The First Wave of the Islamic Conquests 632 652 Myth and Fact of Islamic Conquests

Hi everyone, we are going to be speaking about the first Islamic conquests. That is that moment after the prophet Muhammad died, after the rigid wars when the Arab Muslim soldiers moved out of Arabia and into the larger parts of the Middle East. Now, this is not just topic of general historical concern. It is also let's say trope, common place that people go back to to speak about images of destruction and the so-called insanity and violence of Muslims. And in fact, it's something that continues to be brought up again and again, often compared in sense to the idea of the barbarians invading Rome and destroying things. And in fact, in even in historical scholarship traditionally, not anymore, but traditionally, especially in popular literature, the idea that the rise of Islam, the expansion of nomadic Muslim groups out of Arabia into the rest of the world marks somehow the break or death of the Roman Empire and the start of different civilization. Now, we're going to be looking into whether or not that's true or not, and it basically is not. But do want to point out that often these images for example the fall of the Roman Empire. note the date 19th century when people are become obsessed with some of these topics. Another type of common depiction of what conquest is imagined as raving hordes coming in raping women stealing material burning down cities. Is that actually the case? What is the myth? what is the reality of the conquests and how and why did they take place? Now, we're going to be delving into that piece by piece. Let's look at the first war of expansion. Again, we are looking at the dashed line here. We starting off from Medina and Mecca, that is to say the centers of the nent Muslim/believer community. As we pointed out after the rid wars, these tribes which had been fighting one another, which had now been convened and recentralized under the command of Abu Bakr had to in sense redirect their energies towards other fights and other spaces of raiding. and one of those spaces was the areas north of Arabia that is both Palestine, Syria here under the control of the Byzantines along that with Egypt one of the more populous and rich provinces of the area as well as up into what is today Iraq and northern Arabia, areas that were under the control of the Byzantine lands. sorry, not they were under the control of the Cisanians, the Persian Empire with their capital here in Tessifon right there. So, what's going to happen is that very quickly after 632, possibly even earlier, possibly under the under the command of the prophet Muhammad according to some Syriak sources. But we do have notions that these expansions occurred very soon after the wars. Now what is their priorities? Why are they expanding? One think is way to deal with the question of how to redirect the energies of these nomadic groups. The other thing is that we have believer movement, very strong pitistic transformative new religion that believes the end of the world is coming and it's going to happen in Jerusalem. So they want to focus on Syria and Palestine and that is the area in which they move into. Abu Bakr the Amir al-Muin the commander of the believers moves in organizes four armies. There's probably about 24,000 troops. first first priority is to control the countryside to attack and subdue the other nomadic tribes in Syria and Palestine so that they can then move into this area and control it. well the second priority is to northern Arabian Iraq where the Cisanians are and again the focus is on the nomads. So when we look at what they're actually moving to they're moving into areas that are very different from where they were living before. Mecca and Medina very deserty oasis towns with some farming but very little mostly nomadic lifestyles except in some again oasis towns whereas they move into these much greener larger centers of cultivation initially Syria and then Iraq and then of course Egypt these become major and different places to live and in fact they're not familiar with the population the leaders of the new Muslim troops want to keep separate communities because they believe again that they're one they don't want their troops just mixing about with these people. But they also and and just like we have military bases today to sequester troops from the general population. but they also believed again that they were part of new believer movement and that these people and the the locals were not necessarily part of it. And in fact conversion of the initial of of the of the local population was not priority in any ways. This was more about reaching Jerusalem and controlling these areas militarily. In fact, it was often discouraged by the local population to convert to Islam. Anyways, the troops themselves often lived, especially in southern Iraq and in places like Fustadat, which is will be the future Cairo. It lived in what are called garrison cities, Amsar. We're going to get into that bit more in second, but just keep that in mind that they basically lived in often sequestered areas. Sometimes in Palestine and Syria, they lived in the cities or close by. Now what actually was going on in term why didn't they meet any resistance? Now remember this area here that was under the Byzantines this area here this was Cisanians but the Byzantines and Canians had just finished very long and very devastating war against each other. There were different moments in which they these two groups had been fighting and therefore they could not mount effective counter to the new unified nomadic troops and nor for example were the Cisanians really expecting threat from the south. the Byzantines more successfully tried to counter the new armies coming out the new Muslim armies coming out. and there were some losses on the part of the Muslims but they were eventually able to defeat the Byzantines and new border emerges essentially along this route here kind of Antioch to Mosul to this area basically keeping Asia Minor or Anatolia separate from this area. The other parts that were going to be attacked are over here. Tessif basically moving in initially to control the nomadic populations. The Cisanian kings organize an army to counter them but they are completely routed destroyed. think here in Kadesia the Cisanian Sha escapes doesn't make up quite tries to organize for year or two something against it eventually is killed in battle and that is the end of the Cisanian Empire. So actually very quickly the rise of the Arab mus these Arab nomads who are now under the kind of Muslim/believer movement they enter at precisely the right time. They find essentially military and political vacuum that they're able to seize and take quickly control over this area in time that probably 50 years earlier they wouldn't have been able to do. We're going to get more in