Sword of Fire: Lessons for the Spirit Warrior (Spirit Warrior Series: Vol. 1)

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Just as Philip of Macedon transformed the armies of Greece so his successor, Alexander, could employ them as instruments of conquest and empire, Muhammad transformed the armies of Arabia so his successors could use them to defeat the armies of Persia and Byzantium and establish the heartland of the empire of Islam. Unlike conventional generals, Muhammad did not seek the defeat of a foreign enemy or invader; rather, he sought to replace the existing Arabian social order with a new one based upon a radically different ideological worldview.

Although Muhammad began his struggle for a new order with a small guerrilla cadre capable of undertaking only limited hit-and-run raids, by the time he was ready to attack Mecca a decade later that small guerrilla force had grown into a large conventional army with integrated cavalry and infantry units capable of conducting large-scale combat operations.

The West has been accustomed to thinking of the Arab conquests that followed Muhammad in purely conventional military terms. But the armies that achieved those conquests did not exist in Arabia before Muhammad. One requirement for an insurgency is a determined leader whose followers regard him as special in some way and worthy of their following him. Insurgencies also require a messianic ideology, one that espouses a coherent creed or plan to replace the existing social, political, and economic order with a new order that is better, more just, or ordained by history or even by God himself.

Successful insurgencies also require a disciplined cadre of true believers to do the work of organizing and recruiting new members. These were the muhajirun , or emigrants. The first converts among the clans of Medina, the ansar , or helpers, also filled the ranks of the cadre. Within this revolutionary cadre was an inner circle of talented men, some of them later converts. Some, like Abdullah Ibn Ubay and Khalid al-Walid, were experienced field commanders and provided a much-needed source of military expertise. Once Muhammad had created his cadre of revolutionaries, he established a base from which to conduct military operations against his adversaries.

Only one in six Arabs lived in a city or town at this time; the others resided in the desert, living as pastoral nomads. Muhammad chose Medina as his base of operations because of its strategic location. Medina was close to the main caravan route from Mecca to Syria that constituted the economic lifeline of Mecca and other oases and towns dependent upon the caravan trade for their economic survival.

Medina was also sufficiently distant from Mecca to permit Muhammad a relatively free hand in his efforts to convert the bedouin clans living along the caravan route. Muhammad understood that conversions and political alliances with the bedouins, not military engagements with the Meccans, were the keys to success. Insurgencies require an armed force and the manpower to sustain them. It was from the original small cadre of guerrillas that the larger conventional army could be grown that would ultimately permit the insurgency to engage its enemies in set-piece battles when the time and political conditions were right.

At the Battle of Badr ce , Muhammad could only put men in the field.

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Two years later at Second Badr, 1, Muslims took the field. By the battle at Kheibar, the Muslim army had grown to 2, combatants. When Muhammad mounted his assault on Mecca he did so with 10, men. And at the Battle of Hunayn a few months later the army numbered 12, men. What is evident from the figures, however, is that his insurgency grew very quickly in terms of its ability to recruit military manpower.

Weapons, helmets, and armor were expensive items in relatively impoverished Arabia, and the early Muslim converts, drawn mostly from among the poor, orphaned, widowed, and otherwise socially marginal, could ill afford them. Muhammad also established the practice of requiring prisoners to provide weapons and equipment instead of money to purchase their freedom.

One prisoner taken at Badr, an arms merchant, was forced to provide the insurgents with a thousand spears to obtain his freedom. Muhammad eventually had enough weapons, helmets, shields, and armor to supply an army of 10, for his march on Mecca. By supplying these converts with expensive military equipment, Muhammad immediately raised their status within the clan and guaranteed their loyalty to him, if not always to the creed of Islam. In negotiations with bedouin chiefs he made them gifts of expensive weaponry.

Horses and camels were equally important military assets, for without them raids and the conduct of operations over great distances were not possible. Muhammad obtained his animals in much the same manner as he did his weapons and with equal success. At Badr the insurgents had only two horses. An insurgency must be able to sustain the popular base that supports the fighting elements. To accomplish this, Muhammad changed the ancient customs regarding the sharing of booty taken in raids. The chief of an Arab clan or tribe traditionally took one-fourth of the booty for himself.

Muhammad decreed that he receive only one-fifth, and even this the chief took not for himself but in the name of the ummah. Under the old ways individuals kept whatever booty they had captured. Muhammad required that all booty be turned in to a common pool where it was shared equally among all combatants who had participated in the raid.

Most important, Muhammad established that the first claimants on the booty that had been taken in the name of the ummah were the poor and the widows and orphans of the soldiers killed in battle. He also used the promise of a larger share of booty to strike alliances with bedouin clans, some of whom remained both loyal and pagan to the end, fighting for loot rather than for Islam. The leader of an insurgency must take great care to guard his authority from challenges, including those that come from within the movement itself.

Muhammad had many enemies, and he was always on guard against an attempt upon his life. Like other leaders, Muhammad surrounded himself with a loyal group of followers who acted as his bodyguard and carried out his orders without question. Recruited from among the most pious, enthusiastic, and fanatical followers, they came from impoverished backgrounds.

The suffah members spent much of their time studying Islam. No insurgency can survive without an effective intelligence apparatus. As early as when Muhammad left Mecca in , he left behind a trusted agent, his uncle Abbas, who continued to send him reports on the situation there. Abbas served as an agent-in-place for more than a decade, until Mecca itself fell to Muhammad. His followers were mostly townspeople with no experience in desert travel.

On some of the early operations Muhammad had to hire bedouin guides.

As the insurgency grew, however, his intelligence service became more organized and sophisticated, using agents-in-place, commercial spies, debriefing of prisoners, combat patrols, and reconnaissance in force as methods of intelligence collection. He often conducted advance reconnaissance of the battlefields upon which he fought. We have no knowledge of exactly how the intelligence service was organized or where it was located.

That it was part of the suffah , however, seems a reasonable guess. Muhammad understood the role of propaganda and went to great lengths to make his message public and widely known. In a largely illiterate Arab society, the poet served as the major conveyor of political propaganda. Muhammad hired the best poets money could buy to sing his praises and denigrate his opponents.

He issued proclamations regarding the revelations he received as the Messenger of God, and remained in public view to keep the vision of the new order and the promise of a heavenly paradise constantly before the public. Muhammad understood that the conflict was between the existing social order with its manifest injustices and his vision of the future, and he surpassed his adversaries in spreading his vision to win the struggle for the hearts and minds of the Arab population.

He used terrorism in two basic ways: First, he ensured discipline among his followers by making public examples of traitors and backsliders. He also ordered some of his political enemies assassinated, including poets and singers who had publicly ridiculed him. Second, Muhammad used terrorism to strike fear in the hearts of his enemies on a large scale.

In the case of the Jewish tribes of Medina, Muhammad seems to have ordered the death of the entire Beni Qaynuqa tribe and the selling of their women and children into slavery, though he was later talked out of it by the chief of one of his allies. His ruthlessness and brutality served to strengthen his hand with opponents and allies alike. Over time the violent origins of religions are forgotten and only the faith itself remains, so the founders of the creeds come to be remembered as untouched by the violence of the historical record. Muhammad also managed to bring about a revolution in the way Arabs fought wars, transforming their armies into instruments capable of large-scale combat operations that could achieve strategic objectives instead of only small-scale clan, tribal, or personal objectives.

In so doing he created both the means and historical circumstances that transformed the fragmented Arab clans into a national military entity conscious of its own unique identity.

As a result, the greatest commanders of the early Arab conquests were developed by Muhammad himself. Had he not brought about a military revolution in Arab warfare, it is possible that Islam might not have survived in Arabia. Commanding the Arab armies, those same generals carried out the Arab conquests of Persia and Byzantium.

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The old Arab way of war would have had no chance of success against the armies of either of those empires. Muhammad transformed the social composition of Arab armies from a collection of clans, tribes, and blood kin loyal only to themselves into a national army loyal to a national social entity, the ummah. The ummah was not a nation or a state in the modern sense, but a body of religious believers under the unified command and governance of Muhammad. The ummah transcended the clans and tribes and permitted Muhammad to forge a common identity, national in scope, among the Arabs for the first time.

It was leadership of this national entity that Muhammad claimed, not of any clan or tribe. Loyalty to the ummah permitted the national army to unify the two traditional combat arms of infantry and cavalry into a genuine combined arms force.

Muhammad: The Warrior Prophet | HistoryNet

Bedouins and town dwellers had historically viewed one another with suspicion. Arab infantry had traditionally been drawn from the people living in the towns, settlements, and oases of Arabia. Arab cavalry was traditionally drawn from bedouin clans, whose nomadic warriors excelled at speedy raids, surprise attacks, and elusive retreats, skills honed to a fine edge over generations of raiding. These two different types of combatants possessed only limited experience in fighting alongside one another. Bound by clan loyalties and living in settlements, Arab infantry was steadfast and cohesive and could usually be relied upon to hold its ground, especially in the defense.

Arab cavalry, on the other hand, was unreliable in a battle against infantry, often breaking off the fight to keep their precious mounts from being hurt or make off with whatever booty they had seized. Bedouin cavalry was, however, proficient at reconnaissance, surprise attack, protecting the flanks, and pursuing ill-disciplined infantry. Muhammad was the first Arab commander to successfully join both combat arms into a national army and use them in concert in battle.

Thanks to the larger religious community of believers, the ummah , he could combine the two primary elements of traditional Arab society, town dwellers and bedouin tribes, into a single Arab national identity. That change was actually preceded by a shift in the social composition of Arab society. Before Muhammad, Arab military contingents fought under the command of clan or tribal leaders, sometimes assembled in coalition with other clans or tribes.

While the authority of these clan chiefs was recognized by their own clan, every chief considered himself the equal of any other, so there was no overall commander whose authority could compel the obedience or tactical direction of the army as a whole. Clan warriors fought for their own interests, often only for loot, and did not feel obligated to pursue the larger objectives of the army as a whole. They often failed to report to the battlefield, arrived late, or simply left the fight once they had captured sufficient loot. With about a month left before I move to a whole new chapter in my life, complete with a.

The beginning of a new road This post has very little to do with my active training, but I tend to be a man fond of symbolism. Recently, I purchased a symbol of the journey I am about to take. I debated for weeks before actually deciding on this symbol. It is, as it should be, a sword. However, it is not just any sword.

I have swords that I entrusted to a sword-savvy friend while I am away. This is to be a symbol of a new beginning. It is also the first swo. I just keep talking!!! Allow me to start by apologizing for the brevity of my last post. I was interrupted several times while writing it, and forgot a great many of the things I wanted to discuss in it. Aside from the "noodle dream", and the somatic absorption of Rohai thus far, I wanted to enter a little more personality to this blog.

I just hung the certificate on the wall above my computer. New Look, New Deals. Well, I've done a little reformatting to this blog, as well as my martial arts blog.

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This one has a page dedicated solely to my work within the Jedi Realism movement. Keep an eye on that, because there will be more there, very soon. The biggest thing I did, however, was link each of the books to the CreateSpace eStore, where everyone can buy them. I had the noodle dream! That is, of course, a joke. Instead, I finally had a dream where I did Rohai. This is a long time coming, I know, but I don't dream very often, so it took me a bit longer.

I was standing on a rocky cliff, over looking an even rockier shore, and was wearing a flowing silver outfit, cut like a gi, but soft and sashed closed. I'm not sure if that means anything. What does mean something, though, is that I felt myself doing Rohai wh. I had some ask me the other day, "What exactly is a Spirit Warrior?

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For people to know that they should take the step forward, they must first know something of the road they are choosing. A Spirit Warrior is one who takes to the classical calling of service. They are Knights, in the most romantic meaning of the word. It was shortly after that experience that I missed the interaction of a dojo a great deal, especially playing Uke the way I did during his demonstration. Thanks again, Ross Sensei. That weekend changed my entire plans for the five-year mission, as it were. I am still training Kata Rohai everyday, but.

A Look into the Future I am currently working on several books: Some are fiction, others are more philosophical in nature. On the boards right now are the following works: This is a collection of short stories I have been putting together to test my creativity, and expand not just what I write, but how I write. As I am sure many of you know, authors write a lot, nearly everyday. Welcome to a New Day. This post marks the beginning of my official Author Blog.

I finally broke down, and did it I am starting this because I want to share with each person who finds it a piece of who I am, and what exactly I am doing. To start, I would like to say thank you for reading. My name is J. Michaels, but most people call me Miko. I have been an Independent Writer for just over 16 months now. I didn't start out wanting to be a big writer, I just wanted to tell my story. I am just coming to the end of a 2-week long vacation from all things, except my training. I have spent very little time on the internet, and as such, have not updated the blog in a while.

I want everyone to know that I had a pretty intense scare a week or so ago. I was lying in bed, and felt a strange pain in my sternum. It came and went throughout the day, namely depending on my position. I sneezed, and my sternum popped, and it has not been back since. While studying the Gogenki precursor to Tensho, a "kata" listed as Rokkishu, I discovered compelling evidence that it is, in fact, not a kata at all.

It is, as best as can be researched, a qi gong drill which Gogenki and Miyagi Chojun learned together while in China. There is also a oft-mentioned link to the Kojo Dojo, although I am having trouble finding the exact link bewteen them.

The belief to this point, from what I've gathered, is that Miyagi Choju. Well, after my previously mentioned bout with food poisoning, I am feeling stronger than I have in a long time. It is likely because I experienced for the first time in three years how weak I could be. Got back into Rohai training on the first, working on the "Shorin Ryu" video posted below.

I put the style in quotes because, while that is the title of the video, I can find nowhere that can back up that claim. I find it odd that this version of Rohai removes the deep shiko dachi and ya. I have been pushed off of training for the last two days due to food poisoning, and the hallucination-causing fever attached. I'll get back at it Friday, just need a few days sleep Old video, new interpretation I see several elements of the various styles, but am astonished at some of the differences.

It seems I was a bit too hasty in my previous statement of forging my own being the only step left. Return of the Blog! It has been over a year since I have had any ability to update this blog. I have to extend my apologies to anyone who may still be watching. After a time, with no end in sight, I stopped typing out my progress. Well, yesterday, I received a message from the technical support systems here that my account was repaired.

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I spent the evening deciding. Back on the Air! First, allow me to apologize to everyone who reads this. My PC died, and I have had no way to update this blog until now. Well, I guess it's time to catch everyone up. I'm taking the last few days of the month off, for some down time and a few days in the woods. A little rest is good for the soul. See everyone next month, with the beginning of Hayashi-ha Matsumora no Rohai!

Same drum, new tempo I now have at least 3 techniques for every move. Some are simple pain suppression techniques. Some are far nastier joint locks. A few of them seem quite devastating. I am not sure if I will post any or all of them right now. Some may not be the most practical, others just plain dangerous. More and more by the day, I feel a sense of pride, and a growing sense of awe-like fear. If I am progressing this fast into becoming this kata, what will I be like i. I can feel myself doing Rohai mirrored while in seated meditation, but not while I lie down to sleep yet.

It is odd that doing it mirrored is soaking into my somatic memory faster than doing it the traditional way. Not much else for now. Sorry for the not-so-wordy month, everyone. While standing outside, doing the moves immediately after the sagiashi dachi crane position, I noticed a jabbing forward motion with the primary hand of the technique.

Still trying to train the "knee kick" in the sagiashi dachi crane posture at the gym, to little avail. The multi-level cable cage would work, except there are no foot harnesses at the particular branc. And the Beat Goes On A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.

Reference to any other version within the kata family will be noted as follows: Some of you know me well, others not at all. I myself have spent the last week diving into my psyche, asking if I was really going to do such a thing as devote the next days of my training to training of such a narrow focus.

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