AN AGGRESSIVE Bedouin horde, drunk on religion, sweeps out of the Arabian
peninsula - on the way burning the great library of Alexandria - and, through
wholesale massacre and forced conversion, imposes Islam on a vast area
stretching from Spain to the fringes of China. If this is your mental
picture of the rise of Islam, dimly remembered from some long-ago history
lesson, take note: it is in almost every respect wrong.
Hugh
Kennedy sets out to explain an historical puzzle. How could Arab
forces, relatively small in number and with no particular superiority in
weaponry, have pulled off such an apparently impossible feat? In the century
that followed the death of the Prophet in 632, they challenged two
established empires (the Byzantine and Sasanian). They conquered Syria in
eight years, Iraq in seven, Egypt in a mere two and Spain and Portugal in
five. At the same time, they pushed deep into Central Asia and the Indian
subcontinent. How did they do it? Why did they not meet stronger and more
sustained resistance? And, no less of a mystery, how did the empire they
created endure?
By painstakingly reconstructing the series of Arab conquests, Mr Kennedy
paints a picture strikingly at odds with the popular cliches. "The Muslim
conquests", he writes, "were far from being the outpouring of an unruly
horde of nomads." The Bedouin of Arabia were tough and highly mobile, fired
by tribal honour and love of booty as well as by zeal for Islam. They were
led by intelligent men from the Meccan elite who knew they had to channel
the "frenetic military energies of the Bedouin" outwards, or else face a
real risk of implosion.
These leaders also seem to have grasped that to have based their conquests
on mass killings and conversion by the sword would have been a fatal
mistake. There were massacres, but they were not the norm. If conquered
peoples paid tribute and did not make trouble, they were largely left alone.
Local people were incorporated into the new administrative class. Existing
religions - Christianity in Syria and Egypt, Zoroastrianism in Persian-ruled
areas, Hinduism and Buddhism farther east - were not persecuted. Large-scale
conversions came much later; at the time there was little or no pressure on
the conquered people to convert. As for the sack of the Alexandrian library,
that, says Mr Kennedy, is a discredited myth. . . .
FULL TEXT
Sir John Bagot Glubb, "The
great Arab conquests," Quartet Books (1980)
Paul Lewis, "Charting the Lost
Innovations of Islam," Guardian, March 10, 2006
Alexander Kronemer, "Islamic Spain:
History's refrain," Christian Science Monitor, August 22, 2007
Robert Fisk, "There's a reason why anti-Muslim
ideology hasn't found a home in Portugal: The Arabs were regarded as exotic and educated
peoples whose own culture was never erased from the streets of Portugal's
cities," independent.co.uk, February 22, 2018