Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests

by Walter Emil Kaegi Jr.

This is a study of how and why the Byzantine empire lost many of its most valuable provinces to Islamic conquerors in the seventh century, provinces that included Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Armenia. It investigates conditions on the eve of those conquests, mistakes in Byzantine policy toward the Muslims, the course of the military campaigns, and the problem of local official and civilian collaboration with the Muslims. It also seeks to explain how after some terrible losses the Byzantine government achieved some intellectual rationalization of its disasters and began the complex process of transforming and adapting its fiscal and military institutions and political controls in order to prevent further disintegration.

Genres: History, Islam, Middle East, Nonfiction, Medieval

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Walter Emil Kaegi is a historian and scholar of Byzantine History, professor of history at the University of Chicago, and a Voting Member of The Oriental Institute. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1965. He is known for his researches on the period from the fourth through eleventh centuries with a special interest in the advance of Islam, interactions with religion and thought, and military subjects. Kaegi is also distinguished for analyzing the Late Roman period in European and Mediterranean context, and has written extensively on Roman, Vandal, Byzantine and Muslim occupation of North Africa. He is known also as the co-founder of the Byzantine Studies Conference and the editor of the journal Byzantinische Forschungen.

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

A five-star effort, with a mixed, three-star reaction.
Always a fascinating subject, the nature of the early Islamic irruption out of the Arabian peninsula is dogged by all sorts of baggage, ideological backsward-projecting or what-have-you, not limited to any particular side of the argument.
Kaegi tries to transcend this by focusing largely on the military aspects, especially Byzantine wan-ness after the wars against the Sassanids. Kaegi does the best he can with the extant materials, and gives good discussions on the veracity of sources on both sides. Certainly that the Islamic armies on the march won is not contested, but the why, which could be interesting, is largely relegated to strategic matters here. Issues of faith and Christian/Jewish minority disdain for the Byzantines, sure a factor, is barely entered into here, a startling gap that would've made the picture whole, whether an actual factor or not.
Probably more for the military historian than anyone else.

[Anatolikon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walter Kaegi's 'Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests' is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the details behind the rapid Byzantine collapse in Syria and Mesopotamia. However, those who want a more general and broader historical survey of the period in general should look elsewhere, as this book's focus is narrow and its audience primarily scholarly. For example, the Muslim conquest of Egypt is only ever mentioned in passing: the book's focus is purely that of Syria, Armenia, and Mesopotamia. Kaegi wisely takes a more military approach to the problem than traditional scholarship has applied, and he manages to argue quite convincingly that the religious dissent between Nestorian and Monophysite churches in the east and Constantinople, the theory that is still lazily applied, played virtually no role in the Muslim success. Instead, he cites the strategic difficulty in defending Syria, the surprise and shock of the Byzantines that led to a defeatist attitude, the lack of weapons amongst the Roman population in Syria, and the complicated politics of the last Romano-Persian war. This book focuses on a chronologically tiny amount of time by the standards of ancient and medieval history. As only a few years are discussed, Kaegi is able to go into great detail and thus is able to argue his thesis convincingly for all of the geographic regions he surveys. Kaegi also needs to be commended for his use of Armenian and Arabic source material. He begins the book by noting the limitation of the Greek and Latin sources (although he does not ignore the difficulties in using Arabic, Syriac, and Armenian material and some of the requisite historiographical problems) and he wisely does not assume that the Byzantine sources are in anyway better than the others. Theophanes is accorded the rather low place he deserves. The Battle of Yarmouk also receives a lengthy and solid treatment, far better than David Nicolle's Osprey book, although the description in Haldon's The Byzantine Wars is still probably the best narrative of the battle.

As other reviewers have noted, Kaegi's writing is frequently broken into small blocks of abrupt and awkward sentences. He repeats himself often, and sometimes arguments that are semi-relevant remain in the text when they would better belong in the footnotes. However, the writing style is still significantly better than his Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium (an essential companion to this volume) so I'm not going to be too hard on him for that. This book is too important for the study of the early Muslim clashes with Byzantium to be exceptionally harsh based on Kaegi's writing style. This is not a general history of the period, but rather a detailed study of the immediate causes of Byzantine collapse in Syria and Mesopotamia, and one that will remain invaluable for a long time.

[Альберто Лорэдо · Rating 3 out of 5]

Impeccably researched but really a dry read. The author spend too much time on the the little details losing focus on the main subject. Still, one of the references for the study of this decisive period and engagement.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

بحث جيد عن علاقة المسلمين الفاتحين مع الدولة البيزنطية

[أ.ممدوح بري]

اريد شراء هذا الكتاب، انا ممدوح غالب احمد بري من فلسطين - قلقيلية - بلدة سنيريا ورقم جوالي هو 0598019240