T
he religion of Islam (an Arabic word meaning “submission to God”) arose among the peoples of the
Arabian Peninsula early in the seventh century (see “Muhammad and Islam,” page 343). At the time,
the Arabs were nomadic herders and caravan merchants traversing the vast Arabian desert and settling
and controlling its coasts. They were peripheral to the Byzantine and Persian empires. Yet within little
more than a century, the eastern Mediterranean, which Byzantium once ringed and ruled, had become
an Islamic lake, and the armies of Islam had subdued the Middle East, long the seat of Persian domi-
nance and influence.
The swiftness of the Islamic advance is among the wonders of world history. By 640, Muslims ruled
Syria, Palestine, and Iraq in the name of Allah. In 642, the Byzantine army abandoned Alexandria, mark-
ing the Muslim conquest of Lower (northern) Egypt. In 651, the successors of Muhammad ended more
than 400 years of Sasanian rule in Iran (see Chapter 2). All of North Africa was under Muslim control by- A victory at Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain in 711 seemed to open all of western Europe to
the Muslims. By 732, they had advanced north to Poitiers in France, but an army of Franks under
Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charlemagne, opposed them successfully (see Chapter 16), halting
Muslim expansion at the Pyrenees. In Spain, in contrast, the Islamic rulers of Córdoba flourished until
1031, and not until 1492 did Muslim influence and power end in the Iberian Peninsula. That year the
army of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the sponsors of Columbus’s voyage to the New World, over-
threw the caliphs of Granada. In the East, the Muslims reached the Indus River by 751, and only in Ana-
tolia could stubborn Byzantine resistance slow their advance. Relentless Muslim pressure against the
shrinking Byzantine Empire eventually caused its collapse in 1453, when the Ottoman Turks entered
Constantinople (see Chapter 12).
Military might alone, however, cannot account for the relentless and far-ranging sweep of Islam
from Arabia to India to North Africa and Spain (MAP13-1). That Islam endured in the conquered lands
for centuries after the initial victories can be explained only by the nature of the Islamic faith and its ap-
peal to millions of converts. Islam remains today one ofthe world’s great religions, with adherents on all
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