Why was Islam so successful at Conquering and holding the Middle East?

It’s hard to believe that the Arabs could gain so muchss success in just 150 years, and still hold it together.
Could Christianity for example, have the same success?
 

Cryostorm

Monthly Donor
It helped that pretty much every invader that took over converted to Islam outside the Crusaders which required much more outside support than they received. Without the Turkish invasion there is a good chance Byzantium could have retaken large portions of Syria and Palestine, and possibly Egypt which could leave Northern Africa more likely to be conquered as well. But after 1204 there was very little chance of Islam being overturned.

Now the Arabs themselves were essentially conquered several times by outsiders, the Turks and Mongols especially and only relatively recently shook of outside rule in Middle East.
 
I dont think any one answer will be sufficient, but I have my own geopolitical theory.

In short, no singular religion had ever dominated the silk road prior to Islam.
Before Islam, being on the periphary and at least paying homage to Buddhism, Manichaeism etc was a safe bet because as a merchant and a king, it was trade from practitioners of these faiths you were likely to engage in.
But when Islam dominated the silk road, suddenly becoming a Muslim had strong advantages, and you would likely raisr your kids to be muslims etc.
 

Scaevola

Banned
For the Levant and Egypt at least, it sure helped that they just harshly taxed nonbelievers, rather than slaughtering the unorthodox or selling them into slavery like the Greeks did.
I dont think any one answer will be sufficient, but I have my own geopolitical theory.

In short, no singular religion had ever dominated the silk road prior to Islam.
Before Islam, being on the periphary and at least paying homage to Buddhism, Manichaeism etc was a safe bet because as a merchant and a king, it was trade from practitioners of these faiths you were likely to engage in.
But when Islam dominated the silk road, suddenly becoming a Muslim had strong advantages, and you would likely raisr your kids to be muslims etc.
Wow this is a good one.
 
It helped that pretty much every invader that took over converted to Islam outside the Crusaders which required much more outside support than they received.

Yeah, I’d basically consider the Middle East to have been conquered by Islam more than once. In particular some of the later conquerors were far more intolerant of other faiths—Tamerlane comes to mind.
 
The Romans had persecuted those who dissented from Greek Orthodoxy and there was a lot of discontent outside of the core Orthodox area (Greece/Anatolia). When the Muslims invaded, they won a lot of popular support with their promise to treat all Christians (and Jews) equally as "people of the book," giving them tolerance as long as they paid jizya. Conversely, the core Orthodox regions remained faithful to Constantinople and the Arabs failed to conquer them.
 
Apart from the Arabs, the regions conquered by Muslims weren't fully or even largely Islamized for centuries. Iran was majority Zoroastrian for ~500 years, Egypt was majority Christian for ~900 years (I've seen this figure somewhere, the tipping point was around the C16th, and it was about one third Christian up to the C19th), the Holy Land majority Christian for ~500 years (Crusades were around the tipping point), and the whole Levant and Mesopotamia region was over one third Christian up until the C19th. For much of it's history in the region, Islam was like a large upper class that you could convert into. It was so successful in the region because it wasn't just another empire that conquers and converts nobody, and also because it wasn't just another empire forcing everyone to convert.

Why it was first so successful among the Arabs, I don't know.
 
This is a good question. What's most fascinating to me is why the North African Berbers unanimously converted to Islam while still fighting the Caliphates constantly. Berbers across North Africa accepted Islam almost instantly, but fought the Caliphates for hundreds of years and destroyed a lot of colonial Middle Eastern dynasties between 700 and 1000 C.E. Puzzles me why they'd adopt the religion of their enemy while completely rejecting them politically. It would almost be like America turning completely Communist while still hating the USSR.

Part of it IMO was the extreme racism Middle Eastern Arab Muslims displayed to the first Berbers they met, but then why did they accept Islam if it was associated with an oppressor? Very fascinating, a part of history that doesn't get enough attention.
 
Any belief system that preaches both certainty and equality of all human beings tends to spread rapidly in places where the poor feel downtrodden and oppressed. Christianity, Islam and revolutionary socialism all qualify.
 
I dont think any one answer will be sufficient, but I have my own geopolitical theory.

In short, no singular religion had ever dominated the silk road prior to Islam.
Before Islam, being on the periphary and at least paying homage to Buddhism, Manichaeism etc was a safe bet because as a merchant and a king, it was trade from practitioners of these faiths you were likely to engage in.
But when Islam dominated the silk road, suddenly becoming a Muslim had strong advantages, and you would likely raisr your kids to be muslims etc.

Is that so? It is my position and contention that the Silk Road ended in any substantial way during the rise of Islam. If we chart the history of the Silk Road even just after the fall of the Kushan Empire or the rise of Islam, we see the decline of order in Central Asia until the Mongol hordes united the regions. For instance, in the Abbasid period, the region of the Silk Road at least the western portion, was a place where war prevailed. The old princes of the Silk Road were either conquered by the Muslim armies, Tang or Tibet abd later by the Qhara Qhanids and other hordes.

There was no free movement thus in the same sense that existed between the Han Dynasty and Kushan-Yuezhi Empire (which in my opinion is the only true period of the Silk Road). Rather, we see trade in the Islamic period move closer to the Persian Gulf and the ever growing networks gained by conquest, such as in India.

Certainly there was Muslim merchants in China, however it is not as if there was uninhibited movement or even free movement. Rather, it was a period wherein war was constant and the cities once known for great merchant enterprises, declined and or were destroyed.
 
This is a good question. What's most fascinating to me is why the North African Berbers unanimously converted to Islam while still fighting the Caliphates constantly. Berbers across North Africa accepted Islam almost instantly, but fought the Caliphates for hundreds of years and destroyed a lot of colonial Middle Eastern dynasties between 700 and 1000 C.E. Puzzles me why they'd adopt the religion of their enemy while completely rejecting them politically. It would almost be like America turning completely Communist while still hating the USSR.

Part of it IMO was the extreme racism Middle Eastern Arab Muslims displayed to the first Berbers they met, but then why did they accept Islam if it was associated with an oppressor? Very fascinating, a part of history that doesn't get enough attention.

They adopted different forms of Islam (in the mindset of the times, they adopted diametrically opposed religions), during the period of the Umayyads and Abbasids, the Berber regions were hotbed for the most ghuluu (exaggerating) Shi’a sects and home to many of the more dangerous Kharijite/Shurha sects. In many ways, it was the third most troublesome region conquered by the early Islamic Caliphate, following Iraq and Iran.
 
I suspect the main reason for the long term success of Islam was threefold.

Arab and Berber had military structures which offered greater mobility allowing to retreat into the hinterland, which was also why areas without strategic depth fell to the Christians again.

Arab states ruling over Christians had a large tax base, enable them to afford larger armies and as it disappeared as the Muslim population rose, the support for Christian reconquests also disappeared.

Europe was poorer than the Middle East until after year 1000. Giving the Muslim 400 years of breathing room to consolidate power.
 
They adopted different forms of Islam (in the mindset of the times, they adopted diametrically opposed religions), during the period of the Umayyads and Abbasids, the Berber regions were hotbed for the most ghuluu (exaggerating) Shi’a sects and home to many of the more dangerous Kharijite/Shurha sects. In many ways, it was the third most troublesome region conquered by the early Islamic Caliphate, following Iraq and Iran.

Could you elaborate a little more on this? I lived in Morocco for a bit and took a North African history class. Extremely interesting place and history.

In what ways were the Kharijites dangerous? How were the Shia sects exaggerated?

Saw so many beautiful sights in Morocco and experienced a culture that most people in the West know nothing about. The big cities were more traditionally "Arabic", but the Berber culture of the interior was completely unique. Never seen anything like it.
 
Is that so? It is my position and contention that the Silk Road ended in any substantial way during the rise of Islam. If we chart the history of the Silk Road even just after the fall of the Kushan Empire or the rise of Islam, we see the decline of order in Central Asia until the Mongol hordes united the regions. For instance, in the Abbasid period, the region of the Silk Road at least the western portion, was a place where war prevailed. The old princes of the Silk Road were either conquered by the Muslim armies, Tang or Tibet abd later by the Qhara Qhanids and other hordes.
I think you have missed what I was saying, namely not that Islam itself created order but that its dominance of the region made conversion far more profitable than other religous alternatives for those on the periphery.
 
Is that so? It is my position and contention that the Silk Road ended in any substantial way during the rise of Islam. If we chart the history of the Silk Road even just after the fall of the Kushan Empire or the rise of Islam, we see the decline of order in Central Asia until the Mongol hordes united the regions. For instance, in the Abbasid period, the region of the Silk Road at least the western portion, was a place where war prevailed. The old princes of the Silk Road were either conquered by the Muslim armies, Tang or Tibet abd later by the Qhara Qhanids and other hordes.

There was no free movement thus in the same sense that existed between the Han Dynasty and Kushan-Yuezhi Empire (which in my opinion is the only true period of the Silk Road). Rather, we see trade in the Islamic period move closer to the Persian Gulf and the ever growing networks gained by conquest, such as in India.

Certainly there was Muslim merchants in China, however it is not as if there was uninhibited movement or even free movement. Rather, it was a period wherein war was constant and the cities once known for great merchant enterprises, declined and or were destroyed.
The Silk Road certainly returned during the Samanid Empire, which kept open the trade routes of Central Asia, and Khazar Khaganate, which established a new northern land route that passed through the Pontic Steppe. Archaeological finds in Sweden and Norway examining Viking Age coin hoards have found substantial numbers of silver dirhams from the Abbasid and Samanid Empires, with the relative frequency of Samanid coins indicating an intensive trade between Scandinavia and Middle Asia from about 900-960 AD. Logically these would have been only the last scraps of the Silk Road trade that made it to the far north, and the Silk Road must have continued in higher intensity in Asia. Connections with China were looser, but Sogdian merchants produced and distributed their own silk in the Uighur Empire and continuing through Islamic conquests.

The Romans had persecuted those who dissented from Greek Orthodoxy and there was a lot of discontent outside of the core Orthodox area (Greece/Anatolia). When the Muslims invaded, they won a lot of popular support with their promise to treat all Christians (and Jews) equally as "people of the book," giving them tolerance as long as they paid jizya. Conversely, the core Orthodox regions remained faithful to Constantinople and the Arabs failed to conquer them.
Plus, Asia Minor was perceived as the core and most important part of the Roman Empire by that point other than Constantinople, being named "Rum" by Muslims.
 
Last edited:

Albert.Nik

Banned
For a long time,Muslims had a very unusual sense of Unity as European Christians were very disunited. This is one prime factor. Had Europe been more united,conquests would be reversed in no time.
 
The Silk Road certainly returned during the Samanid Empire, which kept open the trade routes of Central Asia, and Khazar Khaganate, which established a new northern land route that passed through the Pontic Steppe. Archaeological finds in Sweden and Norway examining Viking Age coin hoards have found substantial numbers of silver dirhams from the Abbasid and Samanid Empires, with the relative frequency of Samanid coins indicating an intensive trade between Scandinavia and Middle Asia from about 900-960 AD. Logically these would have been only the last scraps of the Silk Road trade that made it to the far north, and the Silk Road must have continued in higher intensity in Asia. Connections with China were looser, but Sogdian merchants produced and distributed their own silk in the Uighur Empire and continuing through Islamic conquests.

Plus, Asia Minor was perceived as the core and most important part of the Roman Empire by that point other than Constantinople, being named "Rum" by Muslims.

I agreed that there was continued activity. However, the general trend was toward the lessening of this status. The Samanid period regardless was short and the 10th century generally one of constant war between Islamic Turkic states and steppe hordes of varying degrees of Islamic religion. There is little point in seeing trade as flourishing in times when there is such intense conflict. During the height of the Silk Road, there was far less of this, due to the unified state of the Kushan and Han Empires.
 
I think you have missed what I was saying, namely not that Islam itself created order but that its dominance of the region made conversion far more profitable than other religous alternatives for those on the periphery.

Hmm I did misread then. Agreed. The Qhara Qhanids for instance converted to Islam as a political tool most likely.
 
IMO it was the combination of two factors, the aforementioned revolution of social equality combined with awe inspiring military success. It was as if during the Mongol conquests Genghis claimed to be a prophet and that anyone could join the empire, be granted equality and loot in the here and now, and opulence beyond imagination in the afterlife. All he requires is pledging allegiance and accepting Genghis as a prophet. Few would doubt God was not on his side given his many miraculous victories.
 
Top