modern scholar, Caetani, writes that the prophet never dreamed of converting the entire land of Arabia and all the Arabs.23

In Muhammed's lifetime all of Arabia did not come under his sway. It may be said generally that Arabia, during all of its existence, never recognized a sole ruler for the entire land. In reality Muhammed dominated a territory which occupied perhaps less than a third of the peninsula. The provinces under his sway became strongly influenced by the new ideas of Islam. The remaining part of Arabia persisted under a political and religious organization differing very little from that which had existed before the appearance of Muhammed. Christianity, as we know, prevailed in the southwest of the peninsula, in Yemen. The tribes of northeastern Arabia also adopted the Christian faith, which soon became the predominating religion in Mesopotamia and in the Arabian provinces along the Euphrates River. Meanwhile, the official Persian religion was constantly and rapidly declining. Thus, at the time of his death Muhammed was neither the political ruler of all Arabia nor its religious leader.

It is interesting to note that at first the Byzantine Empire viewed Islam as a kind of Arianism and placed it on a level with other Christian sects. The Byzantine apologetic and polemic literature argues against Islam in the same manner as it did against the Monophysites, the Monotheletes, and the adherents of other heretical teachings. Thus, John Damascene, a member of a Saracen family, who lived at the Muhammedan court in the eighth century, did not regard Islam as a new religion, but considered it only an instance of secession from the true Christian faith similar in nature to other earlier heresies. The Byzantine historians also showed very little interest in the rise of Muhammed and the political movement which he initiated.24 The first chronicler who records some facts about the life of Muhammed, "the ruler of the Saracens and the pseudo-prophet," was Theophanes, who wrote in the early part of the ninth century.25

23 L. Caetani, Studi di storia orientale (Milano, 1914), III, 236, 257.

24 See C. Güterbock, Der Islam im Lichte der byzantinischen Polemik (Berlin, 1912), pp. 6, 7, 11, 67-68.

25 Theophanis, Chronographia (ed. de Boor, p. 333).

Even in the conception of medieval Western Europe Islam was not a distinct religion, but one of the Christian sects, akin in its dogmas to Arianism; and even in the later part of the Middle Ages Dante, in his Divine Comedy, considers Muhammed a heretic and calls him one of the "sowers of scandal and schism" (Seminator di scandalo e di scisma [Inferno, XXVIII, 31-36]).

Causes of the Arabian Conquests in the Seventh Century.—It is customary to point out the religious enthusiasm of the Muslims, which frequently rose to a state of religious fanaticism and absolute intolerance, as one of the main causes for the striking military success of the Arabs in their combat with Persia and the Byzantine Empire in the seventh century. The Arabs are supposed to have rushed upon the Asiatic and African provinces with a determination to carry out the will of their prophet, who had prescribed the conversion of the entire world to the new faith. The victories of the Arabs are ordinarily explained by the religious enthusiasm which prepared the fanatical Muslims to regard death with disdain, thus rendering their attacks invincible.

This view should be recognized as unfounded. At the time of Muhammed's death there were only few convinced Muslims; and even this small number remained in Medina until the end of the first great conquests. Very few of the followers of Muhammed fought in Syria and Persia. The great majority of the fighting Arabs consisted of Bedouins who knew of Islam only by hearsay. They were concerned with nothing but material, earthly benefits, and craved for spoils and unrestrained license. Religious enthusiasm among them was out of the question. Besides, early Islam was tolerant in its nature. The Koran states directly that "God will not force anyone beyond his capacity" (II, 257). The indulgent attitude of early Islam toward Christianity and Judaism is well known. The Koran speaks of God's tolerance of other faiths: "If thy Lord wished, he would make the people as one religious community" (XI, 120). The religious fanaticism and intolerance of the Muslims are later phenomena, alien to the Arabic nation and explainable by the influence of the Muslim proselytes. Thus, the assertion that religious enthusiasm and fanaticism were responsible for the victorious conquests of the Arabs in the seventh century must be disregarded.

According to some recent investigations, such as Caetani's, the real causes of the irrepressible onward rush of the Arabs were of a more practical, materialistic nature. Arabia, limited in its natural resources, could no longer satisfy the material needs of its population, and, threatened by poverty and hunger, the Arabs were forced to make a desperate attempt to free themselves "from the hot prison of the desert." The unbearable living conditions are responsible for the crushing force with which the Arabs rushed upon the Byzantine Empire and Persia. One must not seek any religious element in this movement.26

Admitting that the foregoing view is correct to a certain extent, it is still impossible to explain fully the military success of the Arabs solely by their material needs. One must admit that among the causes of this success were also the internal conditions of the eastern and southern Byzantine provinces which were so easily occupied by the Arabs, namely, the provinces of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. The growing dissatisfaction of these provinces because of religious motives has been pointed out repeatedly. Monophysitic and partly Nestorian in their adherence, they came into conflict with the central government, avowedly inexorable with regard to their religious demands. This was particularly true since the death of Justinian the Great. In view of this unyielding policy of the emperors, the provinces of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt were ready to secede from the Byzantine Empire and preferred to become subjects of the Arabs, who were known to be religiously tolerant and interested only in obtaining regular taxes from the conquered provinces. The religious convictions of the conquered people concerned the Arabs little.

On the other hand, the orthodox portion of the population of the eastern provinces was also dissatisfied with the policy of the central authorities because of some concessions and compromises made particularly to the Monophysites, especially in the seventh century. In connection with the Monothelete tendency of Heraclius, of which we shall speak later, Eutychius, the Christian Arabian historian of the tenth century, writes that the citizens of Emesa (Hims) said to the Emperor, "You are a Maronite (Monothelete)

26 Caetani, Studi di storia orientale (Milano, 1911), I, 368.

and an enemy of our faith,"2" and, as says another Arabian historian of the ninth century, Beladsori, then they turned to the Arabs, saying, "Your rule and your justice are more agreeable to us than that tyranny and those insults to which we have been subject."28 Of course, this is a testimony given by a Muhammedan writer; but it reflects the true frame of mind of the orthodox population during the period of the compromising religious policy of Constantinople. We must also remember that the major part of the population of the Byzantine provinces of Syria and Palestine was of Semitic origin and largely of Arabic descent, and that the Arabian conquerors met in the subjected provinces a people of their own race who spoke their own tongue. According to one scholar, "It was, therefore, not a question of conquering a foreign land, whose taxes would constitute the only direct gain, but also of reclaiming part of their own fatherland which was declining under the foreign yoke."29

In addition to the general religious dissatisfaction and the kinship of the population, so favorable for the Arabs, we must also remember that the Byzantine Empire and her army were weakened after the long-continued, though finally successful, campaigns against the Persians, and could not offer the proper resistance to the fresh forces of the Arabs.

In Egypt there were special causes for the weak resistance to the Arabs. The main reason for it must be sought in the general conditions prevailing in the Byzantine army stationed there. Numerically the troops were perhaps sufficiently strong; but the general organization of the army was extremely detrimental to the success of its operations. It was subdivided into many parts commanded by five different rulers-dukes (duces), intrusted with equal power. There was no unity of action among these governors. The lack of coordination toward a common end paralyzed the resistance. The in

27 Eutychii, Alexandrini patriarchae, Annales, ed. by L. Cheikho (Beyrout and Paris, 1912), II, 5, 1. 4 (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Scriptores Arabicf); the Latin translation by Pocock, in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. CXI, col. 1088.

25 Beladsori (Baladhuri), Liber expugnationum regionum, ed. De Goeje (Leiden, 1866), p. 137; the English translation of al-Baladhuri, The origins of the Islamic State, by P. Hitti (New York, 1916), I, 211 (Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, ed. by Columbia University, Vol. LXVIII, Part I). See Barthold, in the Zapiski Kollegii Vostokovedov (Leningrad, 1925), I, 468 (in Russian).

29 De Goeje, Mémoire sur la conquête de la Syrie, 2o éd. (Leide, 1900), p. I.

difference of the governors to the general problems of the province, their personal rivalries, the lack of solidarity, and their military incapacity had a very injurious effect upon the general state of affairs. The soldiers were worthy of their leaders. The Egyptian army was numerous, but its poor leadership and poor training made it very unreliable, particularly because of a strong tendency toward defection. The French scholar Maspero says, "There is no doubt that numerous causes explain the terrifying successes of the Arabs . . . . but the main cause of the Byzantine defeat in the valley of the Nile was the poor quality of the army which was intrusted, contrary to all expectations, with the task of defending Egypt.""" Later, the study of papyri caused M. Gelzer to reach the following conclusions concerning Egypt: He thinks that the class of privileged large landowners which arose in Egypt previous to the period of the Arabian conquests became practically independent of the central government; and while it did not create an actual local ruling body, it was also one of the main causes for the fall of Byzantine domination in Egypt.31 Another scholar, the Frenchman Amélineau, basing his statements on a study of papyri also, reaches the conclusion that in addition to the poor military organization, the inadequate civil administration of Egypt was among the important factors which facilitated the Arabian conquest.32

The English papyrologist, H. J. Bell, writes that the conquest of Egypt by the Arabs was "no miracle, no example of divine vengeance on erring Christendom; it was merely the inevitable collapse of a structure rotten at the core."33

Thus, in the study of the reasons for the Arabian success in conquering so easily the Byzantine provinces in the east and south, we must consider among the primary causes the religious conditions in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, the racial kinship of the population of the two first countries to the people of Arabia, the inadequacy of 30 J. Maspero, Organisation militaire de l'Égypte Byzantine (Paris, 1912), pp. 119–32. " M. Gelzer, Studien zur byzantinischen Verwaltung Aegyptens (Leipzig, 1909), p. 2. 32 E. Amélineau, "La conquête de l'Égypte par les Arabes," Revue Historique, CXIX (1915), 282.

33 H. J. Bell, "The Byzantine Servile State in Egypt," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, IV (1917), 106.