Conquering Persia and the Byzantine Empire

THE RISE OF ISLAM AND CALIPHATES HIST 1301 | History Conquering Persia and the Byzantine Empire The likelihood of the Arab-Muslims defeating the Byzantine and Persian empires—the last great powers of antiquity—was not always certain. Nevertheless, they had great success in capturing most of the region around the Mediterranean basin and central Asia, extending as far west as Spain and Portugal and as far east as the Indus River valley, beginning in 634 and lasting until the early seventh century. The new Islamic state, or caliphate (a region ruled by a caliph), was the biggest empire the world had ever seen, surpassing even the domains of Alexander the Great, the Romans, and the Han Chinese. The first four caliphs, a group of leaders known as the "rightly guided" or Rashidun, oversaw the pivotal early years of Islamic development. During the years 632–661, these four individuals—Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and the hitherto unnoticed son-in-law of Muhammad, Ali—ruled over a mostly Christian Middle East. During this time, a great deal of Byzantine and Persian land was subjugated. The ArabMuslim armies were unlike anything any empire had ever seen before, even though the Byzantines and Persians had used the Arabian Ghassanids and Lakhmids to protect their borders and fight in their battles. Heralded as the victorious emperor of Byzantium against the Persians, Heraclius was unable to fully relish his victory for very long. Meanwhile, the destabilising impacts of a civil conflict were being felt in vanquished Sasanian Persia. When Yazdegerd III finally rose to power in 632, the once-unified Sasanian kingdom had become a broken system dominated by the aristocratic families, with Yazdegerd III little more than a puppet monarch and a juvenile figurehead. The provinces of Iraq and Syria were the starting point of the Arab-Muslim troops' invasion, which subsequently advanced eastward into the Iranian plateau and westward into Egypt. The first few decades of the war were incredibly successful for the conquerors on all fronts. The Byzantine army was defeated by the ArabMuslims in the Battle of Yarmuk in 636, not long after they had won other skirmishes and taken control of Damascus, Syria. The Byzantines eventually abandoned Greater Syria, which included what is now Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, when they were unable to defend the last few cities in the area. The Arab-Muslim troops kept moving westward and northward, besieging Alexandria, the port city of Egypt, and taking it in 641. Soon after, several more Byzantine provinces were added. The Battle of Qadisiyya in Iraq saw the Persian army defeated by the Arab-Muslims, ending the Persians' long-term resistance. Nevertheless, the process of conquering Persia turned out to be more drawn out. The Sasanian nobility had gained independence from the central government after the war with the Byzantines, and as a result, the Sasanian-controlled territory was large and geographically varied. As a result, the Arab-Muslims had to bargain with numerous local governors and landed elites in order to give up their territory. The relationship between the Sasanian nobles and the lower classes had already started to shift at this period. The nobles followed Zoroastrianism, a historic religion of Persia, and lived in a well-established court culture. But outside of this exclusive group, Zoroastrianism had long been losing ground to rival religious movements like Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity. The short-lived ascent of a female monarch, Boran, offers a rare window into something that had never occurred among the elite before: the dissolution of the Sasanian royal line in Persia. After the Byzantines defeated her father in the civil war, Boran, the daughter of Khosrow II, temporarily rose to power. Even though there were few opportunities for women to hold positions of authority in the area, her reign serves as a reminder that Persia was a state and a people undergoing change in the seventh century, and the arrival of Arab-Muslims with their Islamic faith and Arabian customs only accelerated this process. Despite their best efforts, the Persians and Byzantines lost most of their land to the newly formed Islamic empire of the Rashidun by the 650s. The lands that Heraclius and the Byzantines had battled to recapture from the Persians were mainly lost when he passed away in 641. Despite surviving the Arab-Muslim invasions, the Byzantine Empire never again ruled over a significant portion of the former Roman East. Yazdegerd III, the Sasanian king, ran away to the east to avoid being captured by the Arab-Muslims or their allies. He spent a large portion of his brief reign evading captivity before being assassinated in 651 by his own people. By then, the newly formed Islamic state had practically taken control of the whole Persian Empire.