Early Muslim conquests

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Age of the Caliphs

The initial Islamic conquests (632-732) began with the death of Muhammad, were followed by a century of rapid Arab and Islamic expansion, and ended with the Battle of Tours—resulting in a vast Islamic empire and area of influence that stretched from India, across the Middle East and North Africa, to 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 Africa, the solid and compact dominion from Fargana to Aden, from Tarsus to Surat, will spread on every side to the measure of four or five months of the 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 the Mahometan religion 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.

The individual conquests, together with their beginning dates:

Byzantine-Arab Wars: 632-718

Main article: Byzantine-Arab Wars

• The conquest of Syria, 635
• The conquest of Armenia, 639
• The conquest of Egypt, 639
• The conquest of North Africa, 642
• The Second Arab siege of Constantinople 717 - 718

Conquest of Persia: 636-651

Main article: Islamic conquest of Persia

In the reign of Yazdegerd III, the last Sassanid ruler of Persia, a Muslim invasion force 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 Nahavand (Nehavand). Then, in 651, Yazdgird III was murdered at Merv, present-day Turkmenistan, ending the dynasty. His son Pirooz and many others fled into exile in China.

Conquest of Afghanistan: 637-709

Main article: Islamic conquest of Afghanistan

In 637, five years after the death of Muhammad, Arab Muslims had shattered the might of the Persian Sassanians and began to move towards the lands east of Iran: Herat was captured in 652. By 709 all of Aryana came under Arab control. Regions around Kabul were annexed from the Hindu Shahis as well. But the invaders encountered pockets of resistance from local tribespeople, a process that would continue for centuries, and Tang China and Tibet mounted an opposition to the Arab invasion to prevent Muslim incursions into Central Asia.

Conquest of North Africa: 640-709

Main article: Islamic conquest of North Africa

Conquest of South Asia: 664-712

Main article: Islamic conquest of South Asia

During the period of Rajput supremacy in north India, which lasted from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, the first Muslim effort toward invasion was made in 664. Forces led by Mohalib began launching raids from Persia, striking Multan in the southern Punjab in what is today Pakistan. Mohalib penetrated as far as the ancient capital of the Maili and returned with prisoners of war but he didn't come to conquer.

Later, in 711, the Umayyad caliph in Damascus sent an expedition to Baluchistan (an arid region on the Iranian Plateau in Southwest Asia, presently split between Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) and Sindh (presently a province of Pakistan bordering on Baluchistan, Punjab, and Rajasthan, India). This expedition was led by Muhammad bin Qasim and went as far north as Multan. He then invaded South Asia on the orders of Al-Hajjaj bin Yousef, the governor of Iraq. His armies defeated Raja Dahir at what is now Hyderabad in Sindh and established Islamic rule in 712. Like Alexander the Great before him, Qasim traveled and subdued the whole of what is modern Pakistan, from Karachi to Kashmir, reaching the borders of Kashmir within three years.

Conquest of Iberia: 711-718

Main article: Islamic conquest of Iberia

The conquest of Iberia commenced when the Moors (mostly Berbers with some Arabs) invaded Visigothic Christian Iberia in the year 711 CE. 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 part of the expanding Umayyad empire.

End of the Conquests: 718-750

After their success in overrunning Iberia, the conquerers moved northeast across the Pyrenees but were ultimately defeated by the Frank Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732. Meanwhile, the Christian Reconquista or reconquest of Iberia became established with Pelayo of Asturias' victory at the Battle of Covadonga in 722.

Then, in the east, in an internecine war between rival Arab dynasties, the Umayyads were overthrown in 750 by the Abbasids, after which most of the Umayyad clan were massacred. But one Umayyad prince, Abd-ar-rahman I, escaped to Al-Andalus and, a few years later, founded a new Umayyad dynasty there.

See also

• Amr ibn al-A'as
• Caliph
• Khalid ibn al-Walid
• Umayyad Caliphate

References

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