Pre-Islamic Arabia

Well, you got me interested in this issue of early Islamic expansion. And I've found that Wikipedia says this on the Battle of Yarmuk:

According to Byzantine accounts, the Muslims successfully bribed elements in the Byzantine army to defect, this task being made easier by the fact that the Arab Christians, Ghassanids, had not been paid for several months and whose Monophysite Christianity was persecuted by the Orthodox Byzantines. Some 12,000 Ghassanid Arabs switched sides.

So maybe my intuition wasn't wrong after all. For your interest, Christian Monophysites like Egyptian Coptics, Nestorians and others share with Jews and Muslims the concept that God is only one person, being Jesus just a man. Instead mainstream Christianity, including Orthodox and Catholic confessions, sustain the doctrine of the Holy Trinity (sometimes dubbed as polytheism by Muslims and others) that says that the Father (Yaveh), the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit are three persons but the same God. Orthodox doctrine was prominent in the Byzantine Empire - and even more after the loss of the more Monophysitic provinces or Syria, Palestine and Egypt. So maybe Monophysitic Christians felt Islam as a protective force against the doctrinal tyranny of Constantnople.

In fact, the same remark appears when we look for the conquest of Egypt by Muslims:

The ease with which this valuable province was wrenched from the Byzantine Empire appears to have been due to the treachery of the governor of Egypt, Cyrus, Patriarch of Alexandria, and the incompetence of the generals of the Byzantine forces. Cyrus had persecuted the local Coptic Christians, and some supposed him to have been secretly a convert to Islam. An attempt was made in the year 645 to regain Alexandria for the Byzantine empire, but it was retaken by Amr in 646. In 654 an invasion fleet sent by Constans II was repulsed. From that time no serious effort was made by the Byzantines to regain possession of the country, and it would appear that the Arabs were actually assisted by the Copts, who found the Muslims more tolerant than the Byzantines. In return for a tribute of money and food for the troops of occupation, the Christian inhabitants of Egypt were excused military service, and left free in the observance of their religion and the administration of their affairs.

And also (source):

The Egyptian Christians generally welcomed their new rulers: the fact that Islam was a purely monotheistic religion, and thus had a lot in common with Monophysitism, did not escape notice. Thus ended 973 years of Gr�co-Roman rule over Egypt.



Edited by Maju

 

yes it seemes that difference did actully helped the Muslim Arab's expansions.

this is from Britannica:

Routing the Byzantine armies, he surrounded Damascus, which surrendered on Sept. 4, 635, and pushed northward. Early in 636 he withdrew south of the Yarm�k River before a powerful Byzantine force that advanced from the north and from the coast of Palestine. The Byzantine armies were composed mainly of Christian Arab, Armenian, and other auxiliaries, however; and when many of these deserted the Byzantines, Kh�lid, reinforced from Medina and possibly fromthe Syrian Arab tribes, attacked and destroyed the remaining Byzantine forces along the ravines of the Yarm�k valley (Aug. 20, 636). Almost 50,000 Byzantine troops were slaughtered, which opened the way for many other Isl�mic conquests.

In 635 Damascus surrendered, its inhabitants being promised security for their lives, property, and churches, on payment of a poll tax. A counterattack by the emperor Heraclius was defeated at the Battle of the Yarm�k River in 636; by 640 the conquest was virtually complete.

 

and this is some good info about the early years in Syria

The new rulers divided Syria into four districts (junds): Damascus, Ḥimṣ, Jordan, and Palestine(to which a fifth, Kinnasrin, was later added). The Arab garrisons were kept apart in camps, and life went on much as before. Conversion to Isl�m had scarcely begun, apart from Arab tribes already settled in Syria; except for the tribe of Ghass�n, these all became Muslim. Christians and Jews were treated with toleration, and Nestorian and Jacobite Christians had better treatment than they had under Byzantium. The Byzantine form of administration remained, but the new Muslim tax system was introduced. From 639 the governor of Syria wasMuʿawiyah of the Meccan house of the Umayyads. He used the country as a base for expeditions against the Byzantine Empire, for this purpose building the first Muslim navy in the Mediterranean. When civil war broke out in the Muslim empire, as a result of the murder ofʿUthm�n and the nomination of ʿAl� as caliph, Syria stood firm behind Muʿawiyah, who extended his authority over neighbouring provinces and was proclaimed caliph in 660. He was the first of the Umayyad line, which ruled the empire, with Syria as its core and Damascusits capital, for almost a century.

and this about Conquest of Egypt.

Various explanations have been given for the speed with which the conquest was achieved, most of which stress the weakness of Byzantine resistance rather than Arab strength. Certainly the division of the Byzantine government and army into autonomous provincial units militated against the possibility of a concerted and coordinated response.Although there is only dubious evidence for the claim that the Copts welcomed the Arab invasion in thebelief that Muslim religious tolerance would be preferable to Byzantine enforced orthodoxy and repression, Coptic support for their Byzantine oppressors was probably unenthusiastic atbest.

 

 

why these colonies in the Arabian peninsula are not connected!!

couldn't pass through the dessert?

 

nice topic.. thans for sharing.. I will post more later on....

Originally posted by Jagatai Khan It isn't worth to care about.

vay vay...

In the period before Islam also named as "Cahiliye" Arabs were killing their own daughters and digging them although they were alive.

there is more to Arabia than just that arkadas..

Maalesef.... it isn't nice to say that it is not worth talking about....not nice at all...

Originally posted by Maju I've long been wondering how was Arabia (the Arabian peninsula) before Muhammed's teachings and the Islamic unificaton. Politically, culturally and religiously it seems that nobody takes much time on it. Most Wikipedia history articles for instance virtually start in 632 or even later (with a vague mention on people living there before).

It is interesting that after first years of Abbasid dynasty again Arabian peninsula went in darkness and until the wahabbi  uprising in the 18th century there is so little data about this land.
Most of knowledge about Arabian peninsula are those regions that are in neighborhood of Mesopotamia and Sham (historical Syria)

Originally posted by Maju I'm most interested in increasing my knowledge of pre-Islamic Arabia. How was the pagan Arabic religon structured, how were the tribes and cities organized, how strong was Jewish, Christian and Mazdeist influence... all that seems somehow essential in understanding the context in which Muhammed preached and fought.

The names of tribes in the advent of Islam and their structure are recorded in the Islamic texts, there were many myths about the histories of these tribes and their kinship with others, some people between Arab people had a great knowledge about these stories , there existed so much respect for these people.
Traditionally Arabs were divided in two groups :
Qa�htaanids or Yamaanids or southern Arabs or arab�ol�mota�arrebat.
Adnanies or Isma�ili Arabs or northern arabs or arab�ol�mosta�rebat.

Some considered these two as unoriginal Arabs and some considered Qa�htaanids as original Arabs and �Adnaanies as unoriginal, their names also show that : mosta�rebat means Arabified.

Qa�htanids claimed that they are descendants of Qah�taan ibn �Amer and it was said that he was ruler and founder of San�aa (in Yaman).
Qa�htanids were considered more civilized and usually they lived in cities.they classified as �Hamir and Ka�hlan.Us and Khazraj two famous tribe of  Madineh in time of Islam are both from Qa�htanids.
�Adnanies claimed that they are descendant from Ismael son of Ibraahim.They classified as Mazar and Rabi�eh. They were mostly nomads and many famous tribes like Howazuns and Qoreysh said that they are descendant of Ismael.
Language and culture of these two people differed with each other and there was great rivalry between these two people.
In Umayyad time war and conflicts between these two people was on of the main problem of central government.

Originally posted by Maju And you don't find that interesting? The historian is interested in what happened for good or bad... you can't erase a period of history just because you dislike it. Carthaginian and Phoenicians surely also comitted infanticide (human sacrifice) but that's no excuse to ignore them. Chinese and others have comitted infanticide even today and nobody ignores them because of that.  Besides, what about Judaist proselitism that reched Yemen? Isn't that interesting

Religious in pre Islamic Arabia is one of the fields that very little work have been done on it. There were many Jewish communities around Arabia which three of them were located in Medina, Jews lived in separate communities and didn�t mix with others .there was some Christian arabs and they had lived with others , names of many of these Christian has been recorded in Islam. There were some monasteries that follow very old Christian beliefs that were outlawed In other part of world. Two other religion is mentioned: Sa�ebiaan  and Hanifian first were considered followers of Ya�hyaa and second were considered follower of Ibrahim.
Pagans were not totally idol worshippers , they belived that there is a god who named It Allaah  and it is above the all of other gods, there exists many other gods but because they can not directly communicate with people , idols do that job and they were medium of gods with ordinary people, as time passed idols themselves became as gods, there were many idols but four of them were considered as the biggest :
�Azaa, Laat, hobal and Manaat. In Mecca there exist Ka�beh a square building that there were 360 idols  in it, it is claimed that each idol is referred to a day of a year, it is also claimed that every tribe has its own idol in Ka�beh . Qoraysh tribe ruled Mecca and so they so much influence in Arabia.

 

Originally posted by Maju This is a map of that Sassanid Empire at its height:

This map is heavily exaggerated.
Sassanid never succeeded to conquer Khwarazm and also Soghdia.It is unlikely that they could reach their control until the Indus river.In Cacausia it is again exaggeration , the northest part that Sassanid had control is Derbent, (Darband) in border of Republic of Azerbaijan and Daghistan.It was also called Iron gate . There were some more castles and fortification around the southern branch of great Cacausus mountain that constitute the northern fortifications of Iran. Remain of some of them still can be found in Republics of Azerbaijan.

Originally posted by Maju I just found this map of the Near East in the 6th century and thought it would be a nice adition to this topic.  The interior of Arabia is a little better defined than we were able to reconstruct so far.

I�m still have doubt that Sassanids could control until the Indus valley.

Sorry Cyrus there is no evidence that sassanids ever conquered Transxosania.

But Sassanid were good flyers, you know Shapur I flew over Transoxania to conquer Kashgar in modern Xinjiang Province of China!  History of Kashgar -> http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A645392

Edited by Cyrus Shahmiri