After the death of Mohammed in 632 and up to the Battle of Poitiers in 732, Arab Muslim armies conquered a swath of land that extended from Spain and Portugal in the West to what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan in the East. Our traditional understanding of these events is that a group of Muslim fanatics were hell-bent (pardon the expression) on proselytizing others to their faith. Hugh Kennedy, professor of history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, tells us in this excellent and well-written book that there were more mundane reasons for this sudden expansion of the realm: the quest for the spoils of war. Religious conversion was not yet a factor that would come two to three hundred years later.
This story is told in chronological and geographical order, moving outward from Mecca and Medina. Kennedy reminds us that many of his sources are unreliable and unclear since they were written by the victors. But he has done a masterful job putting it together, using the records of the conquered. His knowledge of Arabic is evident throughout this book.
How did a group of disorganized Bedouins without military weapons or martial tradition create such a large Empire? In the beginning, Kennedy tells us that it was mainly due to the weakness and decline of the immediate surrounding empires. Byzantium, which controlled Syria and Palestine, and Sassanid Persia, which controlled what is now Iraq and Iran, had exhausted themselves fighting each other. When the Arab armies arrived, they were met with little resistance.
Their mode of conquest was simple and time-honored. First, they defeated the army, then they besieged the population centers, giving them a choice of paying tribute and allegiance or facing death. Conquered peoples invariably chose the former. Arab administrators wisely left existing structures and traditions in place. They established a very tolerant and multicultural Empire. ( For more on empires and tolerance, read Amy Chua's Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--and Why They Fall.) They were tolerant of Christianity in the West and Hinduism in the East. During the 100 years covered in this book, Egypt remained Coptic-speaking and Christian, and Persia remained Pahlavi-speaking and Zoroastrian. It was not until much later that the Arabic language and Muslim faith took hold.
The conquests were driven by the quest for booty to satisfy the growing Arab-controlled armies. Since Muslims were forbidden to fight each other, according to Kennedy, they constantly sought out new lands and peoples to conquer.
This may shed light on the present condition of the Middle East. Now we know that Muslims do fight each other and that Islam in its current form in Iran and Saudi Arabia has very little tolerance of different faiths. During the period covered in this book, Kennedy does not say much about inter-Muslim and inter-Arab conflicts; apparently, there weren't many. There may have been greater harmony within during a time of tolerance of outside cultures. For those Arabs today who mourn the loss of the Empire and feel humiliation and inferiority at the hands of the West, they would do well to study the lessons of this book. Tolerance of other cultures and religions - not rigidity and exclusion - is the key to greatness and power.
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