Muslim conquest initially left Byzantine administrative structures and personnel untouched

Evidence

In the wake of the Muslim conquests, little changed for the average Christian or Jewish resident of ex-Byzantine Syria. In Damascus, for example, the same family that had administered the city under Constantinople now did so for their new Muslim masters. Bureaucratic apparatuses were left in tact, and the language of administration continued to be Greek (or Persian in the former Persian empire). In the two centuries that followed, the Near East, from Egypt to Iran, became the theater of a tremendous though gradual cultural transformation: out of Greek, Persian, Arabic, Syriac, and Indian elements, a new Islamic civilization was forged. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 260 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

When Muslims occupied new territories, only “public law” applied to the conquered populations, such as tax law, criminal law, land law, and the like. The new subjects were to live by their own denominational laws, and more importantly, there were no further “campaigns” or programs to integrate them into the occupiers’ legal system and force them into an educational apparatus with a view to remold them into new subjects, that is, national citizens. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 256 (#expands, via linked claim)

The conquests destroyed little: what they did suppress were imperial rivalries and sectarian bloodletting among the newly subjected population. The Muslims tolerated Christianity but they disestablished it; henceforth Christian life and liturgy, its endowments, politics, and theology, would be a private not a public affair. By an exquisite irony, Islam reduced the status of Christianity to that which the Christians had earlier thrust upon the Jews, with one difference. The reduction in Christian status was merely judicial; it was unaccompanied by either systematic persecution or blood lust and generally, though not everywhere and at all times, unmarred by vexatious behavior. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 115 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Byzantine-Persian exhaustion enabled early Muslim conquests; The Muslim conquest of Syria initially preserved Byzantine administrative continuity. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 260; Islamic conquests governed conquered populations at arm’s length without forced integration — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 256 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• The Muslim conquest of Syria initially preserved Byzantine administrative continuity. #corroborates (1.00) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 260
• Islamic conquests governed conquered populations at arm’s length without forced integration #expands (1.00) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 256
• Islamic conquests disestablished Christianity without systematic persecution #complicates (0.80) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 115
• Chronic invasion blocked completion of Islamic feudalization until Ottoman times #complicates (0.80) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 363
• The Muslim conquests were not a foreign invasion but a unification of long-familiar peoples #complicates (0.70) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 238
• Local resentment of Byzantine religious coercion eased the Muslim conquest of Syria #complicates (0.70) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 239
• Conquest was framed as restoring a prior Christian order, not acquiring new lands #complicates (0.70) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 962
• Islamic misogyny largely inherited Byzantine Christian and Jewish customs through conquest #complicates (0.70) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 310