The Muslim conquests were not a foreign invasion but a unification of long-familiar peoples

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

• XREF: Contradicts the vault’s mapped trope of Islam as alien irruption; grounds a counter-narrative that Arabs were long embedded in Byzantine structures. — connects to: Early Muslim conquests rode on Byzantine-Persian exhaustion as war was then the norm