The Battle of Andrassos, 960 (MED0092)

The Battle of Andrassos, 960

In the autumn of 960 the emir of Aleppo, Sayf al-Dawla, was returning from a raid into Byzantine territory with rich plunder and many captives. Leo Phokas the Younger did not meet him in open battle: he waited at the pass of Andrassos in the Taurus mountains, occupying the heights above the gorge in advance. The Arab army was destroyed on the march, in ground where it could neither deploy nor manoeuvre.

Frontier warfare

For over a century the Anatolian border saw no lasting conquests but a cycle of seasonal raids in both directions. The Byzantines developed a specific doctrine for it, set out in the treatise De velitatione: never engage a strong opponent in pitched battle; shadow him, wear him down, and strike on his return when he is slowed by plunder and strung out along mountain tracks. Andrassos is that doctrine applied to the letter.

Who Sayf al-Dawla was

The Hamdanid emir of Aleppo was Byzantium’s most tenacious opponent in Syria, and also a patron at whose court the poet al-Mutanabbi and the philosopher al-Farabi worked. Defeat at Andrassos did not remove him, but it marked the beginning of his decline: in the years that followed the Byzantines took Crete, Cilicia and finally Antioch.

Equipment

Giuseppe Rava shows Byzantine frontier troops of the tenth century: light infantry trained for mountain ground, archers, and cavalry able to move quickly along narrow tracks. This was an army built for the ambush rather than the frontal encounter.