Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Türk Kültürü İncelemeleri Dergisi, sa.2, ss.1-22, 2000 (Hakemli Dergi)
Following the conquest of Syria and al-Jezira, the capital of Umayyad Caliphate was transferred to Damascus; Naturally then the Taurus region had been the frontier region between the Byzantine and Muslim Caliphate. For a long time, the Taurus mountains had become an natural obstacle in front of the muslim Arabs who aimed to settle in Anatolia. Through the Umayyad and Abbasid periods, the warfare between Byzantines and Arabs had continued, however this had never turned into an Arab invasion of Asia Minor. Pre- Islamic Arabs had used the term “sâifa” to describe their commercial visit into Anatolia and other regions in Asia. In the early Islamic period however, all the struggle between Arabs and Byzantines was called like that. Within time, the term “sâifa” began to be used to call the periodic summer-expeditions which had formed an important aspect of the Arab-Byzantine warfare in Anatolia and caused afterwards the birth of a holy war (gaza) glorification in this region.