Early Islamic Conquests and the Caliphate

In the decades after Muhammad's death in 632, Arab-Muslim forces overran the Sasanian Empire and much of Byzantium, and the institution of the caliphate emerged to govern a vast new empire.

Definition

This topic concerns the military expansion of the early Islamic polity and the development of the caliphate — the office and institution of leadership over the Muslim community — from the death of Muhammad through the early Abbasid period.

Scope

Covers the rise of the early Islamic state and the great conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries; the Rashidun, Umayyad, and early Abbasid caliphates; the administration of conquered lands and their non-Muslim populations; the early civil wars (fitnas) and the Sunni–Shia divide; and the historiographical problems of the early Islamic sources.

Core questions

• Why were the early Arab-Muslim conquests so rapid and far-reaching?
• How did the caliphate evolve as a political and religious institution?
• How were conquered peoples governed and integrated?
• How reliable are the sources for the earliest Islamic history?

Key theories

Source-critical and revisionist approaches

Scholars such as Patricia Crone and Robert Hoyland question the reliability of the late Arabic literary sources for early Islam, drawing on non-Muslim and documentary evidence and proposing revised accounts of the conquests and the formation of the caliphate.

History

Under the Rashidun caliphs, Arab armies defeated Byzantine and Sasanian forces, taking Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Iran. The Umayyads (661–750), ruling from Damascus, extended Muslim power from Iberia to Central Asia, before the Abbasid revolution (750) shifted the center to Iraq. Civil wars and the disputed succession to leadership shaped the enduring Sunni–Shia division.

Debates

Reliability of early sources

Historians dispute how far the conquests and early caliphate can be reconstructed from later Arabic narratives, with revisionists emphasizing contemporary non-Muslim and material evidence and others defending a critical use of the Islamic tradition.

Key figures

• Hugh Kennedy
• Fred M. Donner
• Robert G. Hoyland
• Patricia Crone

Seminal works

• kennedy2007
• donner1981
• hoyland2015

Frequently asked questions

What is the caliphate?

The office and institution of the caliph (khalifa), the successor to Muhammad as leader of the Muslim community, combining political and religious authority over the early Islamic empire.

What were the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphates?

The Rashidun ('rightly guided') were the first four caliphs after Muhammad; the Umayyads were the dynasty that ruled from Damascus from 661 to 750 and oversaw much of the great expansion.