The Fall and Demolition of Malatya, 133

سقوط ملطية وهدمها سنة 133

c. 750 CE · 133 AH

In al-Baladhuri from al-Waqidi: in year 133 Constantine the tyrant advanced deliberately on Malatya — Kamkh then being Muslim-held under a Sulami — and Kamkh's people sent the appeal to Malatya's, who rode out with two hundred horse and were beaten by the Roman cavalry; the Roman camped on Malatya and besieged those inside — the Jazira then in turmoil, its governor Musa ibn Ka'b at Harran, the messenger they sent him unable to relieve them — and when Constantine heard of it he told them: 'people of Malatya, I came only knowing your state and your sultan's distraction from you — come down on aman, evacuate the city for me to demolish, and I depart from you'; they refused, so he set mangonels on it, and when affliction ground them down and the siege hardened they asked him for sureties, which he gave; they prepared to march, loaded what they could, threw much of the weight into wells and caches, and went out — the Romans formed two files from the city gate to the end of their line with drawn swords held tip to tip like a bridge's arch, then escorted them to safety, whence they dispersed through the Jazira; the Romans demolished Malatya leaving but a tower they had partly wrecked, and demolished the fortress of Qaludhiya.

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Al-Mansur's Rebuilding of Malatya

In al-Baladhuri: in year 139 al-Mansur wrote to Salih ibn Ali ordering Malatya rebuilt and fortified, then resolved to send Abd al-Wahhab ibn Ibrahim al-Imam as governor of the Jazira and its frontier — he set out in year 140 with al-Hasan ibn Qahtaba among the Khurasani armies, proclaiming a levy on the people of Syria and the Jazira until seventy thousand converged, and camped on Malatya having gathered labourers from every land; al-Hasan ibn Qahtaba would carry stone to hand the builder, and a camel of his went round feeding the people from his own purse with field-kitchens deployed — Abd al-Wahhab envied this and wrote to Abu Ja'far accusing him of out-feeding the state in a bid to prolong and corrupt the work by extravagance and vainglory, and of having callers summon people to his food; Abu Ja'far wrote back: 'O boy! Al-Hasan feeds from his own money, and you feed from mine — nothing comes of you but smallness of worth, littleness of ambition and foolishness of opinion,' and wrote to al-Hasan: feed, but keep no caller — so al-Hasan would say 'whoever reaches my awning first gets such-and-such'; the men worked hard and finished Malatya and its mosque in six months; for the garrison each 'arafa — ten to fifteen men — received two lower houses, two upper chambers and a stable; he built a muslaha thirty miles out and another on the river called Qubaqib that feeds the Euphrates; al-Mansur settled four thousand Jaziran fighters in Malatya, it being of their frontier, with ten dinars added to every man's pay and a hundred-dinar allowance besides the camel the tribes engaged between them; he deposited its armoury, granted the soldiers farms and built the fortress of Qaludhiya — and Constantine the tyrant came on with over a hundred thousand as far as Jayhan, heard of the Arabs' numbers and held back.

The Fall and Demolition of Malatya, 133

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Al-Mansur's Rebuilding of Malatya