It took the Western Europeans about 900 years to recover. The Iberian and Italian peninsulas recovered faster than the North, but even then conditons deteriorated to such a degree that a bunch of mud islands in a tidal marsh on the Adriatic became an important city ~ for the times ~ we call it Venice.
The Byzantines produced no works of art for 60 years ~ the climate was better there ~ and the folks in Damascus actually didn't have much to say about the weather during most of that period.
Still, by the time the Meccan Arabs were on the move the Byzantines hadn't paid their armies in 100 years!
China shut down for 300 years. Central Asia shut down until 1300 give or take a few years waiting on the Mongol Empire to rise and reopen it.
Much of history after 535 can be dealt with readily with a model that takes a look at which societies recovered first ~ economically ~ and what they did with their advantage over their neighbors. For example, the Bretons and Cornish were moving out smartly by the mid 600s and had begun resettling Northern Spain. The Arabs beat them to the punch ~ but they met in Spain and engaged in a battle that lasted for over 800 years (SEE: Reconquista).
There are other examples, but any analysis that fails to note the destruction of civilization in the West in the 6th century is deficient in ways I find almost imagineable!
Still, by the time the Meccan Arabs were on the move the Byzantines hadn’t paid their armies in 100 year.
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One of the things the video/article mentions is that the reason Mohamed’s relatives were able to defeat Byzantines and Persians in that wild 25 year expansion of the early 600’s is because the Byzantines and Persians had just finished a debilitating war with each other. And then following hard on that was the plague of the Black Death which killed off roughly a third of their populations.
Both civilizations were defenseless and prostrate.
Actually a climate anomaly of some kind that began in 535AD did in Western Europe BEFORE Mohammad was born.
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Yeah I know about that climate anomaly. But the archaeologists studying the ruins of the spanish french Italian and greek towns along the Mediterranean and the nearby seabeds...show that the seaside towns were destroyed in the decades around 640 and replaced by hilltop fortresses. The nearby seabeds show ship wrecks at layers lower than than the 640 line but none higher—suggesting that sea commerce had died.
Libya was a big farming region until 640. That all disappeared after the Arab armies came through.