The Middle Persian and Zoroastrian texts of the Sasanian period clearly define the role of a military commander: ‘the duty of the warrior is to strike the enemy and to hold their own country and land secure and tranquil’, says the text known as the Spirit of Wisdom. By the third decade of the seventh century AD, the military elite who commanded the Sasanian armies were failing in respect of these stated aims. All-out war between the armies of the Sasanian king Khusro II and the Byzantine emperors raged for twenty-six years (602–628) early in the century, and resulted in the Sasanian military elite not keeping their lands secure or tranquil while internal conflict and civil war wracked the empire. In the decade that followed the peace of 628, both the Sasanian and Byzantine Empires would be defeated in a succession of pivotal battles against the armies of the Rashidun caliphate. The results of these battles in the 630s would be the complete disappearance of the Sasanians and a significant and lasting reduction in the territory of the Byzantines.

The memory of the battles between the Arab Muslim armies of the caliph Umar and the forces of the Byzantine and the Sasanian Empires in the years c. 636–638 looms large in our perception and understanding of the period. The Arab victories in the 630s helped to shape the memory and narrative construction of the empires that came before and the realities of those that followed on from these events. This is also true in the portrayal of the generals in command of the armies that fought these battles. The complex stories of these men cannot be reduced to a simple binary of winner or loser, heroic or villainous, good or bad. On the field of battle were the ‘best of men’, who are remembered as the epitome of masculinity in their own cultures. They were military commanders in societies whose military was the governing elite. These were also men whose actions in command turned the tide of history. The memory of them is embedded in the later narrative accounts, and examining these portrayals helps to illuminate the social complexity of the times. This memory also provides a view of the competing interests that were involved in the creation of the legacy of these fields of battle.