Even Islam’s first Christian critic treated the conquest as a passing annoyance

Evidence

Islam, as such, was not a major issue in his eyes. Arabrule in Syria was viewed as a temporary vexation. He was far more concerned with the iconoclast movement within the Orthodox Church and his priority was to combat those who denied the validity of prayer before holy images and who sought to destroy the icons of the Church. … He also made polemical use of the episode when Zayd ibn Haritha, Muhammad’s adopted son, having married the beautiful Zaynab, was induced to divorce her so that the Prophet could marry her. There was a Qur’anic revelation to sanction this. In John’s eyes, this was further evidence of the sensuality of Islam. (Today it is widely accepted among scholars that the Prophet’s marriages were chiefly contracted for political rather than sexual purposes.) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 53

Categorization

• SEED: The blindness of contemporaries to epochal shifts — John of Damascus ranking iconoclasm above the Arab conquest — could anchor an essay on how observers misjudge their own moment.