THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN LATE ANTIQUITYthe late 540s.^81 Religion could be a useful tool for either side, but Byzantium
was also committed to conversion, admittedly also potentially advantageous
in diplomatic dealings, and the twin objects of conversion and defence are a
theme of Procopius’s Buildings, in which the foundation of new churches went
hand in hand, as conspicuously in the case of his account of North Africa,
with military installations.
The differences between east and west are great, but the eastern provinces
in the seventh century shared with the fi fth-century west the experience of
external threats and the dangers of internal fragmentation. Changes in urban
and rural settlement, Christianization, the interpenetration of Greek with
local cultures and the impact of the military and fi scal needs of the Byzantine
state are all very evident well before the last great Persian invasion of the early
seventh century and the arrival in Syria of the followers of Muhammad. The
story of the origins and expansion of Islam itself fall outside the compass of
this book. Yet when the Muslims left Arabia and encountered Roman troops
in Palestine and Syria, they found the Roman Near East already in a ferment
of change.