125-580: Arthur Graeme West (September, 1891 – 3 April 1917) was a British writer and war poet . West was born in Eaton, Norfolk , educated at Highgate School , then Blundell's School and Balliol College, Oxford , and killed by a sniper in 1917. West enlisted as a Private with the Public Schools Battalion in January 1915. He joined from a feeling of duty and patriotism, but the war had
250-515: A Dead Officer (1919), which presents a scathing picture of army life and a vivid account of daily life in the trenches. The book was published posthumously and edited by C. E. M. Joad , an Oxford colleague of West's and an active pacifist (and contemporary of West's at Blundell's). It was reissued in 1991 by the Imperial War Museum and published again by Greenhill Books in 2007 with an introduction by Nigel Jones . The first edition of
375-860: A Jewish poet who wrote in German from Podiebrad an der Elbe in the Kingdom of Bohemia , had enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1913. On 4 November 1917, Janowitz died of wounds received at the Battle of Caporetto . Two years after his death, a volume of Janowitz's war poems, Aus der Erde und anderen Dichtungen ("Out of the Earth and Other Poems") was published in Munich . The first complete collection of his poems, however, came out only in 1992. According to Jeremy Adler, "Franz Janowitz conflicts with
500-541: A grand scale for English, Stramm achieved more modestly for German." Stramm's war poetry was first published by Herwarth Walden in the avant-garde literary journal Der Sturm and later appeared in the collection Tropfenblut ("Dripping Blood"), which was published in 1919. Muslim conquest of Persia Khuzestan Central Persia Caucasus Pars Khorasan Other geographies Byzantine Empire Sassanid Persia Caucasus Other regions The Muslim conquest of Persia , also called
625-473: A grandson of Khosrau II and was said to be a mere child aged 8 years. After the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah in 628, Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad sent many letters to the princes, kings, and chiefs of the various tribes and kingdoms of the time, exhorting them to convert to Islam and bow to the order of God. These letters were carried by ambassadors to Persia , Byzantium , Ethiopia , Egypt , Yemen , and
750-467: A great impression on him. In August 1916 he became a second lieutenant in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry . Shortly after, he wrote to his new battalion threatening to desert the army - but he could not bring himself to post the letter. Less than a year later, on 3 April 1917, he was shot dead by a sniper's bullet near Bapaume . West is principally known for one book, The Diary of
875-569: A major offence in the Levant, Yazdegerd ordered the concentration of massive armies to push the Muslims out of Mesopotamia for good through a series of well-coordinated attacks on two fronts. Umar ordered his army to retreat to the Arabian border and began raising armies at Medina for another campaign into Mesopotamia. Owing to the critical situation, Umar wished to command the army personally, but
1000-749: A major role in convincing the Prince to come to Scotland and to initiate the Jacobite Rising of 1745 . Other poems about the Uprising were written in both Gaelic and English by John Roy Stewart , who served as colonel of the Edinburgh Regiment and a close and trusted confidant of Prince Charles Edward Stuart . The Irish poem Mo Ghile Mear , which was composed by the County Cork Bard Seán "Clárach" Mac Domhnaill ,
1125-597: A massive army from a coalition of Greek states led by King Agamemnon of Mycenae . The events between the cremation of Hector and the Fall of Troy are expanded upon in the 4th century epic poem Posthomerica , by Quintus of Smyrna . In pre-Islamic Persia, the war poem Ayadgar-i Zariran ('Memorial of Zarer') was composed; it was preserved by Zoroastrian priests after the Muslim conquest of Persia . In its surviving manuscript form, "The Memorial of Zarer" represents one of
1250-750: A massive influence on Ukrainian literature . The Lay also captured the imagination of the intelligentsia during the Golden Age of Russian Poetry and has had a major influence on Russian literature and culture . In 1375, Scottish Makar , or court poet, John Barbour completed the epic poem The Brus , which celebrates the deeds of Robert the Bruce , who led the Scottish people in their Wars of Independence against Kings Edward I and Edward II of England and who ultimately became King of Scotland . Around 1488, fellow Scottish Makar Blind Harry wrote
1375-614: A patriotic rally call for the North. Whitman volunteered for a time as a nurse in the army hospitals, and his collection Drum-Taps (1865) deals with his experiences during the War. On 18 July 1863, Die Minnesota-Staats-Zeitung , a newspaper published by and for German-speaking Forty-Eighters living in Minnesota , printed An die Helden des Ersten Minnesota Regiments ("To the Heroes of
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#17327978680291500-678: A poet from Clan Macrae , who emigrated to Moore County in the Colony of North Carolina around 1774, fought as a Loyalist during the American Revolution , and composed Gaelic war poetry there until his death around 1780. In 1783, the year that saw the end of the American Revolution and the beginning of the Highland Clearances in Inverness-shire, Cionneach mac Cionnich , a poet from Clan MacKenzie who
1625-530: A prime target for the Muslims. Sasanian society was divided into four classes: priests, warriors, secretaries, and commoners. The latter formed the bulk of the population, served as its sole tax base, and remained its poorest class. At the climax of Khosrau II's ambitious Byzantine territory conquests in the Levant and much of Asia Minor , taxes rose dramatically, and most people could not pay. Years of Sassanid-Byzantine wars had ruined trade routes and industry,
1750-478: A profound effect on him. An individualist who hated routine and distrusted discipline, he developed an intense abhorrence to army life and began to question the very core of his beliefs – in religion, patriotism and the reason for war. This growing disillusionment found expression in two particularly powerful war poems he wrote during this time: "God, How I Hate You" and "Night Patrol". In his diary he describes reading Bertrand Russell 's writings on pacifism, which made
1875-563: Is "the first epic poem in Hungarian literature " and "one of the major works of Hungarian literature". Kenneth Clark 's Civilisation describes Szigeti veszedelem as one of the major literary achievements of the 17th century. Even though John Milton 's Paradise Lost is often credited with resurrecting Classical epic poetry , Milton's poem was published in 1667, sixteen years after Zrínyi's Szigeti Veszedelem . Another Croatian nobleman warrior-poet Pavao Ritter Vitezović wrote about
2000-538: Is His servant and Prophet. Under the Command of God, I invite you to Him. He has sent me for the guidance of all people so that I may warn them all of His wrath and may present the unbelievers with an ultimatum. Embrace Islam so that you may remain safe. And if you refuse to accept Islam, you will be responsible for the sins of the Magi. There are differing accounts of the reaction of Khosrau II . Years of warfare between
2125-785: Is a lament for the defeat of the Uprising at the Battle of Culloden . The poem is a soliloquy by the Kingdom of Ireland , whom Seán Clárach personifies, according to the rules of the Aisling genre, as a woman from the Otherworld . The woman laments her state and describes herself as a grieving widow due to the defeat and exile of her lawful King. Poems about the Jacobite rising of 1745 have also been written in English by Sir Walter Scott , Carolina Nairne , Agnes Maxwell MacLeod , Allan Cunningham , and William Hamilton . However, even as
2250-403: Is believed to have been composed by Homer , a blind Greek Bard from Ionia . It is among the oldest surviving works of Western literature , believed to have begun as oral literature . The first written form is usually dated to around the 8th century BC. The Iliad is set during the ten-year siege of the polis of Troy ( Ilium ), ruled by King Priam and his sons Hector and Paris , by
2375-789: Is inspired by and named after Ali Pasha , the governor of the Pashalik of Ioannina in Ottoman Greece , describing, in heroic style, his life, and his military campaigns. The poem is written in Demotic Greek , which Shehreti considered a far more prestigious language than Turkish or Albanian . Historically, the Alipashiad is unique in Greek poetry due to its having been written from an Islamic point of view. The Greek War of Independence raged from 1821 to 1830 and resulted in
2500-413: Is known to have based his account very heavily on the memoirs of Zrinski's valet, Franjo Črnko. Karnarutić is known to have drawn further inspiration from Marko Marulić 's Judita . In 1651, Hungarian poet Miklós Zrínyi , the great-grandson of Nikola Zrinski, published the epic poem Szigeti veszedelem (" The Siege of Sziget "). According to Encyclopædia Britannica Online , The Siege of Sziget
2625-435: Is now Iraq was under Islamic control. Khalid received a call for aid from northern Arabia at Dawmat al-Jandal, where another Muslim Arab general, Iyad ibn Ghanm , was trapped among the rebel tribes. Khalid went there and defeated the rebels in the Battle of Dawmat al-Jandal in the last week of August. Upon his return, he received news of the assembling of a large Persian army. He decided to defeat them all separately to avoid
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#17327978680292750-738: Is now widely believed that the annexation of the Lakhmid kingdom was one of the main factors behind the fall of the Sasanian Empire and the subsequent Islamic conquest of Persia, as the Lakhmids agreed to act as spies for the Muslims after being defeated in the Battle of Hira by Khalid ibn al-Walid . The Persian ruler Khosrau II (Parviz) defeated a dangerous rebellion within his own empire, Bahram Chobin 's rebellion. He then turned his focus to his traditional Byzantine enemies, leading to
2875-690: Is poetry on the topic of war. While the term is applied especially to works of the First World War , the term can be applied to poetry about any war, including Homer 's Iliad , from around the 8th century BC as well as poetry of the American Civil War , the Spanish Civil War , the Crimean War and other wars. War poets may be combatants or noncombatants. The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameter which
3000-596: Is portrayed as having fought in the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 as an elite mercenary soldier for Æthelstan . The foundational masterpiece of Welsh poetry , Y Gododdin ( c. 638 – c. 1000 ), tells how Mynyddog Mwynfawr , the King of Gododdin in the Hen Ogledd , summoned warriors from several other Welsh kingdoms and led them in a campaign against the Anglo-Saxons which culminated with
3125-753: Is sometimes referred to as "The Poet-Priest of the Confederacy," and as "The Poet Laureate of the South." Rudyard Kipling wrote poetry in support of the British cause in the Boer War , including the well-known "Lichtenberg", which is about a combatant's death in a foreign land. Swinburne , Thomas Hardy , and others wrote also poems relating to the Boer War. Hardy's poems include "Drummer Hodge", and " The Man He Killed ". '"Swinburne regularly donated work to
3250-546: The 2nd Minnesota Cavalry Regiment . During his service in that Regiment, Thomas wrote many Welsh poems, including Pryddest ar Wir Fawredd . On the Confederate side, the most well-known Civil War poet is Father Abram Ryan , a Roman Catholic priest and former military chaplain to the Confederate Army . Father Ryan, who eulogized the defeated South in poems like The Conquered Banner and The Sword of Lee ,
3375-522: The Austro-Hungarian Army prior to the outbreak of war in 1914. In response, Gyóni had written the great pacifist poem, Cézar, én nem megyek ("Caesar, I Will Not Go"). According to Peter Sherwood, "Gyóni's first, still elated, poems from the Polish Front recall the 16th century Hungarian poet Bálint Balassi 's soldiers' songs of the marches, written during the campaign against the Turks ." During
3500-787: The Ban of Croatia , defended the Hungarian fortress of the same name against an enormous Ottoman army under the command of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent , has thrice been made the subject of epic poetry . The first epic poem about the Siege was composed in Croatian by the poet Brne Karnarutić of Zadar , titled Vazetje Sigeta grada (English: The Taking of the City of Siget ), and posthumously published at Venice in 1584. Karnarutić
3625-493: The Battle of Catraeth around the year 600. The narrator names himself as Aneirin and professes to have been one of only two to four Welsh survivors of the battle. The Brussels Manuscript of the Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib , which is believed to have been written around 1635 by Franciscan friar and historian Mícheál Ó Cléirigh , contains many Irish war poems not found elsewhere. Like the other two surviving manuscripts,
3750-535: The Battle of Ullais , fought in mid-May. The Persian court, already disturbed by internal problems, was thrown into chaos. In the last week of May, the important city of Al-Hirah fell to the Muslims . After resting his armies, in June, Khalid laid siege to the city of al-Anbar , which surrendered in July. Khalid then moved south, and conquered the city of Ayn al-Tamr in the last week of July. At this point, most of what
3875-673: The British Army on the night before the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Longfellow's poem was first published in the January 1861 issue of The Atlantic Monthly and later included as part of Longfellow's 1863 poetry collection Tales of a Wayside Inn . Ralph Waldo Emerson 's 1837 poem Concord Hymn pays tribute to the Patriot militia at the Battle of Concord and famously says that they fired, " The shot heard round
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4000-603: The Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602–628 . For a few years, he succeeded. From 612 to 622, he extended the Persian borders almost to the same extent that they were under the Achaemenid dynasty (550–330 BC), capturing Western states as far as Egypt , Palestine (the conquest of the latter being assisted by a Jewish army), and more. The Byzantines regrouped and pushed back in 622 under Heraclius . Khosrau
4125-602: The Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 . Following the execution of Sasanian shah Khosrow II in 628, Persia's internal political stability began deteriorating at a rapid pace. Subsequently, ten new royal claimants were enthroned within the next four years. Shortly afterwards, Persia was further devastated by the Sasanian Interregnum , a large-scale civil war that began in 628 and resulted in the government's decentralization by 632. Amidst Persia's turmoil,
4250-732: The Czech nobility 's offer of the throne of the Kingdom of Bohemia , after the local officials of "The Knave of Hearts", the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II , were overthrown in a palace coup known as the Third Defenestration of Prague . In German poetry , the Baroque anti-war sonnets of Andreas Gryphius remain well known. Gryphius made many enemies for himself by denouncing the destruction, suffering, and needless civilian casualties left behind by
4375-466: The Don River . Since its 18th-century rediscovery in a 15th-century manuscript from Yaroslavl and 1800 publication by Aleksei Musin-Pushkin , The Lay has inspired other poems, art, music, and the opera Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin . It is claimed by Russians, Belarusians , and Ukrainians as a national epic . As the main characters of the poem came from modern Ukraine , The Lay has had
4500-767: The Earl of Surrey defeated and killed King James IV of Scotland and gave no quarter to an estimated 12,000 nobles and commons recruited from both the Scottish Highlands and Lowlands, is sometimes considered the end of the Middle Ages in the British Isles . By far the most famous war poem about the battle is the poem in Scots , The Flowers of the Forest by Lady Jean Elliot . In 1755, Lady Jean published
4625-615: The Euphrates River. The border was constantly contested. Most battles, and thus most fortifications, were concentrated in the hilly regions of the north, as the vast Arabian or Syrian Desert (Roman Arabia) separated the rival empires in the south. The only dangers expected from the south were occasional raids by nomadic Arab tribesmen. Both empires therefore allied themselves with small, semi-independent Arab principalities, which served as buffer states and protected Byzantium and Persia from Bedouin attacks. The Byzantine clients were
4750-597: The Ghassanids ; the Persian clients were the Lakhmids . The Ghassanids and Lakhmids feuded constantly, which kept them occupied, but that did not greatly affect the Byzantines or the Persians. In the 6th and 7th centuries, various factors destroyed the balance of power that had held for so many centuries. The conflict with the Byzantines greatly contributed to its weakness, by draining Sassanid resources, leaving it
4875-622: The Muslim armies. Moreover, the powerful northern and eastern Parthian families, the kust-i khwarasan and kust-i adurbadagan, withdrew to their respective strongholds and made peace with the Arabs, refusing to fight alongside the Sassanians. Another important theme of Pourshariati's study is a re-evaluation of the traditional timeline. Pourshariati argues that the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia "took place, not, as has been conventionally believed, in
5000-467: The Muslim conquest of Persia , they relied solely on the accounts of the Armenian Christian bishop Sebeos , and accounts in Arabic written some time after the events they describe. The most significant work was probably that of Arthur Christensen , and his L’Iran sous les Sassanides , published in Copenhagen and Paris in 1944. Recent scholarship has begun to question the traditional narrative: Parvaneh Pourshariati , in her Decline and Fall of
5125-406: The Muslim conquest of Iran , the Arab conquest of Persia , or the Arab conquest of Iran , was a major military campaign undertaken by the Rashidun Caliphate between 632 and 654. As part of the early Muslim conquests , which had begun under Muhammad in 622, it led to the fall of the Sasanian Empire and the eventual decline of Zoroastrianism , which had been predominant throughout Persia as
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5250-455: The Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the 7th century. It is one of the world's longest epic poems created by a single poet, and the national epic of Greater Iran . The Shahnameh also contains many works of war poetry. Armenia 's national epic , Sasna Tsrer ( Daredevils of Sassoun ), is set during the time of the invasion of Armenia by the Caliphate of Baghdad (about 670), and focuses on
5375-453: The Safavids forcefully converted Iran to Shia Islam in the 18th century. This was the first time since the collapse of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BC with the Battle of Opis , that Mesopotamia was ruled again by Semitic -speaking people, after centuries of Persian ( Achaemenid , Parthian and Sasanian empires), and Roman-Greek ( Macedonian , Seleucid the Roman empires) ruling periods. When Western academics first investigated
5500-429: The Siege of Przemyśl , Gyóni wrote poems to encourage the city's defenders and these verses were published there, under the title, Lengyel mezőkön, tábortúz melett ( By Campfire on the Fields of Poland ). A copy reached Budapest by aeroplane , which was an unusual feat in those days. According to Erika Papp Faber, "His leaning toward Socialism and his anti-militarist attitude were, for a brief time, suspended, as he
5625-400: The battle of the same name . The Battle of Brunanburh in 937 is also celebrated by an Old English poem of the same name in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , which in 1880 was translated into modern English, in a metrical mixture of Trochees and dactyls , by Alfred Tennyson . The anti-hero Egill Skallagrímsson of Egil's Saga , attributed to the twelfth-century bard Snorri Sturluson ,
5750-417: The guerrilla warfare of Boer Commando leader Christiaan De Wet . Published poets wrote over two thousand poems about and during the war. However, only a small fraction still is known today, and several poets that were popular with contemporary readers are now obscure. An orthodox selection of poets and poems emerged during the 1960s, which often remains the standard in modern collections and distorts
5875-430: The ship of state into shipwreck. MacCionnich also argues that truth is on the side of George Washington and the Continental Army and that the Gaels would do well to emigrate from the Highlands and Islands to the United States before the King and the landlords take every farthing they have left. During the early 19th century, Albanian Muslim bard Haxhi Shehreti composed the epic poem Alipashiad . The work
6000-435: The Arabs managed to maintain their presence in the area. Later on, the Persians defeated Abu Ubaid in the Battle of the Bridge . Muthanna bin Haritha was later victorious in the Battle of Buwayb . In 635 Yazdgerd III sought an alliance with Emperor Heraclius of the Eastern Roman Empire , marrying the latter's daughter (or, by some traditions, his granddaughter) in order to seal the arrangement. While Heraclius prepared for
6125-427: The Battle. His poem Odiljenje sigetsko ("The Sziget Farewell"), first published in 1684, reminisces about the event without rancour or crying for revenge. The last of the four cantos is titled "Tombstones" and consists of epitaphs for the Croatian and Turkish warriors who died during the siege, paying equal respect to both. In her book The Real Personage of Mother Goose , author Katherine Elwes Thomas alleges that
6250-454: The British upper class and the literary world were romanticizing the Uprising and the culture of the Scottish clans , the suppression of Highland Scottish culture, which had begun after the rising's defeat, continued for nearly two centuries afterward. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 's 1860 poem Paul Revere's Ride both retells and fictionalizes the efforts of Boston silversmith Paul Revere to warn Patriot militia of an imminent attack by
6375-423: The Brussels Manuscript relates the wars between the Irish clans and the Norse and Danish invaders , and celebrates the ultimate rise to power of Brian Boru as High King of Ireland . The Song of Dermot and the Earl is an anonymous Anglo-Norman verse chronicle written in the early 13th century in England. It retells the 1170 invasion of Ireland by Diarmait Mac Murchada , the wars that followed between
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#17327978680296500-466: The Byzantines with Persian support. Umar, allegedly aware of this alliance and not wanting to risk a battle with two great powers simultaneously, quickly reinforced the Muslim army at Yarmouk to engage and defeat the Byzantines. Meanwhile, he ordered Saad to enter into peace negotiations with Yazdegerd III and invite him to convert to Islam to prevent Persian forces from taking the field. Heraclius instructed his general Vahan not to engage in battle with
6625-409: The Earl since Goddard Henry Orpen published a diplomatic edition under this title in 1892. The Tale of Igor's Campaign ( Слово о пълкѹ Игоревѣ ), an epic poem in Old East Slavic , describes a failed raid made in the year 1185 by an army led by Prince Igor Svyatoslavich of Novgorod-Seversk against the Polovtsians ( Cumans ), Pagan Turkic nomads living along the southern banks of
6750-420: The English nursery rhyme The Queen of Hearts is about the events that caused the outbreak of the Thirty Years War . The King and Queen of Hearts are, according to Elwes Thomas, a thinly disguised description of Elector Palatine ( German : Kurfürst von der Pfalz ) Friedrich V and his wife Elizabeth Stuart . The Queen's decision to bake tarts refers to her persuasion of her Calvinist husband to accept
6875-400: The European imagination. For poets, the unprecedented scale of violence annihilated the classic traditions of war literature – individual heroism, military glory, and virtuous leadership. Writers struggled for a new idiom commensurate with their apocalyptic personal experience. European Modernism emerged from the trenches of the Western Front . " British poetry especially was transformed by
7000-424: The First Minnesota Regiment"), a work of German poetry in tribute to the Union soldiers of the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment and their iconic charge from Cemetery Ridge during the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg . The poet was G. A. Erdman of Hastings, Minnesota . Also during the American Civil War, Edward Thomas, a Welsh-language poet whose Bardic name was Awenydd , enlisted in Company E of
7125-422: The Great War." August Stramm , who is considered the first of the expressionists , has been called by Jeremy Adler one of, "the most innovative poets of the First World War ." Stramm, Adler writes, treated, "language like a physical material" and, "honed down syntax to its bare essentials." Citing Stramm's fondness for "fashioning new words out of old," Adler has also written that, "what James Joyce did on
7250-412: The Highland Clans" and Òran do'n Phrionnsa – "A Song to the Prince," serve as testament to the Bard's passionate loyalty to the House of Stuart . According to literary historian John MacKenzie , these poems were sent to Aeneas MacDonald , the brother of the Clanranald tacksman of Kinlochmoidart . Aeneas read the poems aloud to Prince Charles Edward Stuart in English translation and the poems played
7375-501: The Muslims before receiving explicit orders. Fearing more Arab reinforcements, Vahan attacked the Muslim army in the Battle of Yarmouk in August 636, and was routed. With the Byzantine threat ended, the Sasanian Empire was still a formidable power with vast manpower reserves, and the Arabs soon found themselves confronting a huge Persian army with troops drawn from every corner of the empire, including war elephants, and commanded by its foremost generals. Within three months, Saad defeated
7500-399: The Persian army in the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah , effectively ending Sasanian rule west of Persia proper. This victory is largely regarded as a decisive turning point in Islam's growth: with the bulk of Persian forces defeated, Saad with his companions later conquered Babylon ( Battle of Babylon (636) ), Kūthā , Sābāṭ ( Valashabad ) and Bahurasīr ( Veh-Ardashir ). Ctesiphon , the capital of
7625-421: The Persians decided to take back their lost territory. The Muslim army was forced to leave the conquered areas and concentrate on the border. Umar immediately sent reinforcements to aid Muthanna ibn Haritha in Mesopotamia under the command of Abu Ubaid al-Thaqafi . At that time, a series of battles between the Persians and Arabs occurred in the region of Sawad , such as Namaraq , Kaskar and Baqusiatha, in which
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#17327978680297750-423: The Roman forces, it was too slow and regimented to act with full force against the agile and unpredictable lightly armed Arab cavalry and foot archers. The Persian army had a few initial successes. War elephants temporarily halted the Arab army, but when Arab veterans returned from the Syrian fronts, where they had been fighting against Byzantine forces, they provided crucial instruction on how to effectively counter
7875-439: The Sasanian Empire. In 642, Umar ibn al-Khattab , eight years into his reign as Islam's second caliph , ordered a full-scale invasion of the rest of the Sasanian Empire. Directing the war from the city of Medina in Arabia, Umar's quick conquest of Persia in a series of coordinated and multi-pronged attacks became his greatest triumph, contributing to his reputation as a great military and political strategist. In 644, however, he
8000-412: The Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran , published in 2008, provides both a detailed overview of the problematic nature of trying to establish exactly what happened, and a great deal of original research that questions fundamental facts of the traditional narrative, including the timeline and specific dates. Pourshariati's central thesis is that contrary to what
8125-412: The Sasanian towns in Mesopotamia , actions that generated a considerable amount of booty was collected. Al-Muthanna ibn Haritha went to Medina to inform Abu Bakr about his success and was appointed commander of his people, after which he began to raid deeper into Mesopotamia. Using the mobility of his light cavalry , he could easily raid any town near the desert and disappear again into the desert, beyond
8250-448: The Sasanians and the Byzantines, as well as the strain of the Khazar invasion of Transcaucasia , had exhausted the army. No effective ruler followed Khosrau II , causing chaos in society and problems in the provincial administration, until Yazdegerd III rose to power. All these factors undermined the strength of the Persian army. Yazdegerd III was merely 8 years old when he came to the throne and, lacking experience, did not try to rebuild
8375-406: The Sassanid Empire, fell in March 637 after a siege of three months. In December 636, Umar ordered Utbah ibn Ghazwan to head south to capture al-Ubulla (known as "port of Apologos" in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea ) and Basra , in order to cut ties between the Persian garrison there and Ctesiphon . Utbah ibn Ghazwan arrived in April 637, and captured the region. The Persians withdrew to
8500-456: The Uprising was only completed many years later. When Ailean Dearg, the Chief of Clan Macdonald of Clanranald had been mortally wounded at the Battle of Sherrifmuir , Alasdair Dubh, 11th Chief of Clan MacDonald of Glengarry rallied the faltering warriors of Clan Donald by throwing up his Highland bonnet and crying Buillean an-diugh, tuiream a-màireach! ("Blows today, mourning tomorrow!"). Following Alasdair Dubh's death (c. 1721 or 1724), he
8625-403: The army. The Sasanian Empire was highly decentralized, and was in fact a "confederation" with the Parthians , who themselves retained a high level of independence. After the last Sasanian-Byzantine war, the Parthians wanted to withdraw from the confederation, and the Sasanians were thus ill-prepared and ill-equipped to mount an effective and cohesive defense against the Muslim armies. Moreover,
8750-418: The book consisted of an introduction by Joad, extracts from West's 1915-17 diary, and several essays and poems. Joad edited the book as pacifist propaganda and it was published jointly by the left-wing Herald newspaper and Sir Francis Meynell's Pelican Press (Meynell's other publications had included Sassoon's protest in 1917). Jones' edition does not include Joad's introduction. War poet War poetry
8875-408: The city of Al-Hirah in Iraq on the same day. This assertion has been brought under scrutiny by some modern historians of Islam—notably Grimme and Caetani. Particularly in dispute is the assertion that Khosrau II received a letter from Muhammad, as the Sassanid court ceremony was notoriously intricate, and it is unlikely that a letter from what at the time was a minor regional power would have reached
9000-455: The earliest surviving works of Iranian literature and the only surviving epic poem in Pahlavi . Historically, Iranian epic poems such as this one were composed and sung by travelling minstrels, who in pre-Islamic and Zoroastrian times were a fixture of Iranian society. Ferdowsi 's 11th century Shahnameh ("Book of Kings") retells the mythical and to some extent the historical past of
9125-586: The effects of war and the transitoriness of human life; "Menschliches Elende" (Human misery); and "Trawrklage des verwüsteten Deutschlandes" (Lament of a Devastated Germany). In 1632, Gryphius had witnessed the pillaging and burning of the Silesian town of Freystadt by the Protestant troops of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden . Gryphius immortalized the sack of the city in a detailed eyewitness account titled Fewrige Freystadt , which made him many enemies. In
9250-596: The end of the First World War. Georg Trakl , an Expressionist poet from Salzburg , enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army as a medical officer in 1914. He personally witnessed the Battle of Gródek , fought in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria , in which the Austro-Hungarian Army suffered a bloody defeat at the hands of the Imperial Russian Army . Georg Trakl is best known for the poem Grodek . Franz Janowitz [ de ] ,
9375-665: The entirety of the Arab Peninsula under the authority of the Caliph at Medina. Abu Bakr set in motion a historical trajectory (continued later by Umar and Uthman) that in a few decades led to one of the largest empires in history , beginning with a confrontation with the Sassanid Empire under the general Khalid ibn al-Walid . After the Ridda wars , a tribal chief of northeastern Arabia, Al-Muthanna ibn Haritha , raided
9500-469: The epic poem The Wallace , about the life and death of iconic Scottish nationalist Sir William Wallace . The events of the Scottish Wars of Independence are also a regular theme in the verse of Scotland 's national poet , Robert Burns . The 15th-century poem Zadonschina , which draws upon the same tradition of Pre-Christian Slavic war poetry as The Tale of Igor , was composed to glorify
9625-702: The first Rashidun invasion of Sasanian territory took place in 633, when the Rashidun army conquered parts of Asoristan , which was the Sasanians' political and economic centre in Mesopotamia . Later, the regional Rashidun army commander Khalid ibn al-Walid was transferred to oversee the Muslim conquest of the Levant , and as the Rashidun army became increasingly focused on the Byzantine Empire ,
9750-521: The first epidemic was brought by the Sasanian armies from its campaigns in Constantinople , Syria , and Armenia . It caused the death of many Aryan and therefore contributed to the fall of the Sasanian Empire. Khosrau II was executed in 628 and, as a result, there were numerous claimants to the throne; from 628 to 632 there were ten kings and queens of Persia. The last, Yazdegerd III , was
9875-920: The hands of the Shahanshah. With regards to Persia, Muslim histories further recount that at the beginning of the seventh year of migration, Muhammad appointed one of his officers, Abdullah Huzafah Sahmi Qarashi, to carry his letter to Khosrau II inviting him to convert: In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful. From Muhammad, the Messenger of God, to the great Kisra of Persia. Peace be upon him, who seeks truth and expresses belief in God and in His Prophet and testifies that there are no gods but one God whom has no partners, and who believes that Muhammad
10000-574: The heresy, alienating the Ghassanids and sparking rebellions on their desert frontiers. The Lakhmids also revolted against the Persian king Khusrau II. Nu'man III (son of Al-Monder IV), the first Christian Lakhmid king, was deposed and killed by Khusrau II in 602, because of his attempt to throw off Persian suzerainty. After Khusrau's assassination in 628, the Persian Empire fractured and the Lakhmids were effectively semi-independent. It
10125-536: The history of English literature . "Similar cohorts of war poets occupy important positions in other European literature's. French literature has Charles Peguy , Guillaume Apollinaire , and Blaise Cendrars (who lost his right arm at the Second Battle of Champagne ). Italian poetry has Eugenio Montale , Giuseppe Ungaretti , and Gabriele D'Annunzio . German poetry has Georg Trakl , August Stramm , and Gottfried Benn . "These scarred survivors reshaped
10250-512: The impression of World War I poetry. This selection tends to emphasize the horror of war, suffering, tragedy and anger against those that wage war. In a 2020 article for the St Austin Review about American WWI poet John Allan Wyeth , Dana Gioia writes, "The First World War changed European literature forever. The horror of modern mechanized warfare and the slaughter of nineteen million young men and innocent civilians traumatized
10375-574: The independence of the Greek people after more than four hundred years of rule by the Ottoman Empire . The uprising and its many predecessors also produced many great composers of war poetry. In English poetry , Lord Byron is by far the most famous of these poets. Byron travelled to Greece during the fighting and joined the Greek rebels. Byron also glorified the Greek cause in many of his poems, which continued to be widely read. Even though he
10500-482: The invaders and Haskulf Thorgilsson , the last Hiberno-Norse King of Dublin and Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair , the last High King of Ireland , and the subsequent visit to Ireland by King Henry II of England in 1172. The chronicle survived only in a single manuscript which was re-discovered in the 17th century at Lambeth Palace in London. The manuscript bears no title, but has been commonly dubbed The Song of Dermot and
10625-548: The invaders. When the main Arab army reached the Persian borders, Yazdegerd III procrastinated in dispatching an army against the Arabs. Even Rostam-e Farokhzad , who was both Eran Spahbod and Viceroy , did not see the Arabs as a threat. Without opposition, the Arabs had time to consolidate and fortify their positions. When hostilities between the Sasanians and the Arabs finally began, the Persian army faced fundamental problems. While their heavy cavalry had proved effective against
10750-645: The last major battle of the Sassanids. The Sassanid dynasty came to an end with the death of Yazdegerd III in 651. Muhammad died in June 632, and Abu Bakr took the title of Caliph and political successor at Medina . Soon after Abu Bakr 's succession, several Arab tribes revolted, in the Ridda Wars ( Arabic for the Wars of Apostasy). The Ridda Wars preoccupied the Caliphate until March 633, and ended with
10875-486: The lyrics anonymously and The Flowers of the Forest was at first thought to be an ancient ballad. However, Robert Burns suspected it was an imitation, and together with Ramsay and Sir Walter Scott eventually identified the author. The 1566 Battle of Szigetvár , in which a vastly outnumbered army of 2,300 Croatian and Hungarian soldiers in service to the Habsburg monarchy and under the command of Nikola IV Zrinski ,
11000-532: The members of Majlis ash-Shura demurred, claiming that the two-front war required Umar's presence in Medina. Accordingly, Umar appointed Saad ibn Abi Waqqas , a respected senior officer, even though Saad was suffering from sciatica. Saad left Medina with his army in May 636 and arrived at Qadisiyyah in June. While Heraclius launched his offensive in May 636, Yazdegerd was unable to muster his armies in time to provide
11125-603: The month of November. These devastating defeats ended Persian control over Mesopotamia, and left the Persian capital Ctesiphon vulnerable. Before attacking Ctesiphon, Khalid decided to eliminate all Persian forces in the south and west. He accordingly marched against the border city of Firaz , where he defeated the combined forces of the Sasanian Persians , the Byzantines and Christian Arabs in December. This
11250-608: The most famous 19th-century war poem is Tennyson 's " The Charge of the Light Brigade ", which he supposedly wrote in only a few minutes after reading an account of the battle in The Times . It immediately became hugely popular, even reaching the troops in the Crimea , where it was distributed in pamphlet form. As the American Civil War was beginning, American poet Walt Whitman published his poem " Beat! Beat! Drums! " as
11375-560: The mountains to gain their independence. Dionysios Solomos , another poet of the Greek War of Independence , wrote the Hymn to Liberty , which is now the Greek national anthem , in 1823, just two years after the Greeks rose against the Ottoman Empire . It is also the national anthem of Cyprus , which adopted it in 1966. Solomos is considered to be the national poet of Greece. Probably
11500-505: The nation's official religion. The persecution of Zoroastrians by the early Muslims during and after this conflict prompted many of them to flee eastward to India , where they were granted refuge by various kings. While Arabia was experiencing the rise of Islam in the 7th century, Persia was struggling with unprecedented levels of political, social, economic, and military weakness; the Sasanian army had greatly exhausted itself in
11625-543: The newly conquered Mesopotamian territories were retaken by the Sasanian army. The second Rashidun invasion began in 636, under Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas , when a key victory at the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah permanently ended all Sasanian control to the west of modern-day Iran . For the next six years, the Zagros Mountains , a natural barrier, marked the political boundary between the Rashidun Caliphate and
11750-651: The notable exception of the provinces along the Caspian Sea (i.e., in Tabaristan and Transoxiana ), had come under Muslim domination. Many localities fought against the invaders; although the Rashidun army had established hegemony over most of the country, many cities rose in rebellion by killing their Arab governors or attacking their garrisons. Eventually, military reinforcements quashed the Iranian insurgencies and imposed complete control. The Islamization of Iran
11875-556: The objective of Khalid, Abu Bakr sent reinforcements and ordered the tribal chiefs of northeastern Arabia, Al-Muthanna ibn Haritha, Mazhur bin Adi, Harmala and Sulma to operate under Khalid's command. Around the third week of March 633 (first week of Muharram 12th Hijrah) Khalid set out from Al-Yamama with an army of 10,000. The tribal chiefs, with 2,000 warriors each, joined him, swelling his ranks to 18,000. After entering Mesopotamia, he dispatched messages to every governor and deputy who ruled
12000-551: The papers to rouse the spirit, from 'Transvaal', with the infamous closing line, 'Strike, England, and strike home', to 'The Turning of the Tide'." During the last phase of the war in the former Orange Free State , the Afrikaner people of Winburg taunted the Scottish regiments in the local British Army garrison with a parody of the Jacobite ballad Bonnie Dundee , which was generally sung in English. The parody celebrated
12125-405: The period from 628 to 632." An important consequence of this change in timeline means that the Arab conquest started precisely when the Sasanians and Parthians were engaged in internecine warfare over who was to succeed the Sasanian throne. When Arab squadrons made their first raids into Sasanian territory, Yazdegerd III did not consider them a threat, and he refused to send an army to encounter
12250-417: The population's main income sources. The existing Sassanid administrative structure proved inadequate when faced with the combined demands of a suddenly expanded empire, economy, and population. Rapid turnover of rulers and increasing provincial landholder ( dehqan ) power further diminished the Sasanians. Over a period of fourteen years and twelve successive kings, the Sassanid Empire weakened considerably, and
12375-588: The power of the central authority passed into the hands of its generals. Even when a strong king emerged following a series of coups, the Sassanids never completely recovered. The Byzantine clients, the Arab Ghassanids , converted to the Monophysite form of Christianity , which was regarded as heretical by the established Byzantine Eastern Orthodox Church . The Byzantines attempted to suppress
12500-564: The powerful northern and eastern Parthian families, the Kust-i Khwarasan and Kust-i Adurbadagan, withdrew to their respective strongholds and made peace with the Arabs, refusing to fight alongside the Sasanians . Pourshariati argues that the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia "took place, not, as has been conventionally believed, in the years 632–634, after the accession of the last Sasanian king Yazdgerd III (632–651) to power, but in
12625-535: The private armies of both sides in both verse form and in prose. Gryphius's first collection of poems, Sonnete ("Sonnets"), was published in 1637 by Wigand Funck in Lissa , and is accordingly known as the Lissaer Sonettbuch , after the town. The collection of 31 sonnets includes some of his best known poems, such as "Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas", later titled "Es ist alles eitel" (All is vanity), about
12750-427: The provinces calling on them to either embrace Islam or pay tribute. Khalid did not receive any responses and continued with his tactical plans. Khalid went on to win decisive victories in four consecutive battles: the Battle of Chains , fought in April; the Battle of River , fought in the third week of April; the Battle of Walaja the following month (where he successfully used a double envelopment manoeuvre), and
12875-493: The reach of the Sasanian army . Al-Muthanna's acts made Abu Bakr think about the expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate . To ensure victory, Abu Bakr used a volunteer army and put his best general, Khalid ibn al-Walid , in command. After defeating the self-proclaimed prophet Musaylimah in the Battle of Yamama , Khalid was still at Al-Yamama when Abu Bakr ordered him to invade the Sasanian Empire. Making Al-Hirah
13000-437: The received idea of the best German war poets. Neither realistic , nor ironic, nor properly expressionistic , while he excoriated the battlefield that the whole world had become, he still preserved a Faith in nobility, innocence, and song. Forced into maturity by the war, his poetic voice never lost a certain childlike note – indeed, in some of his best poems, naivety and wisdom coexist to an almost paradoxical degree. Such poetry
13125-738: The resistance of four generations within the same family, which culminates with Armenian folk hero David of Sasun driving the Muslim invaders from Armenia . It was collected and written down from the oral tradition by Fr. Garegin Srvandztiants , a celibate priest of the Armenian Apostolic Church , in 1873. The epic was first published in Constantinople in 1874. It is better known as Sasuntsi Davit (" David of Sasun "). The Old English poem The Battle of Maldon , which survives only in an unfinished fragment, celebrates
13250-418: The risk of being defeated by a large unified Persian army. Four divisions of Persian and Christian Arab auxiliaries were present at Hanafiz, Zumiel, Sanni and Muzieh. Khalid divided his army into three units, and employed them in well-coordinated attacks against the Persians from three different sides at night, in the Battle of Muzayyah , then the Battle of Saniyy , and finally the Battle of Zumail , all during
13375-406: The sensibility of modern verse. The Great War also changed literature in another brutal way; it killed countless young writers." From the war itself until the late 1970s, the genre of war poetry was almost exclusively reserved for male poets. This was based on an idea of an exclusive authenticity limited to the works of those who had fought and died in the war. It excluded other forms of experience in
13500-409: The song Là Sliabh an t-Siorraim , Sìleas na Ceapaich , the daughter of the 15th Chief of Clan MacDonald of Keppoch , sings of the joy upon the arrival of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart , the indecisive Battle of Sheriffmuir and the state of uneasy anticipation between the battle and the end of the Jacobite rising of 1715 . The most iconic poem by Sìleas, however, inspired by the events of
13625-417: The trauma of trench warfare and indiscriminate massacre. The 'War Poets' constitute an imperative presence in modern British literature with significant writers such as Wilfred Owen , Robert Graves , Siegfried Sassoon , David Jones , Ivor Gurney , Rupert Brooke , Edward Thomas , and Isaac Rosenberg . Their work, which combined stark realism and bitter irony with a sense of tragic futility, altered
13750-642: The victory of Dmitri Donskoi , Great Prince of Moscow over Mamai and the Mongols of the Golden Horde at the Battle of Kulikovo along the Don River on 8 September 1380. The poem survives in six medieval manuscripts. The author of Zadonshchina is believed to have been Sofonii (Russian: Софоний). His name as the author of the text is mentioned in two surviving manuscript copies. The Battle of Flodden on 9 September 1513, in which an English army led by
13875-536: The war also gave women greater artistic freedom and space to express their identities as artists. Serbian World War I poets include: Milutin Bojić , Vladislav Petković Dis , Miloš Crnjanski , Dušan Vasiljev , Ljubomir Micić , Proka Jovkić , Rastko Petrović , Stanislav Vinaver , Branislav Milosavljević , Milosav Jelić , Vladimir Stanimirović . and others. Géza Gyóni , a Hungarian poet with twin beliefs in socialism and anti-militarism , had unhappily served in
14000-468: The war elephants. These factors contributed to the decisive Sassanid defeat at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah. The Persians, who had only one generation before conquered Egypt and Asia Minor, lost decisive battles when nimble, lightly armed Arabs accustomed to skirmishes and desert warfare attacked them. The Arab squadrons defeated the Persian army in several more battles culminating in the Battle of Nahāvand ,
14125-449: The war, such as mourning, nursing and the home front, which were more likely to be experienced by other demographics such as women. There were over 500 women writing and publishing poetry during World War I. Examples of poems by female poets include Teresa Hooley 's A War Film , Jessie Pope 's War Girls , Pauline B. Barrington 's Education , and Mary H.J. Henderson 's An Incident . In addition to giving women greater access to work,
14250-751: The world ." David Humphreys wrote the first sonnet in American poetry in 1776, right before he left Yale College to fight as a colonel in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War . Colonel Humphreys' sonnet was titled Addressed to my Friends at Yale College, on my leaving them to join the Army . Among the earliest known Scottish Gaelic poets in North America, is Kintail -born Iain mac Mhurchaidh ,
14375-589: The years 632–634, after the accession of the last Sasanian king Yazdgerd III (632–651) to power, but in the period from 628 to 632." An important consequence of this change in timeline means that the Arab conquest started precisely when the Sassanians and Parthians were engaged in internecine warfare over succession to the Sassanian throne. Since the 1st century BC , the border between the Roman (later Byzantine ) and Parthian (later Sasanian ) empires had been
14500-405: Was assassinated by the Persian craftsman Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz , who had been captured by Rashidun troops and brought to Arabia as a slave. Some Iranian historians have defended their forebears by using Arab sources to illustrate that "contrary to the claims of some historians, Iranians, in fact, fought long and hard against the invading Arabs." By 651, most of the urban centres in Iranian lands, with
14625-530: Was born at Castle Leather near Inverness , composed the only surviving Gaelic poem of the era which takes up the Patriot, rather than the Loyalist, banner - The Lament of the North . In the poem, MacCionnich mocks the Scottish clan chiefs for becoming absentee landlords , for both rackrenting and evicting their clansmen en masse in favor of sheep, and of "spending their wealth uselessly", in London. He accuses King George III both of tyranny and of steering
14750-420: Was caught up in the general patriotic fervor at the outbreak of World War I. But once he experienced the horrors of war first hand, he soon lost his romantic notions, and returned to the more radical positions of his youth, as it evident in his further volumes." One of his poems from this period, Csak egy éjszakára ( For Just One Night ) became a prominent anti-war poem and its popularity has lasted well beyond
14875-589: Was commonly assumed, the Sassanian Empire was highly decentralized, and was in fact a "confederation" with the Parthians , who themselves retained a high level of independence. Despite their recent victories over the Byzantine Empire , the Parthians unexpectedly withdrew from the confederation, and the Sassanians were thus ill-prepared and ill-equipped to mount an effective and cohesive defense against
15000-421: Was defeated at the Battle of Nineveh in 627, and the Byzantines recaptured all of Syria and penetrated far into the Persian provinces of Mesopotamia . In 629, Khosrau's general Shahrbaraz agreed to peace, and the border between the two empires was once again the same as it had been in 602. The Plague of Sheroe (627–628) was one of several epidemics that occurred in or close to Iran within two centuries after
15125-660: Was eulogized by Sìleas in the song-poem Alistair à Gleanna Garadh , which hearkens back to the mythological poetry attributed to Amergin Glúingel and which remains an iconic and oft imitated work of Scottish Gaelic literature. In Scottish Gaelic literature , the greatest war poet of the Jacobite rising of 1745 is Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair , a tacksman from the Clanranald branch of Clan Donald . Jacobite songs penned by Alasdair such as: Òran Nuadh – "A New Song", Òran nam Fineachan Gaidhealach – "The Song of
15250-424: Was fired by a vision of a transcendental realm that lay beyond conflict, but never sought to exclude death. His 25 years, the last four of which were spent in the Army, scarcely left him time to develop a wholly independent voice, but his work displays an increasing mastery of form and deepening of vision. His small oeuvre consists of Novellen , essays, aphorisms, and a handful of the best German poems connected with
15375-513: Was gradual and incentivized in various ways over a period of centuries, though some Iranians never converted and there is widespread evidence of Zoroastrian scriptures and all other pre-Islamic being systematically burnt and Zoroastrian priests being executed, particularly in areas that were centers of resistance. Islam had become Iran's predominant religion by the Late Middle Ages ; the majority of Iranians were Sunni Muslims until
15500-534: Was strangled inside Nebojša Tower in Belgrade by order of Sultan Selim III of the House of Osman in 1798 while planning a Greek uprising with the assistance of Napoleon Bonaparte , the nationalist verse of Rigas Feraios helped inspire the Greek War of Independence and he remains a major figure in Greek poetry . In his poems, Feraios urged the Greek people to leave the cities for the mountains and to fight in
15625-767: Was the last battle in his conquest of Mesopotamia. While Khalid was on his way to attack Qadissiyah (a key fort en route to Ctesiphon), Abu Bakr ordered him to the Roman front in Syria to assume command there. According to the will of Abu Bakr, Umar was to continue the conquest of Syria and Mesopotamia. On the northeastern borders of the Empire, in Mesopotamia, the situation was rapidly deteriorating. During Abu Bakr 's era, Khalid ibn al-Walid had left Mesopotamia with half his army of 9000 soldiers to assume command in Syria, whereupon
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