Arabs were long-established Byzantine allies, not foreign invaders, in 634
Evidence
The Muslim invasions were not an irruption of a new and foreign people into the fertile crescent. Arabs had long been confederate members of the Roman (or Byzantine) military forces; they had founded and settled many of the cities of Syria: Petra, Hims, Harrân, Edessa. Trade between Roman Syria and the Bedouins of the Arabian peninsula had been constant, punctuated by sporadic military clashes. What was unprecedented in 634 was that the tribes of the peninsula were no longer feuding rivals but united allies. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 238
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Reverses the common picture of the Arab conquest as a sudden irruption; parallels how Milgrom’s law-merchant work showed pre-state trade communities had established institutions rather than emerging from a vacuum.
Related
- The Muslim conquests were not a foreign invasion but a unification of long-familiar peoples (similarity 0.93)
- Muslim conquests seemed unremarkable to contemporaries who had seen many (similarity 0.79)
- Byzantine-Persian exhaustion enabled early Muslim conquests (similarity 0.78)