I remember a discussion of this battle from Robin Pierson's History of Byzantium podcast, which is a great listen. It always struck me how the Byzantines had just gotten out of a decades-long (really centuries long) war with their mortal enemies, the Persians, only to be decimated by what they believed were raiding tribes from the periphery. If anyone's interested in Byzantine early run-ins with Islam, there's a great bit of scholarship about how the first "Siege of Constantinople" probably didn't even happen and was maybe just a retconn for later Byzantine historians. Byzantium is one of my favorite historic topics!
I remember a discussion of this battle from Robin Pierson's History of Byzantium podcast, which is a great listen. It always struck me how the Byzantines had just gotten out of a decades-long (really centuries long) war with their mortal enemies, the Persians, only to be decimated by what they believed were raiding tribes from the periphery. If anyone's interested in Byzantine early run-ins with Islam, there's a great bit of scholarship about how the first "Siege of Constantinople" probably didn't even happen and was maybe just a retconn for later Byzantine historians. Byzantium is one of my favorite historic topics!