The Arabs would conquer their two imperial neighbors in the name of a monotheistic faith that bore striking similarities to Judaism and Christianity. Like these two other faiths, Islam would take centuries to develop many of the institutions and doctrines that are most characteristic of it today. Many of these developments would take place in territories formerly under Byzantine and Sasanian rule. Thus, before we examine the career of Muhammad, it will be useful to survey certain features of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, as well as of the Arabian Peninsula.
The Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire owed a large debt to Alexander the Great, whose bloody campaigns between the Mediterranean Sea and the Himalayas during the late fourth century B.C.E. introduced Greek culture into southwestern Asia and northeastern Africa. In the centuries after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C.E., the Macedonians and Greeks who came into this area as soldiers, merchants, craftsmen, and rulers brought with them their language, architecture, and social institutions. The result was a synthesis of Greek and indigenous cultures that is called Hellenistic civilization. Urban life along the eastern Mediterranean seaboard experienced a cultural transformation. Newly established cities, such as Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria, became the dominant economic and cultural centers. The architecture of older cities received new inspiration with the advent of Greek styles for theaters, gymnasia, and temples. Greek became the language of learning and of politics. The era was remarkable for its scientific, artistic, philosophical, and economic achievements. This was the period when such philosophical schools as Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism, and Cynicism flourished. Aristarchus devised his seemingly audacious theory that the sun, rather than the earth, occupied the center of the universe; Archimedes introduced the concept of pi and developed theories of the properties of the lever and of the specific gravity of water; and Eratosthenes became the first man known to have measured with remarkable accuracy the circumference of the earth.
The chief threat to the Hellenistic kingdoms was the Roman Republic, which began flexing its military muscle in the mid-third century B.C.E. by challenging Carthage for control of the western Mediterranean. Soon its ambitions extended to the eastern Mediterranean as well, and between 146 B.C.E. and 30 B.C.E. it absorbed its Hellenistic neighbors. The last of the Hellenistic rulers was Cleopatra of Egypt. She might have been as little known to most of us as the other Hellenistic rulers had it not been for her tragic affairs with the Roman leaders Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.
With the defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian assumed the title of Augustus Caesar, and the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire. The empire’s eastern half was in effect the Hellenized region. When Rome took over this area, the language of governmental administration changed to Latin, but the power of the Hellenistic legacy is revealed in the fact that Greek remained the most influential language of culture in the eastern Mediterranean until the Arabs came, six centuries later. The Romans themselves continued to look to Greek sources for the inspiration of much of their own cultural production.
Even during the famous Pax Romana of the two centuries during and after the reign of Augustus (the period 27 B.C.E.–180 C.E.), the former Hellenistic areas remained the most populous and wealthy sections of the empire. The emperor Constantine’s decision to establish an eastern capital (Constantinople, or “Constantine’s City”) on the site of the ancient Greek colony of Byzantium, at the mouth of the Black Sea, reflected the importance that the East had for the Roman Empire. The dedication of the new capital in 330 C.E. is a convenient point to identify as the beginning of Byzantine history. It is important to remember, however, that the Byzantines always regarded themselves as “Romanoi” and that a distinctive Byzantine culture required at least two centuries to emerge.
Map 1.1 Western Asia and the Mediterranean on the Eve of Islam.
The eastern half of the Roman Empire remained stable and even flourished over the next two centuries, while the western half succumbed to the attacks of Germanic invaders in the fourth and fifth centuries. By 410, Germanic tribes controlled Europe west of the Adriatic Sea and North Africa west of modern Tunisia. Constantinople ruled over an area that extended across southeastern Europe to the Adriatic Sea, eastward into Asia to a frontier just west of the Euphrates River, and westward across North Africa as far as modern Tunisia.
The Mediterranean climate of the coastal areas produced long, hot, and dry summers and temperate, rainy winters. The agriculture of these regions usually specialized in the production of grapes, olives, and grain. Away from the coast, agriculture was much more limited. Topography was one factor. Rugged mountains and narrow valleys are the dominant feature of the Balkans (southeastern Europe) and characterize all but the narrow coastal plains and central plateau of Anatolia (the bulk of modern Turkey). Spotty rainfall was another factor. The Anatolian plateau typically receives just enough rainfall to make growing wheat worthwhile, but the interior regions of Syria, Egypt, and North Africa are arid, making agriculture impossible without irrigation. Irrigation had made Egypt one of the earliest centers of civilization, and the centrality of irrigation to the life of Egypt had prompted the ancient Greek historian Herodotus to call Egypt “the gift of the Nile.” In Syria, the Euphrates and Orontes rivers and numerous oases provided water for irrigation. The river valleys and oases were the most densely populated regions of both Syria and Egypt. Because of their grain-producing potential, the two regions were invaluable “breadbaskets” for the empire, and they were more important than ever after the loss to the Germanic invaders of grain-growing areas in the western Mediterranean.
The inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea engaged in a flourishing commerce in order to exchange the cash crops of one area for those of another. The Byzantine Empire possessed a remarkably long coastline relative to its land area. This geographical fact was a great benefit to its economy and to its government’s ability to remain in communication with outlying areas. Goods could be shipped much more rapidly and cheaply by ships and boats than by carts and pack animals. Since most of the empire’s hinterlands were within a short overland trip from water routes, travel between the geographic extremities of the empire was remarkably efficient. The huge city of Constantinople could safely outgrow the ability of its own region to produce food and rely instead upon Syria and Egypt to ship much of the grain that fed its people.
The region’s foodstuffs were also valued commodities in other parts of the world. Grain traveled well without further processing, and it was ground into flour by either the wholesale or retail customer. Olives and grapes, however, spoiled quickly in their natural state and needed to be processed prior to shipment. Olives were pressed for their oil, which was used as food, lamp oil, and a soap substitute; grapes were fermented into wine. The Byzantines traded these products for furs, timber, amber, spices, and other items that they needed. They had access to Russia by way of the great rivers that drain into the Black Sea, and they were able to trade for the gold of Nubia (in the northern part of the modern country of Sudan) by sailing up the Nile.
The middle half of the sixth century may well have been the period of the empire’s greatest triumph and influence. By that time, the areas that had composed the western half of the Roman Empire were divided into feuding Germanic kingdoms, whereas the emperor Justinian (r. 527–565) ruled the Byzantine half. Justinian aspired to reunite the entire Mediterranean under “Roman” rule (he spoke Latin and regarded himself to be the Roman emperor) and led military campaigns that regained large areas of the Italian Peninsula, the southern Iberian Peninsula, and No...