Arab invasion of Armenia
| Arab invasion of Armenia | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Arab–Byzantine wars | |||||||||
Arab invasions of Byzantine Armenia in Anatolia | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Rashidun Caliphate |
Byzantine Empire Byzantine Armenia Sasanian Empire Sasanian Armenia Khazaria | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan Iyad ibn Ghanim Salman ibn Rabiah |
Heraclius Constans II Theodore Rshtuni Sarvand ibn Boulos al-Rumi Mauryan † Bargik tarkhan † Tuman Shah | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| Unknown | 100,000 | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| Unknown |
Unknown killed 35,000 captured | ||||||||
The Arab invasion of Armenia was a series of military campaigns conducted in 639–661 CE by the Rashidun Caliphate against the Byzantine Empire in Byzantine Armenia as part of the wider early Muslim conquests and centuries-long Arab–Byzantine wars.
The first Arab raids into the country occurred in 639/640. At that time, the Byzantine and Sasanian parts of Armenia had just been united under the Byzantine-aligned Armenian prince Theodore Rshtuni. Several Arab attacks and Byzantine-Armenian counterattacks occurred in the 640s. In 652, facing a renewed Arab assault, Rshtuni broke with the Byzantines and made an agreement with Mu'awiya, who was then governor of Syria, and accepted Muslim rule. Rshtuni's death in 654 and Arab internal conflicts after 656 temporarily weakened Arab control over Armenia, but Arab rule was decisively reasserted after Mu'awiya's accession as caliph in 661.