Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

syria, palestine and mesopotamia 611
open for the occupation of the rest of the country, including the coastal
cities and Antioch itself. By around 647–8 the whole of Syria was in
Muslim hands. 83 After the defeat of the Byzantine field armies, most cities
surrendered peacefully on easy terms. Only at Damascus and Caesarea
does there seem to have been any prolonged and organized resistance.
Our understanding of the Muslim conquests is determined by the view
we take of the Near East at the time of their arrival. In the present state of
historical research, it is possible to suggest that a major military victory, at
the battle of the Yarmuk in 636, was followed by the largely peaceful penetration
of a sparsely populated land by nomad or semi-nomad tribesmen,
and many of the changes often ascribed to the Muslim conquests, like the
decline of the coastal cities and the evolution of new patterns of urban
planning, were continuations of trends already established in late antiquity.
The Muslims certainly brought a new ruling class, and a new dominant
religion and language eventually replaced the Christian Greek and Syriac
world of antiquity, but even so, the conquests were only one factor among
many in the long evolution of the economic and social life of town and
country.
83 See Donner (1981) 91–155 and Kaegi (1992); ch. 22c (Conrad), pp. 695,9 below.
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