From bedouins to global titans: The extraordinary rise of the Islamic empire

"Historians have still not ceased to research these conquests and formulate arguments and reasonings for that time. Through their endeavours, they attempt to interpret and rationalise the miraculous from a conventional lens."

In his book "The Story of Civilization", American historian Will Durant opened the section that discusses the Islamic Era with the topic of Islamic conquests with these words: "Mohammed was born into a poor family in a country three-quarters desert, sparsely peopled by nomad tribes whose total wealth could hardly have furnished the sanctuary of St. Sophia."

"No one in those years would have dreamed that within a century these nomads would conquer half of Byzantine Asia, all Persia and Egypt, most of North Africa, and be on their way to Spain."

"The explosion of the Arabian peninsula into the conquest and conversion of half the Mediterranean world is the most extraordinary phenomenon in medieval history."

Greater than Alexander

In his book "History of Syria, Including Lebanon and Palestine", the late Lebanese-American historian Philip Hitti also tackled the tremendous effect of the rise of Islam on world history.

He wrote: "Two episodes of late ancient times stand out in significance: the migration of the Teutonic tribes which resulted in the destruction of the Roman Empire in the West, and the eruption of the Moslem Arabian tribes which annihilated the empire of the Persians and stripped the Byzantine of its fairest provinces."

"Of the two, the Arabian episode was the more phenomenal. At the time of its occurrence Persia and Byzantium were the only two world powers; the Arabians were nobody. Who living then could have guessed that such a happening was within the realm of possibility?"

Hitti draws a comparison between the Arab conquests of the first Hijri century and the ones made by Alexander the Great.

"In about a decade the Muslim conquests changed the face of the Near East; in about a century, they changed the face of the civilised world — something more than Alexander's conquests could claim. Far from being peripheral, the victories of Islam proved to be a decisive factor in the evolution of medieval society."

"They changed mare nostrum to a Moslem lake. Contact by sea between East and West was thus broken. This, coupled with the occupation of the eastern, western and southern shores of the Mediterranean, created a new world, that in which Charlemagne (768-814) and his contemporaries lived. Thereby ancient times ended and the Middle Ages began."

Motivations explored

Interest in the pivotal moments that have changed history has increased lately, and several Arab and Western researchers have explored the motivations behind key events of the early Islamic state, particularly the conquests.

Iraqi historian Saleh Ahmad al-Ali dedicated a full chapter of his book "The Islamic Conquests" to this theme. Al-Ali said several studies focused extensively on this theme and concluded that historical events of all kinds follow common trends.

But experts disagree on the single main factor that drives the progress of this history, attributing it differently to ethnic, geographical, economic, or religious motivations.  

But in doing so, they tried to impose their own perceptions regarding the history of Islam, selecting which events to interpret to fit their preferred factor.

Some orientalists also offered rationalisations for the motivations of Islamic conquests, two of which stand out: religion and economy.

American historian Carl Becker might be the strongest proponent of the economic rationale. He perceived the Islamic conquests to be a manifestation of the Arabs' political control.

Becker said the Arabs never forced anyone to convert to Islam and accepted tributes from those who wished to remain loyal to their faiths, which meant that the Islamic conquests were not missionary expeditions meant to convert the invaded nations to Islam.

Becker added that these conquests can be regarded as an extension of the recurring Arab migrations from the Peninsula to Iraq and the Levant, which were mostly motivated by economic reasons.

He described hunger and scarcity as the real motivations behind the Islamic conquests, which were helped by the zeal and enthusiasm that Islam instilled in its fighters, as well as its organised, unified military command.

Hitti agreed with Becker, casting doubt on the conventional rationale provided for these conquests as "religious wars". Instead, like Becker, Hitti perceived the conquests as a further example of Bedouin migration from the Arabian Peninsula's barren and dry deserts to the lands of the Fertile Crescent.

Hitti wrote that the Islamic expansion "was the last stage in the age-long process of infiltration which had begun with the Babylonians some four thousand years before. The Islamic movement, however, did possess one distinctive feature — religious impulse. Combined with the economic, this made the movement irresistible and carried it far beyond the confines of any preceding one."

A battle cry and newfound unity

Hitti added that Islam "admittedly provided a battle cry" and "served as a cohesive agency cementing tribes and heterogeneous masses never united before."

Ultimately, that major Arab wave reached the borders of China in the east and France in the west, carrying the Arab-Islamic culture and the Arabic language to new territories.

Culture, science, arts, architecture, and literature prospered in the conquered lands, which comprised around one-third of the world at the time.

Arabic became a global language of science and knowledge, and Arab-Islamic scholars of the golden Islamic age made major contributions to human development and laid the foundations for the subsequent Renaissance in the West.