Early Muslim conquests

Age of the Caliphs

The initial Muslim conquests (632–732) began after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and were marked by a century of rapid Arab expansion beyond the Arabian peninsula under the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphs, ending with the Battle of Tours— resulting in a vast Muslim empire and area of influence that stretched from India, across Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, to Iberia and the Pyrenees. Edward Gibbon writes in History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

"Under the last of the Ommiades, the Arabian empire extended two hundred days’ journey from east to west, from the confines of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. And if we retrench the sleeve of the robe, as it is styled by their writers, the long and narrow province of march of a caravan. We should vainly seek the indissoluble union and easy obedience that pervaded the government of Augustus and the Antonines; but the progress of Islam diffused over this ample space a general resemblance of manners and opinions. The language and laws of the Koran were studied with equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville: the Moor and the Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers in the pilgrimage of Mecca; and the Arabian language was adopted as the popular idiom in all the provinces to the westward of the Tigris."

History

The individual conquests, together with their beginning and ending dates, are as follows:

Byzantine-Arab Wars: 632-750

Main article: Byzantine-Arab Wars

Further information: Khalid ibn al-Walid

The Byzantine-Arab Wars were between the Byzantine Empire and at first the Rashidun and then the Umayyad caliphates and resulted in the conquest of the Bilad al-Sham (Levant), Misr (Aegyptus), Ifriqiya (Mediterranean North Africa) and the Kingdom of Armenia.

Under the Rashidun

• The conquest of Syria, 635
• The conquest of Armenia, 639
• The conquest of Egypt, 639

Under the Umayyads

• The conquest of North Africa, 642
• The Second Arab siege of Constantinople 717 - 718

Frontier warfare continued in the form of cross border raids between the Ummayyads and the Byzantine Isaurian dynasty allied with the Khazars across Asia Minor. Byzantine naval dominance and Greek fire resulted in a major victory at the Battle of Akroinon (739); one of a series of military failures of the Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik across the empire that checked Umayyad expansion and hastened their fall.

Conquest of Persia: 636-651

Main article: Islamic conquest of Persia

Further information: Khalid ibn al-Walid

In the reign of Yazdegerd III, the last Sasanid ruler of Persia, a Muslim army secured a decisive defeat of the Persian army at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah in 636, but the final military victory didn't come until 642 when the Persian army was destroyed at the Battle of Nihawānd. Then, in 651, Yazdgird III was murdered at Merv, ending the dynasty. His son Pirooz escaped through the Pamir Mountains in what is now Tajikistan and arrived in Tang China.

Conquest of Transoxiana: 662-709

Main article: Islamic conquest of Afghanistan

Further information: Qutaibah bin Muslim and Battle of Talas

Following the First Fitna, the Umayyads resumed the push to capture Sassanid lands and began to move towards the conquest of lands east and north of the Iranian plateau towards Khorasan and the Silk route along Transoxiana. Following the collapse of the Sassanids, these regions had fallen under the sway of local Iranian and Turkic tribes as well as the Tang dynasty. By 709, however, all of Greater Khorasan and Sogdiana had come under Arab control.

Conquest of Sindh: 664-712

Main article: Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent

Further information: Muhammad bin Qasim

During the period of early Rajput supremacy in north India, during the seventh, the first Muslim invasions were carried out simultaneously with the expansion towards Central Asia. In 664, forces led by Mohalib began launching raids from Persia, striking Multan in the southern Punjab in what is today Pakistan.

In 711, an expedition led by Muhammad bin Qasim defeated Raja Dahir at what is now Hyderabad in Sindh and established Umayyad rule by 712. Qasim subdued the whole of what is modern Pakistan, from Karachi to Kashmir, reaching the borders of Kashmir within three years. After his recall, however, the region devolved into the semi-independent Arab ruled states of Mansura and Multan.

Conquest of Iberia: 711-718

Main article: Umayyad Conquest of Iberia

Further information: Tariq ibn-Ziyad

The conquest of Iberia commenced when the Moors (mostly Berbers with some Arabs) invaded Visigothic Christian Iberia in the year 711. Under their Berber leader, Tariq ibn Ziyad, they landed at Gibraltar on April 30 and worked their way northward. Tariq's forces were joined the next year by those of his superior, Musa ibn Nusair. During the eight-year campaign most of the Iberian Peninsula was brought under Islamic rule—save for small areas in the northwest (Asturias) and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees. This territory, under the Arab name Al-Andalus, became first an Emirate and then an independent Umayyad Caliphate after the overthrowing of the dynasty in Damascus by the Abbasids. When the Caliphate dissolved in 1031, the territory split into small Taifas, and gradually the Christian kingdoms started the Reconquest up to 1492, when Granada, the last kingdom of Al-Ándalus fell under the Catholic Kings.

Conquest of the Caucasus: 711-750

Main article: Khazar-Arab Wars

End of the Umayyad conquests: 718-750

The success of the Bulgarian Empire and the Byzantine Empire in dispelling the second Umayyad siege of Constantinople halted further conquests of Asia Minor in 718. After their success in overrunning the Iberian peninsula, the Umayyads had moved northeast over the Pyrenees where they were defeated 721 at the Battle of Toulouse and then at the Battle of Covadonga. A second invasion was stopped by the Frank Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732 and then at the Battle of the River Berre checking the Umayyad expansion at Narbonne. In 740, the Berber Revolt weakened Umayyad ability to launch any further expeditions and, after the Abbasid overthrow in 756 at Cordoba, a separate Arab state was established on the Iberian peninsula, even as the Muhallabids were unable to keep Ifriqiya from political fragmentation.

In the east, internal revolts and local dissent led to the downfall of the Umayyad dynasty. This military expansion era extended the military boundaries of the Islamic world in the pursuit of wealth garnered from booty. The Khariji and Zaidi revolts coupled with mawali dissatisfaction as second class citizens in respect to Arabs created the support base necessary for the Abbasid revolt in 750. The Abbasids were soon involved in numerous Shia revolts and the breakaway of Ifrikiya from the Caliph's authority completely in the case of the Idrisids and Rustamids and nominally under the Aghlabids, under whom muslim rule was extended temporarily to Sicily and mainland Italy before being oveerun by the competing Fatimids. The Abbasid caliph, even as he competed for authority with the Fatimid Caliph, also had to devolve greater power to the increasing power of regional rulers. This began the process of fragmentation that soon gave rise to numerous local ruling dynasties who would contend for territory with each other and eventually establish kingdoms and empires and push the boundaries of the muslim world on their own authority, giving rise to Mameluke and Turkic dynasties such as the Seljuks, Khwarezmshahs and the Ayyubids who fought the crusades, as well as the Ghaznavids and Ghorids who conquered India.

In Iberia, Charles Martel's son, Pippin the Younger, retook Narbonne, and his grandson Charlemagne actually established the Marca Hispanica across the Pyrenees in part of what today is Catalonia, reconquering Girona in 785 and Barcelona in 801. This formed a permanent buffer zone against Muslims, with Frankish strongholds in Iberia (the Carolingian Empire Spanish Marches), which became the basis, along with the King of Asturias for the Reconquista, spanning 700 year which after the fall of the Caliphate of Cordoba contested with both the successor taifas as well as the African-based Muslim empires, such as the Almoravids and Almohads, until all of the Muslims were expelled from the Iberian peninsula.

Conquest of Sudan: 700-900

Muslims conquered Sudan between the 7th and 9th centuries. Most of the Sudanese eventually converted from Christianity to Islam.

Conquest of Italy: 831-902

Main article: History of Islam in southern Italy

The Aghlabids rulers of Ifriqiya under the Abbasids, using present day Tunisia as their launching pad conquered Palermo in 831, Messina in 842, Enna in 859, Syracuse in 878, Catania in 900 and the final Byzantine stronghold, the fortress of Taormina, in 902 setting up emirates in the Italian peninsula.

Berber and Tulunid rebellions quickly led to the rise of the Fatimids taking over Aghalbid territory and Calabria was soon lost to the Byzantine Catapanate of Italy. The Kalbid dynasty administered the Emirate of Sicily for the Fatimids by proxy from 948. By 1053 the dynasty died out in a dynastic struggle and interference from the Berber Zirids of Ifriqiya led to its break down into small fiefdoms which were captured by the Italo-Normans by 1091.

Conquest of Anatolia: 1060-1360

The later Abbasid period was mixed with expansion and capture of Crete (840) in the early days, who soon shifted their attention towards the East. During the later fragmentation of the Abbassid rule and the rise of their Shiite rivals the Fatimids and Buyids; a resurgent Byzantine then captured Crete and Cilicia in 961, and soon Cyprus in 965 and pushing into the levant by 975 and successfully contested the Fatimids for influence of the region until the arrival of the Seljuk Turks who first allied with the Abbassid and then ruled as the de facto rulers.

In 1068 Alp Arslan and allied Turkmen tribes invaded the Byzantine regions and recaptured the Muslim lands even pushing further into eastern and central Anatolia after a major victory at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The disintegration of the Seljuk dynasty resulted in the rise of the Turkic kingdoms such as the Danishmends and the Sultanate of Rum and various Atabegs who contested the control of the region during the Crusades and incremently expanded across Anatolia until the rise of the Ottoman Empire.

Further conquests: 1200-1800

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the Sahelian kingdom expanded muslim territories far from the coast. Muslim traders spread Islam to kingdoms across Zanj along the east African coast, and to Southeast Asia and the sultanates of Southeast Asia such as those of Mataram and Sulu.

After the Mongols destroyed the Abbasid caliphate, after the Battle of Baghdad, they conquered Muslim lands, but soon converted to Islam, beginning an era of Mongol expansions of Muslim rule into Central Asia and India under Tamerlane and the Mughals.

The Modern era saw the rise of three powerful Muslim empires: the Ottoman, the Safavid and the Mughals; the contest and their fall to the rise of the colonial powers of Europe.

See also

• Khalid ibn al-Walid
• Amr ibn al-A'as
• Aslim Taslam
• Caliph
• Umayyad Caliphate
• List of the Muslim Empires
• Islamization‎

References

• Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 51
• Fred Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests Chapter 6