The City That Ended 700 Years of Roman Rule in the Levant (Siege of Caesarea)

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[00:00:00]The giants of the Syrian campaign were gone. Abu Ubeda, the trustworthy of this um had fallen. Maad ibn Jabel, the brilliant scholar, was buried in the dirt. Yazid bin Abi Sufyan, Shurakil bin Hassan were gone. And Khaled Walid, the undefeated sword of Allah, had taken his final breath in the quiet confines of a stone room. The supreme command structure of the Rashidan vanguard. The men who had shattered the ironclad legions of the Roman Empire at Yamuk, Ajinadane, and at the entire Syrian front had been completely wiped out by the plague of Amwis. But as the dust settled over the mass graves and the new borders of the caliphate solidified across the Levant, one massive bleeding wound remained open on the western coastline of Asham.

[00:00:53]Caesaria Maritima.

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[00:01:23]The siege of Cesaria had been bleeding the caliphate for nearly seven grueling years. Long before the plague, long before the climactic battle of Yammuk, the legendary commander Amu Ibn Alas had first surrounded this city back in 634 AD. He had trapped the Roman garrison inside, establishing a suffocating land blockade. For years, the Muslim vanguard camped outside these walls. They watched as the rest of the Levant got conquered.

[00:01:55]They held their ground as Damascus fell, as Jerusalem surrendered, and even as the devastating contagion of Ammois ravaged their own ranks. The siege had been lifted and restarted multiple times, a relentless, grinding stalemate.

[00:02:11]Because Caesaria was not merely a fortress, it was an ancient sprawling Roman metropolis, an absolute marvel of Roman engineering. It was protected by colossal towering stone walls that didn't just border the Mediterranean Sea. They plunged directly down into the dark, crashing waves. For the Muslim infantry, this city was a tactical nightmare. The Rashidan warriors were the undisputed masters of the desert.

[00:02:39]They could outmaneuver any field army on Earth across the open plains. But curved Arabian swords, elite light cavalry charges, and hitand-run tactics were completely utterly useless against 70 foot high blocks of solid Roman masonry.

[00:02:57]The Muslims were trapped outside the walls, bogged down in the mud, staring up at an unbreakable shield. Every direct assault was repelled in a hail of Roman arrows and boiling oil. Every attempt to scale the walls ended in a deadly assault.

[00:03:14]But the true horror of Caesaria was not its walls. It was the water. While the caliphate ruled the land, the Roman Emperor Heraclus still held absolute unchallenged mastery over the Mediterranean Sea. Day after day, the frustrated, starving Muslim soldiers on the beaches were forced to watch as massive Roman war gs with dark sails glided effortlessly into the heavily fortified harbor. The city was constantly being resupplied with fresh troops, grain, and weapons directly from Constantinople.

[00:03:50]The Roman garrison inside the walls wasn't starving. They were feasting.

[00:03:55]They stood at top the battlements and openly mocked the desert warriors below.

[00:04:00]The army needed a miracle, or they needed a monster of a tactician.

[00:04:05]Stepping into this massive, terrifying void of leadership was a young, brilliant, and deeply ambitious governor. A man whose name would soon echo across the entire globe, fundamentally altering the course of world history. Maawia ibn Ebi Sufyan.

[00:04:24]Caiff Umar had recognized the immense administrative and political genius of this young commander, appointing him as the governor of Syria. But to truly solidify his rule, to prove to the battleh hardardened veterans of the frontier that he was worthy of sitting in the seat of Abu Ubeda and Khaled, Maawia had to achieve the impossible. He had to finish the 7-year war. He had to break Caesaria.

[00:04:51]Maawya arrived at the siege camps and immediately recognized the fatal flaw in the Rashidan strategy. He stood on the muddy coastline looking out at the Roman Dmans cutting through the waves. He realized a profound terrifying truth.

[00:05:07]The desert warriors could never truly secure the Levant as long as the Romans ruled the sea. You cannot starve a city that is being fed by the ocean. It was here, staring at the unbreakable walls of Cesaria, that the seed of the first Islamic naval fleet was planted in Maawia's mind.

[00:05:27]But the caiff in Medina strictly forbade naval warfare. For now, Maawia had to take this city with the men, the mud, and the swords he had on the ground. He tightened the blockade. He ordered his men to dig in. If they could not break the walls, they would suffocate the city's landwood gates. The psychological warfare intensified.

[00:05:51]For weeks, the air was filled with the deafening roar of Arabian war cries, beating relentlessly through the night, denying the Roman defenders a single moment of psychological peace. Yet, the walls held. Then, on a freezing, moonless night in 640 AD, the stalemate cracked. According to the accounts presented by Elbai, the Rashidan centuries patrolling the dark, muddy perimeter of the siege camp spotted a lone figure moving through the shadows.

[00:06:22]It was not an assassin. It was a defector. A local Jewish resident of Cesaria, historically recorded as Ysef, had slipped out of the heavily guarded city. He was brought directly to the command tent of Mavia. The intelligence he brought was about to change the fate of the Mediterranean.

[00:06:42]Ysef sat before the Muslim high command.

[00:06:45]He told them that direct assaults on the main gates were suicide. The walls were impenetrable.

[00:06:52]But he revealed the Romans possessed a fatal hidden vulnerability.

[00:06:57]Deep beneath the city, hidden from the naked eye, ran an ancient subterranean aqueduct. a water tunnel designed to flush the city's waste into the sea. The tunnel was heavily fortified with iron grates, but time and corrosion had eaten away at the metal. The water was waist deep, freezing, and pitch black. But a man, a very brave, very quiet man, could fit through it. The tunnel led directly under the 70 ft stone walls, bypassing the entire Roman defense grid and opening up right in the heart of the city. Mavia did not hesitate. This was not a mission for an army. This was a mission for a suicide squad. He called upon a highly elite vanguard of his most lethal, fearless veterans. Men who had survived the slaughter of Yamuk. men who had fought alongside Khalid Ibn Walid.

[00:07:54]He briefed them in the dead of night.

[00:07:56]They were to strip off their heavy chain mail to avoid making a single sound.

[00:08:02]They would arm themselves only with short blades and daggers. They were to enter the freezing black abyss of the water tunnel, wade through the darkness, and infiltrate the sleeping Roman metropolis. Their objective was absolute. survive the tunnel, silently eliminate the interior guards, and throw open the massive main gates of Cesaria from the inside. If they were discovered in the tunnel, they would be trapped and slaughtered like rats. There would be no retreat. The men drew their blades, tied their tunics, and waded into the freezing black water. The final bloody chapter of the Roman Levant had begun.

[00:08:44]The subterranean aqueduct of Cesaria was a pitch black freezing nightmare. The elite vanguard of Mavia slipped silently into the dark water. The liquid was ice cold, rising to their chests, thick with centuries of decay, and the foul runoff of the Roman metropolis.

[00:09:04]The air was suffocatingly thin, heavy with the stench of stagnant water and absolute darkness.

[00:09:11]Above them, millions of tons of solid Roman masonry pressed down. If the Roman centuries on the battlementss heard even a single splash, if a single torch was dropped into the great above, the vanguard would be trapped in this stone throat and boiled alive.

[00:09:29]Ysef, the Jewish defector, led the way.

[00:09:32]Behind him, the fiercest veterans of a sham moved with terrifying predatory silence. These were men who had charged into the roaring chaos of Yammuk. Yet here their greatest weapon was absolute stillness. They moved inch by inch, step by agonizing step. For hours they waded through the blinding darkness, their hands tracing the slick mosscovered stone walls of the tunnel to keep their balance. They could hear the muffled, heavy footsteps of the Byzantine guards patrolling the massive walls directly above their heads. They were crossing the unbreakable threshold. They were passing beneath the shield.

[00:10:15]Finally, the freezing water began to shallow. A faint pale sliver of moonlight cut through the darkness ahead. The tunnel was ending. The vanguard emerged like ghosts from the water, stepping out of a great into the shadowed narrow alleyways of Cesaria Maritima.

[00:10:34]The contrast was staggering. Outside the walls, their brothers were freezing in the mud, starving in the relentless siege camps, but inside the Roman city was a pristine, untouched marvel of the ancient world. grand marble columns, paved streets, and massive storehouses overflowing with grain from Constantinople.

[00:10:58]The Romans believed they were completely, utterly invincible. They were sleeping peacefully in their beds.

[00:11:05]They had no idea that the apex predators of the desert were already inside the cage. The vanguard did not hesitate.

[00:11:13]They communicated entirely in shadows and hand signals. Drawing their short blades, they moved with lethal efficiency toward the main objective.

[00:11:23]The colossal iron reinforced main gates of the city. They crept up the stone stairwells to the gate house. The Roman centuries wrapped in thick cloaks against the sea breeze were completely relaxed, looking outward toward the Muslim camps. They were watching the wrong direction.

[00:11:42]In a terrifying synchronized strike, the Rashid and veterans emerged from the darkness. Hands clamped over Roman mouths. Short blades flashed in the moonlight. The guards were dragged silently into the shadows before they could utter a single scream. The gate house was secured. Now came the hardest part. The main gates of Cesaria were colossal, secured by massive, heavy timber crossbars designed to withstand the pounding of heavy siege rams.

[00:12:15]The veterans of Mahawia threw their shoulders against the heavy timber.

[00:12:20]Their muscles, exhausted by the freezing tunnel, strained to the absolute breaking point. Slowly, agonizingly, the massive wooden bar began to slide.

[00:12:31]Outside the walls, the entire Rashidan army was waiting in pitch black silence.

[00:12:38]Thousands of men, no war drums, no fires, just the sound of the crashing waves and hands gripping the hilts of their swords. And then the unmistakable deafening crack of the main gates unlatching echoed through the night. The colossal iron and wood doors of Cesaria slowly swung inward.

[00:13:01]A single roaring cry of Alahu Akbar shattered the silence of the Mediterranean coast. It was the signal.

[00:13:10]Like a dam bursting, the entire Rashidan army flooded out of the darkness and poured through the open gates. The shock to the Roman defenders was absolute and paralyzing. They woke up to the sound of Arabian war horses galloping through their pristine paved streets.

[00:13:30]The defense completely collapsed. The invincible Roman garrison caught entirely offguard was killed in the streets or forced to surrender in mass droves.

[00:13:42]Panic consumed the city as the black banners of the caliphate were violently hoisted over the towers of Cesaria.

[00:13:50]The unbreakable shield had been shattered from the inside.

[00:13:55]As dawn broke over the Mediterranean Sea, Mahawia rode his warhorse slowly through the conquered gates. He looked out over the massive Roman harbor, watching the surviving Roman war gs frantically raising their sails and fleeing desperately toward the horizon, back to Constantinople.

[00:14:15]They were never coming back.

[00:14:18]The fall of Cesaria in 640 AD was the final nail in the coffin of the Roman Empire in the Middle East. It marked the absolute definitive end of a 700year Roman presence in the Levant. From the jagged peaks of the Taurus mountains to the burning sands of the Sinai, the province of Asham belonged entirely to the Islamic caliphate.

[00:14:43]The colossal campaign was over. The men who had started it, Abu Obeda and Khaled Wal were gone. But their unbelievable legacy had been cemented into the earth.

[00:14:57]But the world is a massive violent chessboard. And while the western front had finally fallen silent, a terrifying apocalyptic storm was gathering in the east. Hundreds of miles away in the political epicenter of Medina, Caiff Ume received the glorious dispatches of the victory at Cesaria.

[00:15:19]The Levant was secure, but the caiff did not celebrate. The severe ruler of the faithful was staring at a completely different map. Riders were arriving daily from the jagged freezing peaks of the Zagros mountains, carrying intelligence that chilled the caiff to the bone. The Sassinid Empire was not dead. Deep within the Iranian plateau, the young Persian emperor Yazdiger III had refused to accept the loss of Iraq.

[00:15:49]He had spent the last several years issuing a massive empirewide call to arms. He was draining every single province of the Sassinid realm of its men, its steel, and its gold. He was raising the largest, most heavily armored military force the ancient world had ever seen. Over 150,000 men, formations of terrifying, heavily armored Persian catifacts.

[00:16:19]Massive, earthshaking war elephants bred for absolute slaughter. The King of Kings was preparing an annihilation campaign aimed directly at the heart of the caliphate.

[00:16:31]He did not just want Iraq back. He wanted to march all the way to Medina and burn the Islamic state to ashes.

[00:16:39]Caiff Umeare realized that a defensive war was impossible. If he waited for that colossal iron storm to hit the borders of Arabia, the caliphate would be wiped off the face of the earth. He had to launch a massive preemptive strike deep into the absolute heart of the Persian Empire. The early Muslim wars were far from over. The real bloodbath was just beginning. The era of the Levant is closed. But the grand strategy of the caliphate is about to face its ultimate test. In the monumental premiere of season 3, we will turn our lenses completely to the east.

[00:17:19]We will march into the freezing Zagras mountains. We will witness the terrifying mobilization of the Persian war machine. and we will see caiff um assemble a massive coalition army for the victory of victories, the absolute battle of Nahavand.

[00:17:36]This is going to be the most brutal heavy infantry campaign we have ever covered on historic war lens. If you want to bypass the wait and watch the season 3 premiere early and completely adree, join our elite guards and commanders on Patreon using the link in the description below. Your support on the front lines is what funds this battlefield.

[00:17:59]Make sure you hit that subscribe button and leave a like so you don't miss the terrifying Persian storm. Stay sharp, commanders, and we will see you on the Eastern Front.