THE GREAT ARAB CONQUESTS How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We !

"e In# B$ H%gh &enned$# 'a Capo (ress#

Few events in history have had so swift, profound and far-reaching an impact as the arrival of Islam. Within a mere 15 years of the Prophet
Muhammads death, in !.". #$%, his desert followers had con&uered all the centers of ancient 'ear (astern civili)ation. *hey had erased a great and
enduring regional power, Persia+ reduced its ,rilliant rival, -y)antium, to a rump state+ and carved from their territories an empire as vast as that of
.ome at its height. Within 1// years, Muslim armies were harrying the frontiers of *ang dynasty 0hina in the east, while 5,/// miles to the west, they
had charged across 1pain to clash with the Merovingian princes of what is now France.*he triumph was not 2ust military. *he e3plosive e3pansion of
Islam severed at a stro4e the 1,///-year-old lin4s of commerce, culture, politics and religion that had ,ound the southern and northern shores of the
Mediterranean. It created, for the first and only time, an empire ,ased entirely upon a single faith, ,ound ,y its laws and devoted to its propagation. It
uprooted long-em,edded native religions, li4e 5oroastrianism in Persia, -uddhism in 0entral !sia and 6induism in much of the Indus 7alley. It
transformed !ra,ic from a desert dialect into a world language that, for centuries, supplanted 8atin and 9ree4 as the main repository of human
4nowledge.
!nd yet strangely, the &uestion of how the Muslim !ra,s achieved all this, in such a short time, remains pu))ling. 'ot that no one has tried to e3plain
it. *he !ra,s themselves ,uilt a rich literary tradition around the seemingly miraculous success of Islam. -ut these martial histories of the futuhat, or
:openings,; won ,y the new faith tended to focus on the moral superiority, )eal and courage of the victors rather than on more mundane factors that
might have aided them. Much attention was paid to such details as the genealogy of !ra, generals and the precise division of ,ooty, at the e3pense of
accurate chronology and geography.
Modern historians have generally discounted the !ra, histories, emphasi)ing instead how the calamitous upheavals of late anti&uity sapped capacities
to resist the Muslim invasions. -ecause of the difficult nature of te3tual sources, which include rare materials in 9ree4, 1yriac, 0optic, !rmenian,
Persian and even 0hinese as well as !ra,ic, and ,ecause of the relative paucity of archaeological research into early Islam, recent scholarship has also
tended to ,e area- and theme-specific. 'ot for a generation has anyone attempted a ,road political history of Islams first century.
Few writers are ,etter e&uipped for such a tas4 than 6ugh <ennedy. ! professor of medieval history at the =niversity of 1t. !ndrews, in 1cotland, he
has written scores of articles and numerous ,oo4s on the early period of Islam, including popular histories as well as scholarly studies. <ennedy is a
fastidious historian, refraining from undue speculation and stic4ing close to his sources. 6e is also a 2udicious one. .ather than dismissing suspect
material, li4e triumphalist Muslim histories, he prefers to sift through them in search of clues. >ccasionally, he finds corro,orating evidence that some
of these accounts appear closer to the truth than fellow historians have assumed.
9iven the immense geographical scope of the wor4 and the spotty, dis2ointed nature of the evidence, <ennedy has wisely chosen to organi)e the ,oo4
simply, in more or less chronological fashion, one campaign after another. 6e ,egins, however, with a pair of useful chapters, one surveying the
te3tual and archaeological sources for the period, the second outlining the shape of !ra, society at the onset of the great Islamic e3pansion.
Far from ,eing wild, illiterate -edouins, <ennedy shows, the early Muslim leaders were sophisticated townsmen and highly competent commanders.
>nce they had rallied a critical mass of converts, the swift adherence to the new faith of tri,es from across the !ra,ian Peninsula created its own
impetus for con&uest. !ra,ian society had ,een geared to intertri,al conflict. 6aving now su,mitted to the authority of a single leader, the Muslim
caliph, nomadic warriors had to direct their energies outward or ris4 tearing the nascent Islamic nation apart. *heir fighting spirit was further primed
,y the doctrine of 2ihad, which promised ,oth earthly and heavenly rewards. Martyrs were assured a special place in paradise, while soldiers were
allowed to 4eep four-fifths of captured ,ooty.
?et the Muslims esprit de corps, their desert-trained mo,ility and the cleverness of their generals still cannot e3plain how such astonishingly small
armies @ perhaps $/,/// men for the con&uest of 1yria, 1/,/// for Ira&, 1#,/// for (gypt @ so swiftly overran these densely populated lands.
1everal other factors proved crucial. *he most important was timing.
-eginning around 5A/, repeated epidemics of ,u,onic plague appear to have drastically reduced populations across the 'ear (ast and the
Mediterranean. Political turmoil was to wea4en the region more. =sing the assassination of the -y)antine emperor Maurice in #/% as a prete3t, the
shah of 1asanian Persia, 0hosroes II, mounted a ,lit)4rieg that swept his armies through the rich provinces of 1yria and (gypt, and across !natolia as
far as 0onstantinople. It was not until #%A that the -y)antines under 6eraclius counterattac4ed, landing an army on the shore of the -lac4 1ea, ,ehind
Persian lines, that sac4ed and pillaged its way south through the Persian heartlands. 6eraclius recaptured Berusalem in #$/, while 0hosroes son
<avad II, who ascended to the throne after his father was murdered in a coup, sued for peace.
-ut the decades of war, in the manner of a Cuentin *arantino script, had left ,oth -y)antium and Persia stunned and ,leeding. *he sudden Muslim
advance found them completely unprepared. !s <ennedy notes, :If Muhammad had ,een ,orn a generation earlier and he and his successors had
attempted to send armies against the great empires in, say, #//, it is hard to imagine they would have made any progress at all.;
Worse yet, for 6eraclius, schism among 0hristian sects led many (gyptians and 1yrians to side with the !ra, invaders against the -y)antines, who
had tried to impose orthodo3y ,y ,rute force. *o the Muslims further advantage, they demanded relatively lenient termsD those among the van&uished
who did not em,race Islam could worship as they li4ed, on payment of an annual ta3 that was no more ,urdensome than what they had paid ,efore.
*he Muslim advance was not always painless, as <ennedy reveals in a poignant chapter that gives voice to the con&uered. >n several occasions, cities
that resisted were ra)ed, their inha,itants slaughtered or enslaved. In 'orth !frica, the scale of slave raiding was so large that it spar4ed a huge -er,er
uprising. !cross much of the swiftly con&uered territory, the Muslims hold remained tenuous for generations. It is significant that the e3pansion out
of !ra,ia happened in two waves. *he first e3ploited the wea4ness of the collapsed neigh,oring empires. *he second, two generations later, used the
Muslims newfound strength ,ut failed to push ,orders ,ac4 very far. It is remar4a,le, in fact, how sta,le the peripheries of Islam have remained ever
since, e3cepting the loss of 1pain to the 0hristian .econ&uista and Muslim forays into India, the -al4ans and the (ast Indies. -ut these events came
centuries later, and Islams final military triumphs were achieved not ,y !ra,s, ,ut ,y *ur4s.
<ennedys reluctance to pronounce sweeping 2udgments may disappoint general readers. 6is preference for dwelling on lesser-4nown episodes li4e
the con&uest of 0entral !sia, rather than on such oft-related e3ploits as the capture of 1pain, is also more li4ely to please scholars than laymen.
Fellow historians may fault <ennedy, too, for relying on te3tual evidence more than on archaeology. 'evertheless, this ,ris4 yet richly detailed
account is li4ely to remain the ,est we have for many years.