Why Did Umayyad Have Lost At Tours

The Umayyads appear to have lost at Tours for several reasons, with the first being overconfidence coupled with a lack of respect for their Frankish adversaries. In the Franks, the Umayyads faced an opponent who had begun establishing professional military forces, including cavalry, and required 3 months of military service per year from its eligible citizenry. The Frankish people’s military skills were further improved by their need to hunt and protect their flocks from wild animals. Finally, Frankish society required all its citizenry to arm and equip themselves based on their social status while paying all military volunteers equally regardless of social status and offering large bonuses for victories. The Umayyads respected their Frankish …show more content…
The Umayyads’ rapid territorial expansion gave them limited time to consolidate their gains in North Africa and al Andalus while making the rapid commitment of large numbers of Ahl al Sham forces increasingly difficult due to the distance involved regarding the deployment of forces from Syria to theatres like Western Europe. This ensured the Umayyad army at Tours was mostly comprised of non-Arab Berber troops whose primary goal was acquiring loot from raiding, as they would have had faced discrimination in Umayyad society and been paid lower wages than their Arab counterparts, yet have been entitled to a generous share of plunder under the Umayyad system. The Umayyads, spurred on by their successes at Poitiers, sought to follow up on their triumphs in France, yet were hindered by the lack of military discipline caused by large numbers of troops whose primary purpose was looting vice pursuing military objectives and a reduction in mobility caused by the Berbers and Moors refusal to give up the plunder they took at Poitiers. The indiscipline of the Berber and Moorish troops would have also made it more difficult for the Umayyads to employ the previously mentioned tactics employed by the Prophet Muhammad and Ali, as such troops would have been far less inclined to display the patience required to occupy a position and wait for the enemy …show more content…
The Shiat Ali, or partisans of Ali, formed following the 680 murder of Ali’s son Hussein and his followers by the Umayyad Caliph Yazid I in Karbala, Iraq. Following the death of Hussein, the Shia would remain a source of instability for the Umayyad regime, waging a low level insurgency against the Umayyad state and eventually supporting the Abbasid revolution that overthrew the Umayyad Dynasty in 750. This study did not examine the Shia insurgency’s cost to the Umayyad treasury or how much it required the Umayyads to allocate military forces to quelling domestic unrest vice expanding their empire, diversions of resources which would have limited the Umayyads’ ability to commit forces to the Battle of Tours or consolidate any gains in France. The Kharijites, or rejectionists, were another faction which served as a source of unrest in the Umayyad Caliphate and contributed to the success of the Berber rebellion, were not a focus of this work and should also be examined in future