Muslim conquests

The early Muslim conquests were a series of military expansions that began after the Prophet Muhammad's death and, within about a century, created an empire stretching from Spain and North Africa to Central Asia. Under the first caliphs and then the Umayyad dynasty, Arab armies took Syria and Egypt from the Byzantine Empire and overthrew the Sasanian Empire of Persia, both exhausted by years of mutual warfare. The conquests continued across North Africa and into Spain, where the Visigothic kingdom was overthrown, and into Sindh and Transoxiana. They were halted in Gaul and at Constantinople. The period ended around the time of the Abbasid revolution, which replaced the Umayyads, and conquered peoples converted to Islam and Arabic over time.

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