User:Al Ameer son/Siege of Damascus

Background
In late 633 or early 634, Abu Bakr dispatched three or four armies to invade Syria. These initial armies were led respectively by the Ridda veteran commanders Amr ibn al-As, Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan, and Shurahbil ibn Hasana. The fourth army was headed by the prominent companion of Muhammad, Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, though several modern historians estimate his arrival to shortly before the siege of Damascus. In the early stage of the invasion, Muslim forces engaged in minor skirmishes with local Byzantine garrisons and allied Christian Arab tribesmen in southern Palestine and Transjordan and gained control of the southern Levantine countryside. With the arrival in April 634 of another army led by the prominent Ridda general Khalid ibn al-Walid, the second phase of the conquest opened and the Muslims captured their first major Syrian city, Bosra. Afterward, Khalid and the other commanders joined Amr in southern Palestine to confront a large Byzantine force assembling against him. In this first major confrontation between the Byzantines and the Muslims, the Battle of Ajnadayn, the Byzantines were routed and fled toward Pella (Fahl in Arabic) in northern Transjordan. There, the Byzantines were routed again and Pella was captured.

The defeated Byzantines fled for Damascus, where they joined with other Byzantine troops stationed in the city. Khalid's army crossed into the Golan Heights and confronted "some resistance" by Byzantine troops at Marj al-Suffar, a little north of modern al-Sanamayn, on the way to Damascus. The Muslims suffered considerable losses, but put the Byzantines to flight nonetheless, after which the Byzantines returned to Damascus.

Siege
The Byzantines in Damascus were commanded by Vahan. All the main Muslim commanders participated in the siege, each placed at one or two of the city's gates.