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1.
Waqidi: p. 39.
Page 7
Soon after sunrise, Wardan came forward in full imperial regalia, wearing bejewelled
armour with a bejewelled sword hanging at his side. Khalid walked up from the Muslim
centre and stood in front of Wardan. The two armies were already arrayed in battle order
as on the previous day.
Wardan started negotiations with an attempt to browbeat the Muslim. He expressed his
low opinion of the Arabians; how wretched were the conditions in which they lived, and
how miserably starved they were in their homeland. Khalid's response was sharp and
aggressive.
"O Christian dog!"
he snapped.
"This is your last chance to accept Islam or
pay the Jizya."
1
At this, Wardan, without drawing his sword, sprang at Khalid and held
him, at the same time shouting for the 10 Romans to come to his aid.
From behind the hillock he saw, out of the corner of his eye, 10 Romans, emerge and race
towards him. Khalid also saw then and was horrified, for he was expecting to see
Muslims emerge from behind the hillock. He has made no other arrangement for his own
protection, and he wondered with a sense of deep sorrow, if Dhiraar had at last met his
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match. As the group of Romans got nearer, however, Wardan noticed that the leader of
these 'Romans' was naked to the waist; and then the terrible truth dawned upon him.
During the night Dhiraar and his nine comrades had got to the hillock, killed all 10
Romans noiselessly, and then, such was Dhiraar's impish sense of humour, put on the
garments and armour of the Romans. Later, however, Dhiraar discarded the garments and
reverted to his normal fighting dress! As the first light of dawn appeared, these 10
Muslims said the prayer of the Morning and then awaited the call of the Roman
commander.
Wardan left Khalid and stepped back, looking on helplessly as the 10 Muslims
surrounded the pair. Dhiraar now advanced with drawn sword. At this Wardan implored
Khalid,
"I beseech you, in the name of whatever you worship, to kill me yourself; do not
net this devil come near me"
2
In reply Khalid nodded to Dhiraar, and Dhiraar's sword flashed in the sun and severed
Wardan's head.
It was Khalid's way so to time his attack as to get the maximum benefit from any tactical
advantage which he had gained over his enemy. When no other advantage was possible
and manoeuvre was restricted, he would exploit the psychological effect of killing the
enemy commander-in-chief or some other prominent general, and strike a powerful blow
with the entire army while the enemy was stunned by the moral setback of such a loss.
Here again Khalid did the same. As soon as Wardan was killed, he ordered a general
attack: the centre, the wings and the flank guards swept forward and assaulted the
Romans, who were now under the command of Qubuqlar.
As the two armies met, another phase of violent hand-to-hand fighting began. Soon the
fighting became vicious, with no quarter given or taken. The Muslims struck fiercely at
the Roman formations, and the Romans struggled desperately to hold the assault. Khalid
and all his officers fought in front of the men, and so did many of the Roman generals
who were prepared to die for the glory of the empire. The battlefield soon turned into a
wreckage of human bodies, mostly Roman, as the men struggled mightily without respite.
At last, as the two sides were reaching the point of exhaustion, Khalid threw his reserve
of 4,000 men under Yazeed into the centre; and with the added impetus of this
reinforcement, the Muslims broke through at several places, driving deep wedges, into
the Roman army. In the centre a Muslim group got to where Qubuqlar stood with his
head wrapped in a cloth, and killed him. It is believed that Qubuqlar had ordered his head
to be so wrapped because he could no longer bear to see such carnage. With the death of
Qubuqlar, the Roman resistance weakened, and soon after collapsed entirely. The
Romans fled from the field of battle.
It was safer to stand and fight the Muslim Arabs in battle than to run from them. Against
a fleeing enemy, the Arab of the desert was in his element. As the Romans sought to
escape, they turned in three directions; some fled towards Gaza, others towards Jaffa, but
the largest group of fugitives made for Jerusalem. Khalid forthwith launched his cavalry
in several regiments to pursue the enemy on all three routes; and at the hands of this
cavalry the Romans suffered even more grievous damage than in the two days of fighting
on the plain of Ajnadein. The pursuit and the killing of the fugitives continued till sunset,
when the pursuing columns returned to camp.
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