How did they do it? Where did the weapons come from? Where did the manpower come from? Where did the military experience come from?
>>872527
Well that's awkward.
>>872524
Don't forget Sicily...
>>873130
Beyond the scope of the Rashidun-Umayyad conquests, and would be like attributing the Norman conquests of Sicily and North Africa as a part of Carolingian expansion.
>>872524
Religions are weapons
>>873130
>>873219
One thing that wasn't addressed in >>872527 is the conquests outside of the Middle East. From what I gathered, a big factor in the Conquest was that the populace in the Middle East were tired of their previous rulers and wanted change. Was this any different in Egypt, North Africa, Sicily, and Iberia?
>>872524
>Where did the weapons come from?
From centuries of trade with Rome and Persia, as well as armories looted from defeated army camps and conquered imperial cities.
>Where did the manpower come from?
From the settled and semi-nomadic pastoral tribes of Roman Petra, the Hedjaz, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, along with professional soldiers, engineers, and local aristocracies who abandoned their sinking ships or were flat out conscripted into the armies of the Caliphs and their governors.
>Where did the military experience come from?
From centuries of fighting wars for both Rome and Persia, as well as fighting both Rome and Persia every now and then. At a certain point the Arab Conquests looked less like a foreign invasion of unknown barbarians and more like a wholesale revolt of imperial soldiers and longtime mercenaries, kind of like how Western Rome fell not to Germanic tribes fresh off the Rhine ferries but tribes that had serving in Roman armies and fighting its battles for decades.
>>873286
>Was this any different in Egypt, North Africa, Sicily, and Iberia?
Sort of. A lot can be said about Orthodox-Coptic rivalry leading up to the invasion of Egypt, the Visigothic persecutions of Jews and antagonism with Hispano-Roman southerners, and accounts that say the Arabs initially came to both Spain and Sicily as mercenaries fighting for one side or another in their internal squabbling. North Africa however just seemed weak, in a state of rebellion and already broken apart by the territorial shrinkage of Byzantine control and the rise of independent Berber chieftains. The Arabs merely replaced the ruling classes in many of these places, and the large body of mercenaries or landholders in the area that remained signed up with their new overlords since they were bringing in pay and opportunity.
>>873290
I can tell you've read "In God's Path".
