Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

698 22c. the arabs
of Abraham. 108 It therefore seems probable that there was a religious
agenda to the conquests from the start, and it is certainly true that without
the unifying factor of Islam there would probably have been no conquest
at all.
But the arguments of leaders and advocates are one thing, and the
response of the fighters themselves is another. Even in Mecca and Medina
the teachings of Muh · ammad and the text of the Qur�ān were still known
in only fragmentary fashion, and it is difficult to see how most tribesmen
elsewhere could have had more than a vague and trivial knowledge of
either so soon after the Prophet’s death. Many warriors who joined the conquest
forces had only recently fought against the Prophet himself, or
resisted the effort of the first two caliphs to bring Arabia under their
control. It is also implausible that tribal warriors all over Arabia could so
quickly have abandoned the pragmatic and worldly attitude toward religion
that had prevailed for centuries, in favour of one that expected genuine
commitment to the one God. There is, in fact, good evidence on the conquests
showing that this was not the case at all. 109
This is not to detract from the centrality of the message of Islam to
Muh · ammad’s own sense of mission and purpose, and probably to that of
others around him. One may also concede that Islam enabled the Muslim
leadership to mobilize warriors in a way that transcended important
differences, and it is likely that Islamic slogans and admonitions of various
kinds were frequently inspiring to fighters on the ground. But if the faith
played an important role in uniting and mobilizing the tribes, it was nevertheless
waves of tribal forces, motivated primarily by traditional tribal
ambitions and goals, that broke over Syria, Iraq and Egypt, beginning in the
630s.
It is unlikely that either Syria or Iraq could have withstood the advance
of forces of this kind, given the constitution of their defences after the end
of the last Persian war in 628, only six years before the first Arab advance.
The Arab armies were not simply marshalled in Medina and then sent forth
with the caliph’s instructions; providing food, fodder and water for an army
of thousands of men and animals would have been extremely difficult. The
norm was rather for small contingents gradually to expand as other groups
joined them on the march; the sources make it clear that commanders were
expected to engage in such recruiting along the way, to ensure that the newcomers
were armed and equipped, and to ‘keep each tribe distinct from the
108 Sebeos, Histoire d’Héraclius 95–6. Cf. also the quotations from Dionysius of Tell Mah· rē (d. 845)
in Michael I Qīndāsī, Chronique de Michel le Syrien ii.403–5 (trans.); iv.404–8 (text); Chronicon ad annum
Christi 1234 pertinens i.227–30 (text); i.178–80 (trans.). Discussion in Crone and Cook (1977) 8–10;
Hoyland (1997) 124–30.
109 E.g. al-Walīd ibn Muslim (d. 810) in Ibn �Asākir i.461–2; al-T· abarī, Ta�rīkh i.2922; al-Maqrīzī,
Khit · at · i.75.
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