of Italy (from the Ostrogoths) left that country devastated and paved the way for the Lombard invasion. By the early seventh century, the war between Rome and Iran had flared up again, and the Sasanians who had ruled Iran since the third century launched a wholesale invasion of all the major eastern provinces (including Egypt). When Byzantium, as the Roman Empire was now increasingly known, recovered these provinces in the 620s, it was just a few years away, literally, from the final major blow which came, this time, from the south-east. The expansion of Islam from its beginnings in Arabia has been called ‘the greatest political revolution ever to occur in the history of the ancient world’.
By , barely ten years after Prophet Muhammad’s death, large parts of both the eastern Roman and Sasanian empires had fallen to the Arabs in a series of stunning confrontations. However, we should bear in mind that those conquests, which eventually (a century later) extended as far afield as Spain, Sind and Central Asia, began in fact with the subjection of the Arab tribes by the emerging Islamic state, first within Arabia and then in the Syrian desert and on the fringes of Iraq. As we will see in Theme , the unification of the Arabian peninsula and its numerous tribes was the key factor behind the territorial expansion of Islam. M AP : West Asia EVENTS BCE ‘Principate’ founded by Octavian; now calls himself Augustus c.
- Life of the Elder Pliny; dies in the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius, which also buries the Roman town of Pompeii - The great Jewish revolt and capture of Jerusalem by Roman forces c. Greatest extent of the Roman Empire, following Trajan’s conquests in the East All free inhabitants of the empire transformed into Roman citizens New dynasty founded in Iran, called ‘Sasanians’ after ancestor Sasan 250s Persians invade Roman territories west of the Euphrates Cyprian bishop of Carthage executed 260s Gallienus reorganises the army Caravan city of Palmyra destroyed by Romans Diocletian reorganises empire into c. provinces