Customer comments on this selection.
 Decent Coverage of an Important Muslim Battle
The author does a pretty good job of covering this battle between the Muslim forces of the 7th Century and the Byzantine Empire. Recent books on the Jihadist movement cite this battle as an inspiration for Muslim terrorists. As such, western readers should find this ancient battle interesting. Unfortunately, the historical records appear to be weak. It is a weakness that Mr. Nicolle could not fully overcome.
Nevertheless, the book provides a basic understanding of the overall campaign that led up to this battle. Only the second half of "The Campaign" chapter deals with the Battle of Yarmuk. The first half is focused on the overall campaign and the associated battles of Ajnadayn and Pella, among others. Thus, the coverage of the Yarmuk battle itself is somewhat truncated. Some stories are apocryphal and not fully developed. In addition, the author often refers to several important personalities without fully explaining their identity. Basically, there are too many names to keep straight. The Chapter on the "Opposing Armies" is quite good in its description of tactics and recruiting methods. It is well-organized into Byzantine and Muslim sections. The ending chapter does an excellent job of explaining the fall of Syria, which was the major goal of the campaign. The author points out that this Muslim victory had far more to do with the individual cities surrendering than with the defeat of the Byzantine army at Yarmuk.
The 3D maps are pretty good despite a few minor shortcomings. The map of the 4th day of battle contains a landmark or "Tel" with only half the name. This reference is useless, as the reader has no way of knowing what Tel the author is trying to emphasize. The text refers to a Byzantine base camp at Yaqusah, which the Muslims eventually overran. Unfortunately, this camp is not located on any of the three Yarmuk battle maps. Nevertheless, the other maps are quite good; the siege of Damascus being one example. Also, the large area maps that detail the overall movement of both Byzantine and Muslim forces are quite helpful.
The book contains numerous photographs that are a standard feature of Osprey books. Unfortunately, the pictures of the various wall paintings are hard to see due to years of decay, or taken at an angle that makes the photo less than clear. The photographs of the various sculptures, however are first rate and quite helpful.
Bottom line: this is a pretty good book on a very important battle. Despite some minor weaknesses, the reader will gain a basic understanding of this battle that appears to loom large in Islamic mythology.
 Wow...another name for a helmet
I swear, Dr. Nicolle must have spent his entire life staring at rusty weapons and suits of armor, because that is what half the book is about. Muslim weapons, Byzantine recruitment, size of the Muslim armies, Byzantine tactics that never are mentioned to be used...complete with 10,000 names of EVERY type of soldier of a Byzantine and Arab army that he never uses later and is a complete waste of ink! The origins of the campaign is weak, and the whole summary of the campaign is dry (he moved there, this place surrendered, then they moved here...). Sheesh, even the battle (only several pages long) is exceedingly emotionless and those pages are filled with mediocre pictures taking up more than half the page taken of some dry gorge! I must admit that even the 2D and 3D maps are pretty lame, as it is exceedingly difficult to tell between the armies (there are about 6 of them in the 2D maps, their movements are all in the same color, and the only difference between them is the minute spaces between the dashed lines). Another plus (or minus, in common terms) is that I swear I saw around 100 of "he might have..." "he probably..." "this could have..." "maybe..." that it becomes painstakingly obvious that the whole campaign is soaked in mystery that a very few facts can be said. But of course, why would a person want to buy a book that the more than half of the ideas presented are misleading (also adding the whole campaign/battle is less than a 1/3 of the book)? Unfortunatley I was one of those people, and after reading this, I have absolved to never buy another Osprey from Dr. Nicolle. He would me much better making college speeches about archeology and battle tactics (that werent even used in this campaign, by the way) that writing a book focused very much on fervor and emotion rather than dry, unfactual summaries. Why do I rate it a two? Because I found no grammatical errors. But by the time I realized that, I had ceased to care (and I don't like to be mean, and yes, I just proved I was a hypocrite).
 Islmic pious and brilliant commanders uncovered
Never before the Battle of Yarmuk presented in English literature so much complete and thorough. Both sides were presented equally and the backgrounds were defined clearly and intact. Inquiries of the aftermath were also seriously done and showed how decisive the battle was.Some flaws regarding the sandstorms and the accusation of Ghassanids turnover to the Muslim as the main cause of Byzantines' defeat did not even scratch the beauty of this work. Easily the best-buy book that came out from OSPREY Campaign Series.
 Excellent, well-illustrated and detailed.
I find it odd that most military historians omit the Battle of Yarmuk in their descriptions of great battles. It was the crucial struggle that permitted the outnumbered Muslims (12,000 Muslims vs 80,000 Byzantines )to take Syria from the Byzantines, was titanic in scale and lasted several days. The book is very detailed in its description of tactics and armaments used by both sides, as well as the organisation of the opposing forces. It describes the crucial events of the battle each day it lasted, and includes funny anecdotes such as the actions of Hind bint Utbah, Abu Sufyan's formidable wife, who took part in the battle. A must read in order to complete the historical picture of the Islamic Conquest, and to add one more to the list of Great Battles. I'd like to see the Muslim conquest of Persia described in the series as well.
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