life. To the shock of the Persian defenders, Khalid’s horsemen crashed against the chained warriors without fear, immolating themselves on the lances of the Sassanids. As the Muslims continued to charge despite the wall of death, the Persians became frightened by their intensity and commitment, and panic began to spread among the dehydrated and exhausted troops. And then, when Khalid slew their commander, Hormuz, the Persian warriors tried to flee, but the chains that had been meant to hold back their enemies now became shackles that led them to their deaths.
Khalid’s men destroyed the Persian force in what became known to us as the Battle of the Chains. Thousands of the Sassanids’ best troops fell that day, and the Arabs had opened a door into the east. The Muslims exploded out of the desert and soon descended on the city of al-Hira, the capital of Persian Iraq, which had been administered by Arab Christians known as Lakhmids. Khalid showered the people of al-Hira with gifts and promised the Christians that their right of worship would be protected under the laws of Islam, a guarantee that had never been given by their Persian overlords. The Lakhmids quickly capitulated, and the boundaries of Islam had in one stunning swoop extended outside of the Arabian peninsula and reached the banks of the Euphrates.
Our nation had just become an empire.
THE REJOICING IN THE streets of Medina at word of Khalid’s victory was soon followed by sadness. My father fell deeply ill, and he was confined to his bed. I sensed the cloud of death that was hanging over Abu Bakr. I could not imagine a world without him any more than I could one without my husband. But in truth, I could still feel Muhammad’s presence in my room and found some comfort in the intuition that he was still with me. Yet my father was just an ordinary man, and when he passed away, he would truly be gone.
Asma and I stayed by his side, night and day, nursing him through the fever. And then one morning, I saw a look on his face, a serenity and resignation that told me that his time had come.
“Call Uthman,” he whispered to me.
I immediately dispatched a messenger, and within a few minutes the son of Affan arrived. As Uthman knelt beside my father, he looked older but was still remarkably handsome, and I noticed the sparkle of generosity and kindness in his eyes.
“What can I do for you, old friend?” he said, running a hand through my father’s thinning white hair.
“I have a testament for the people, a final command as Caliph that I want you to deliver to them,” my father said, enunciating every word carefully, his breath wheezing.
Uthman lowered his head. For a moment, I wondered if he would object, as had the Companions during Muhammad’s last illness. I trembled at the thought of another chaotic struggle for succession. The Muslims had established order only because of my father’s statesmanship. Would we have to endure another round of tribesmen jockeying for position? With the Muslim nation now expanding into the heart of the Persian empire, with enemies circling us like vultures over a battlefield, we could not afford another dispute over authority. And my heart chilled at the thought that the small but vocal faction that favored the right of Ali and the Prophet’s grandsons might not choose to acquiesce as easily as they had done before. If Uthman refused to pass along my father’s wishes, the Ummah could descend overnight into civil war.