>>344050

You can actually aculturate dominated peoples. That was Arabs did in the North Africa for example.

>How did arab tribes living in the desert outnumber the big empire at the time ?
Justinian plague

It killed over 50 million inbetween both empires which was a lot since the overall world population was estimated at around 200 million back then by different historians.

Also, Rome and Persia had been fighting each other on and off for almost 700 years which gave them little to no time to rebuild their numbers.
Especially the Sassanids, who didnt use a standing army but trusted border security/warfare to noblelords and their vassals.

>>344050
I think about 100,000 expanded out of Arabia, newly united.

They became the new upper class elite in the societies they conquered, so the natives changed their culture to the new rulers, not the other way around. Kind of like the Saxon invasion of Britain, if you become the dominant class, people will change to you, if you emigrate and are at the bottom, you will change to the society.

>>344074
That still doesn't explain it to me

There was 3 millions saudi citizens in 1950, how many of them could've been living there in 600 ?

>>344074
Thats just a meme answer. That plague was 100 years before. The Byzantine army had just reformed its military and was quite strong. They also had a lot of new tax revenue coming in. Sassies were fucked though.

>>344050
>but if they were less numerous than the locals they should be the one to be assimilated

No, because with arabs came a religion with a holy book written in arabic. At least in the first years to climb in society you had to be muslim and, if possible, arabized.

Also the parts that became arabized were already mostly inhabited by peoples who spoke semitic languages, or afroasiatic languages related to the semitic group. The core iranian lands continued talking persian, and most of the people in Iberia talked a now extinct romance language.

>>344075
I know they forced their culture upon them

But reading /pol/ / /int/ i've been told a few times that the middle east was much whiter back then and that the arabs turned them swarthy

Is this true ?

>>344050
Considering the obviously low demographic potential of a peninsula that in places resembles the surface of Mars, it's highly unlikely the Arabs ever really outnumbered their opponents as a population, even with Justinian's Plague pushing things more in their favor.

But like the Turks and Mongols or like the Scandinavians, they didn't have to outnumber anyone to win. They just had to out maneuver them. The Arabs at the time had generations of martial experience from fighting in the wars of Rome and Persia, and at a moment when both empires had lost their prestige the Arab elites of the Hedjaz and Yemen united tribe after tribe into a confederation, then kingdom, then empire.

>>344050
>How numerous were arabs at the time of their expensions ?
Not very, Mr Kang. They spread their culture remarkably quickly whilst not being all too numerous themselves.

>>344105
No, that's a load of bullshit. They don't know what they're talking about. Even today the Arab impact on genetics is actually quite small, 100,000 into possibly 100 million is nothing.

>>344091
Its cause most of the arab tribes moved out from the Arabian Penninsula after the conquest and turned Iraq/Baghdad into the capital of the islamic world.

I mean, would you still rather live in land almost completely made up by desert when you so many already established cities and nations to take your pick from?

>>344100
>a plague that killed 1/4th of the known population
>thats just a meme answer, they had a century to rebuild everything
alright then

>>344105
I'm also a /pol/lack. That's not really true, because for example Egypt at that time had more inhabitants than the whole Arab peninsula.

Might've been true though that some "white features" like fair hair/eyes were more widespread than today, because they are phenotypically recessive. E.g. a good friend of mine's mum was from Iraq and has ginger hair, or Assad's blue eyes. Statistics also show that blue eyes became much rarer in the US due to mixing - the genes are still there, but they are recessive.

>>344105
No it's not.

Though the middle east is probably more varied than you think.

Portion of Arab population under arms were much bigger than in both empires, so they could muster armies of compatible size with much smaller population. In the empire you had to pay (quite big) wages to your solders, and so you tax the rest of the population. Arabs, lacking centralized state structures, were more egalitarian and raided eachother constantly. They also were motivated by plunder, so needed no wages.
This is exactly the same situation that was in the west in 400s, where bands of 20-40k farmer-solders with families in their baggage train were able to conquer Gaul, Spain and Africa, each having population of several millions.

>>344105
No, the Arabs did not turn them swarthy. It was mostly the other way around in any case, as the Arabs were increasingly diluted with every generation.

They didn't force their culture either, simply because they didn't have much of one that could be forced on an urbanized populace, and how they went out of their way to prevent any cultural contamination with sumptuary laws.

What happened was a new middle class of bureaucrats arose out of the households of the Arab elites - their slaves, clients, bastards, legitimate children, in-laws, etc. - who formed the cultural elite of 8th and 9th century Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. These folk combined their native cultures with Arab touches into a new cosmopolitan culture that was then imposed as a barrier between the common folk and the new elite.

>>344074
>50 Million
Nah man, it was closer to 20 Million, still a lot

>>344144
This. It's the same reason Gauls and Spaniards spoke Romance, went to public baths and read Cicero by the 5th century, yet Roman immigration was quite small.

>>344050
They didn't outnumber either of the big empires. No matter how many people spam Justinian, the Byzantines and Persians still fielded equal numbers or more troops than the Arabs did in pretty much every encounter of the Rashidun expansion and repopulated their ranks quickly to make up for getting trounced repeatedly.

>>344050
>How numerous were arabs at the time of their expensions?

Not much. The Hejaz and Nejd never had the ability to maintain a large human population.

>How did arab tribes living in the desert outnumber the big empire at the time?

Outstanding generals, a solid and inviting ideology, a favorable institutional environment, a decrepit and defeated Empire (Persia), and other rotten by excessive taxation, economic intervention and religious persecution (the Roman).

>Also if they zerged the middle east i can understand that they would just mix with local and change them into arabs after a few generations, but if they were less numerous than the locals they should be the one to be assimilated

The process did not happen like that. In the early years, the Greek was used largely as administrative language. The Umayyad regime wanted to turn the Arab tribes in a patriciate, which they made creating unique institutional privileges to the Arabs (not Muslims in general), and establishing Arabic as official language. This was not without consequences, as the Abbasid Revolution demonstrated. But the aristocratic vein remained. In the end, you have from Berbers to Egyptians and Sudanese claiming to have Arab descent, even today.

The question of cultural prevalence has not, and never had, any relationship with demographic contingents. The Romans were a minority in their Empire, but their civilization prevailed in much of it. As a rule, the superior culture - or so as it is perceived by its users - prevails, while others succumb.

>>344074
The Sassanids had a standing army after Khosrau I's reforms. The issue that fucked them over was they just had an EXTREMELY exhaustive nearly 30 year long war with Byzantine that fucked up each empire's manpower reserves.

Then the Sassanids right after the war ended got hit by a nearly decade long plague that killed off around half the entire population of their empire total and several disasters like the Tigris and Euphrates flooding and ruining most of their agricultural heartland for feeding their citizens.

>>344050
>but if they were less numerous than the locals they should be the one to be assimilated
If this was the case, languages would transmit very rarely. Slavic languages would be limited to a region of the Ukraine, Romance Languages to part of Italy, Germanic language would never form in Britain (it's shocking, there are only a few dozen words in the English language with Brythonic or Welsh roots).

Generally speaking, assimilating the conquered is the rule, rather than the exception.

>>347525
Why were the Persians so successful then at assimilating others without being assimilated themselves?

>>344105
its a meme you dip

>>347496
Not to mention the dynastic fights that ruined the empire.

>>347628
They were the ones actually managing the empires of arabs, turks and mongols in Iran. Even in some empires outside of Iran, like the Ottoman or the Mughal, the language of the administration was persian and not a turkic language. The nomadic rulers just "protected" the country with their bands of warriors like gangsters and gave the orders. It was an stereotype even in sources of the time that talk about turk lords of the sword and tajik (persian) lords of the pen.

It's ironic considering the situation was the opposite when Cyrus built his empire, persians being the conquerors needing more developed peoples settled for a long time runing the administration while persians were the military elite.

>>344050
They forgot to add Sicily

>>348730
Not this again. It has to be the third time I correct it here. It's not "lands conquered by Islam at some time", and Sicily was never conquered by the Umayyads or any previous dynasty.

>>344091
A big part of it was that the Aramaic speakers of the fertile crescent spoke a similar language to Arabic, so it was easy for them to pick up. With language and religion in common, the rest was rather simple.

>>348743
Who were the Fatimids

>>344050
I really like this map projection

>>344050
One thing that always bothered me about these maps is that these borders extend into a lot of desert while the actual settled territory was like a thin strip along coasts and rivers.

Did the Caliphates really control the desert like they controlled Baghdad or Damascus?

>but if they were less numerous than the locals they should be the one to be assimilated

But this is bullshit. Many black Africans are Christians, speak some form of English and write in Latin alphabet despite the fact the British colonizers were always a minority in Africa.