How can we account for the spectacular rise of the Arabs?

Authors Avatar

How can we account for the spectacular rise of the Arabs?

When looking at the sudden elevation of the Arabs in terms of conquest, one certainly cannot dispute the spectacular nature of their rise. Within less than a century of the death of Mohammed in 632, Arab armies had transformed themselves from a tribal society in which the socially meaningful unit was that of a small tenting or village group encompassing four or five generations of family; to invading the lands of and founding a permanent Islamic state in the lands of Persia, Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Spain. Many theories have been expounded as to the reason for this extraordinary transformation. The classical interpretation of the Arab conquests outlined by Muir has been to see it as the result of a mass migration, caused primarily by the avarice of the local tribes. Watt was to see the conquest’s cause as fundamentally socio-economic, seeing Mecca’s role as a centre for overland economic trade in luxury goods as causing a situation in which the gap between rich and poor was to widen, resulting in a social malaise in which materialism was eroding traditional values. Mohammed’s message was simply a response to this crisis which was to result in conquest. However, serious challenges can be made to both of these theories. In seeing the Arab conquests as solely a mass resettlement based on greed, one would ignore the central role which Mohammed and the message of Islam was to play in its causation. Equally, serious contentions have been made by Crone as to the notions of a lucrative Arabian trade in luxury items surviving into the seventh century, as well as Mecca’s role as an important hub within it. Thus, in order to account for the ‘spectacular rise of the Arabs,’ one needs to examine several crucial factors. Firstly, one needs to assess the role that decline in both the Byzantine and Persian Empires was to play, as well as to a lesser extent that of the Himyaritic and Kindan Kingdoms. In addition, one must examine the nature of Arab society before Mohammed, as well as the way in which Mecca, under the Quraysh tribe, was to be involved. Finally, it is necessary to look at the impact of both Mohammed and the message of Islam, and the degree to which it was to bring about the conquest. It is only through scrutinizing these issues that one can build up a picture as to both the causation and nature of the ‘spectacular rise’ that was to take place.

Join now!

As Kennedy has argued, one cannot begin to explain the Arab conquests without looking at them in the context of the decline of both the Byzantine and Persian Empires. Wars, plagues, infighting and natural disasters were to leave them in a position where they would be unable to oppose the Arab invasions militarily. Moreover, both empires were in the midst of a century long process of far reaching social and economic change, in which the increased importance of pastoral peoples and absence of civic autonomy were well underway. The role of the Arab conquest was thus to fill ...

This is a preview of the whole essay