Leadership Qualities of the Arabs

As a student and lecturer of management and leadership; I found this section in Hugh Kennedy's book, The Great Arab Conquests to be rather interesting. This looks like a topic that could be further expanded on. From pp. 371-72:

The quality of leadership in the Muslim armies was clearly very high. The small elite of Hijazi city dwellers, mostly from the Quraysh and associated tribes, who provided the majority of the senior commanders, produced some extremely able men. Khālid b. al-Walīd in Syria, Amr b. al-Ās in Egypt and Sa'd b. Abī Waqqās in Iraq were all military leaders of distinction. In the next generation we can point to Uqba b. Nāfi in North Africa, Tāriq b. Ziyād and Mūsā b. Nusayr in Spain, Qutayba b. Muslim in Transoxania and Muhammad b. Ishāq al-Thaqafī [sic; Kennedy really means Muhammad b. Qāsim al-Thaqafī] in Sind as great commanders. The Arabic sources also talk a great deal about councils of war and commanders taking advice before deciding on a course of action. This is partly a literary fiction, designed to outline the possible military activity and emphasize the "democratic" nature of early Muslim society, but it may be a genuine reflection of practice, whereby decisions were made after a process of consultation and discussion.

The effectiveness of the leadership may be in part a product of the political traditions of Arabian society. Leadership was passed down from generation to generation within certain families and kins, but within those groups any aspiring leader had to prove himself, showing his followers that he was brave, intelligent and diplomatic. If he failed, they would look for someone else. He also had to take account of the views and opinions of those he hoped to lead. Being someone's son was never qualification enough. The astonishment of the Iranian queen mother that the sons of the great Qutayba b. Muslim did not inherit his position are an indication of the difference in culture between Iranian and Arab in this respect. Incompetent or dictatorial commanders were unlikely to survive for long. Ubayd Allāh b. Abī Bakra in Afghanistan and Junayd b. Abd al-Rahmān in Transoxania are among the few examples of failure in command; they lasted only a short time and were savagely excoriated by the poets, the political commentators of their time.

There were other features of the Muslim command structure which led to success. The sources lay continuous stress on the roles of caliphs and governors, particularly the caliph Umar I (633-44), in organizing and directing the conquests. It is quite impossible that Umar could have written all the letters about the minutiae of military operations that are ascribed to him, but these narratives may reflect the fact that there was a strong degree of organization and control from Medina and later from Damascus. There are very few examples of commanders disobeying orders, equally few of rebellions against the center by commanders in distant fields and provinces. This is all the more striking because it contrasts with events in the contemporary Byzantine Empire, where the military effectiveness of the state was constantly undermined by rebellions of military commanders hoping to take the imperial crown. The way in which successful generals like Khālid b. al-Walīd, Amr b. al-Ās, Mūsā b. Nusayr and Muhammad b. Ishāq [sic; again, Muhammad b. Qāsim al-Thaqafī] accepted their dismissal and quietly made their way back to the center, often to face punishment and disgrace, is very striking.

I take exception to Kennedy referring to the councils of war and commanders taking advice being "partly a literary fiction." All the sirah I've read of the Prophet (pbuh) refer time and again to his taking council not only with his Companions, but even his wives (e.g., Umm Salamah at the time of Hudaybiyyah). Moreover, Kennedy proves his own point when he later wrote, "He also had to take account of the views and opinions of those he hoped to lead." I don't think this is a literary fiction at all, but was the standard operation procedure of the Arab commanders, who used the example of the Prophet (pbuh) to great effect.

When Kennedy also wrote that the poets would "savagely excoriate" weak commanders, this is not an exaggeration. Earlier in the book (p. 288) Kennedy had provided several poems; this first was written against Junayd b. Abd al-Rahmān, who led the Arabs in the disastrous Battle of the Tashtakaracha Pass (south of the city of Samarqand, in what is now Uzbekistan):

You weep because of the battle
You should be carved up as a leader
You abandoned us like pieces of a slaughtered beast
Cut up for a round-breasted girl.
Drawn swords rose
Arms were cut off at the elbows
While you were like an infant girl in the women's tent
With no understanding what was going on.
If only you had landed in a pit on the day of the Battle
And been covered with hard, dry mud!
War and its sons play with you
Like hawks play with quails.
Your heart flew out of fear of battle
Your flying heart will not return
I hate the wide beauty of your eye
And the face in a corrupt body
Junayd, you do not come from real Arab stock
And your ancestors were ignoble
Fifty thousand were slain having gone astray
While you cried out for them like lost sheep.

Another poem was written against Ubayd Allāh b. Abī Bakra (pp. 196-97):

You were appointed as their Amir
Yet you destroyed them while the war was still raging
You stayed with them, like a father, so they said
Yet you were breaking them with your folly
You are selling a qafiz* of grain for a whole dirham
While we wondered who was to blame
You were keeping back their rations of milk and barley
And selling them unripe grapes.

* A measure of four liters, the implication being that this was very expensive.

Photo credit: Masjid Jamia Khalid ibn al-Walid, location of the tomb of Khalid ibn al-Walid, from Wikipedia/Mohammad Adil Rais