We should not, then, view the conquests as a sort of nationalist enterprise, as was sometimes proposed by late nineteenth-century European scholars inspired by the emergence of the German and Italian nations. Though Arab identity certainly existed before Islam, it was the conquests that entrenched it and spread it and the early Muslim rulers who commissioned writers and poets to give it substance and shape. So what was it that motivated the conquerors to venture forth? It could be argued that there is no need to postulate a particular reason. Tribes living on the margins of states will frequently turn upon those states to supplement their incomes, whether by pillage, ransoming prisoners, or extorting subsidies. Usually they are quickly chased away or bought off by the agents of state security, but if not they will return in bigger numbers, and soon the affair, if not checked, will snowball into far-reaching conquest. This is what is termed an autocatalytic process: a small initial event triggers and drives a chain reaction that evolves on an ever faster and bigger scale. This is sometimes adduced to explain the explosion of Viking raids that occurred after the highly profitable attack on the English island of Lindisfarne in 793, and also the European rush to embark upon maritime exploration after Columbus’s “discovery” of the New World in 1492. One might object that this would have only led to disorder and not a state, but if large territories were won, adept leaders would step forward to manage the situation, as happened with the Vikings and much later with the Mongols. This certainly fits with what we learn from contemporary descriptions of the early stages of the Arab conquests where random minor raids yielded success and soon prompted the participation of much larger numbers of Arabian tribesmen. In this view, Muhammad's coalition would have been just one of many groups profiting from the disorder caused by the Byzantine-Persian conflict, though their superior organization and ideological commitment helped them to become the dominant group.
The accidental view of history (i. e., history as fallible human responses to random acts and events) is not, however, a commonly held one, and usually an array of push and pull factors has been proposed. The most popular factors cited are easy availability of plunder due to the weakness of the Byzantine and Persian empires (on the pull side) and economic/environmental impoverishment in Arabia (on the push side). The case for imperial exhaustion has been frequently advanced, though never actually documented, and Heraclius's defeat of the Persians and subsequent failure to prop up their government at their hour of greatest weakness has recently been described as “Heraclius's gift to Islam.” The idea that there was a worsening economic and/or environmental situation in Arabia was in vogue in the first half of the twentieth century, but fell out of favor thereafter. However, recent archaeological surveys of east and west Arabia reveal a substantial drop in settlement activity in the fifth and sixth centuries, and the collapse of ancient Yemen after a tradition of 1,500 years is startling and must have had a negative impact on neighboring communities. Presumably, Arabia suffered the same sort of fall in economic activity in the fifth and sixth centuries as Europe did in the fourth and fifth centuries, and, as happened in Europe, a number of Arabia's residents turned to raiding their imperial masters in order to make good the shortfall in their income. Given that political instability and economic retraction were afflicting numerous areas from the Balkans to China, it is possible that this deterioration in material conditions was much more widespread. Plausibly there were climatic and/or environmental stresses affecting large parts of Eurasia that were putting empires under strain and leaving them more exposed to the predations of steppe and desert peoples around them, but this needs further investigation.38
In recent years, and especially since the rise of radical Muslim groups like al-Qa'ida, the most often cited pull factor is Islam, which is assumed to have unified the diverse Arabian tribesmen under one banner and filled them with the zeal to do God’s work in fighting all non-believers and to bring God’s rule to the whole world. This is the message that ninth-century Muslim historians propagated, and modern Western scholars have recently embraced it. “Faith was the driving force behind the Muslim conquests,” as one has succinctly put it.39 Some of these scholars, however, have felt a little uneasy that a religion that “embodied an intense concern for attaining personal salvation through righteous behavior” should also have impelled its followers to take up arms. They have, therefore, striven to play down the role of violence in the conquests, though we cannot view them, concedes the doyen of this view, “as entirely a pacific operation, devoid of violence against, or coercion of, the conquered populations.”40
Such opinions reflect an attempt to present Islam more positively in a world in which Islamophobia has been growing. But such apologetic aims, though noble, are out of place in works of history. All empires have relied on violence and coercion for their existence, and yet, since the imperial elite is always small in relation to the numbers of their subjects, all empires make use of a range of non-violent strategies to maintain their rule: co-opting the willing, rewarding collaboration, promising protection in return for submission, playing divide and rule, and so on. The Arab empire was no exception to this, and so needs no special treatment. Moreover, by the time the Arabs arrived on the scene, the use of violence for religious ends had long been regarded as acceptable, if not commendable, in the Middle East, at least in certain situations. When in 388 a band of Christians attacked a Jewish synagogue in northern Syria, the emperor thought to apply Roman law and punish the culprits, but Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, dissuaded him, pointing out that the pious should not have to defer to the impious. And when in the 620s the emperor Heraclius wished to rally his troops to fight the Persians, he emphasized that “death in battle opens the way to eternal life” and so urged them to sacrifice themselves to God for the sake of their compatriots and “to seize the martyrs' crown.”41 These exhortations accord well with similarly encouraging remarks in the Qur'an: “Let those who would trade this life for the hereafter fight in God's path; and We will recompense well whomsoever does fight in God's path, whether he dies or achieves victory” (4:74).
The Qur'an is equally explicit about the rewards that those who fight for Him can expect in this life: “God has promised that you will take much booty and He has expedited this for you” (48:20), so “consume the booty that you have captured as a lawful benefit” (8:69). And it is made abundantly clear that “God favors those who go out to fight with their own wealth and lives over those who stay behind” (4:95). Since God was sanctioning the fighting and the acquisition of booty, there is no need to debate whether Muhammad's west Arabian soldiers fought more for gain or for God—the two were inseparable. They were also mutually reinforcing: the gains won by fighting for God made His warriors more desirous to serve Him in war and worship. One should not think, however, that this idea goes hand in hand with trying to convert the conquered peoples. In many ways it runs contrary to it, for the gains will be diluted if they have to be shared with everyone. This point is made very strongly by a number of Arab Muslim generals seeking to motivate their troops on the eve of war: “This land is your inheritance, which God has promised you,” says Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas to his soldiers before the battle of Qadisiyya, “and you have been tasting it and eating from it, and killing its people, collecting taxes from them and taking them prisoner until today,” and so it is crucial that you fight now to maintain this situation.42 It is, in effect, a literal understanding of “the righteous shall inherit the earth,” as the Qur'an itself notes (21:105), explicitly quoting the Psalms of the Bible (37:29).
There is a downside, however, in assuming faith to be the prime instigator of the Arab conquests. Besides the difficulty of assessing whether one group is more zealous than another (why should we think that the Byzantines and Sasanians had less zeal for their faith than the Arabs?), this explanation focuses very narrowly on one time and place, early seventh-century west Arabia, and one man, Muhammad, and ignores broader currents of world history. To take a modern example, Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit-vendor who set himself on fire in December 2010, may well have been the spark that kindled the Arab spring, but a proper reckoning of this phenomenon would have to take into account high youth unemployment, rising food prices, restricted access to positions of power, and so on. Of course, the prophet Muhammad played a much more crucial role in the uprising that followed his death, and his politico-religious message and organization were key to the future direction of the conquests. However, the fact that other peoples, such as the Turks and Avars, were also striving to conquer Byzantium and Persia at this time, and the fact that there were many prophetic figures active in Arabia in the early seventh century, suggests that we need to think more broadly about the ultimate causes of the Arab conquests.
World History
