ABSTRACT
The Arabs took the place of the Persians in their dealings with the Byzantines. Unlike the Persian Empire, the Byzantine Empire was not completely vanquished by the Arabs. The Byzantine historians do not deal with these campaigns—the greater part of which were insignificant—in such thorough fashion, year by year; however, they do speak about the more important campaigns in a much more complete and accurate way than do the Arabic reporters. According to monk Theophanes, the Mardaites took charge, as military frontier troops in Byzantine service, of maintaining this protective desert zone. Theophanes says that all the cities that in the time of the 'Abbasids were located on the border and were then in the possession of the Arabs, from Mopsuestia to Armenia IV, had previously been unfortified and uninhabited in the days of the Umayyads. The great event in the Byzantine theater of war under al-Walid is the conquest of Tyana by Maslama and 'Abbas ibn al-Walid.
