Razzia (military)

Although it primarily sought to obtain booty, historically the objectives of a razzia have been diverse: the capture of slaves, ethnic or religious cleansing, expansion of territory, and intimidation of the enemy.

Over time, its meaning has also been extended to other activities that bear certain similarities to these attacks, such as police raids or certain violent incursions by organized or paramilitary groups, such as those carried out in Brazilian favelas, or in refugee camps during the war in Central Africa.

It has the same connotation as the words ghaziya and maghazi, which in pre-Islamic times referred to raids organized by nomadic Bedouin warriors for the purpose of plundering rival tribes or sedentary, wealthier neighbors.

[2] In the Iberian Peninsula, the Muslim razzias received the name of aceifas, from the Arabic al-ṣayfa: "Saracen war expedition that takes place in summer".

The first important razzias against peninsular Christian territory began after the defeat of Bermudo I by the Andalusian Hisham I in the battle of Burbia (791), even sacking the city of Oviedo in 794.

In the year 981, when Hisham II delegated his powers to the warlord, who was named al-Mansūr bi-l-Lah ("The Victorious of God"), he organized up to five expeditions in Christian lands.

In the west, Turkish ghāzīs regularly raided along the Byzantine frontier, finding in the Greek and Armenian akritoi their nemesis.

After the battle of Manzikert, these raids intensified, while the ghāzī guilds grouped together to form fraternities similar to Christian military orders.

When executed in the context of Islamic jihad, the function of the razzia was to weaken the enemy's defenses in preparation for his eventual conquest and subjugation.

One of the main sources that tell us about the development of a traditional razzia are the medieval Islamic jurists, whose discussions of what was and was not permitted in such actions in the course of war reveal some of the practices of this institution.

The annals of these campaigns, often reflected as preemptive measures or attacks against invaders, which entailed the traditional plunder, constitute their own genre of prophetic biography within Islamic literature, distinctive of the sira.

During the Second Chechen War, Chechnya announced the gazawat against Russia, as a propaganda measure and to gain the support of the Islamic population, the majority in the country.

Other examples of current razzias are the death squad raids in the Brazilian favelas, or the paramilitary incursions during the war in Central Africa.