[Spacewalker]

If you knew Areab history, you would know that most of these conquests were done by slave armies... Arabs themselves didn't fight except at the very beginning (see for instance Patricia Crone's book, Slaves on Horses)

Moreover the East was not Melkite, so they didn't fight too hard against the Muslims...

But in modern time
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_17/articles/deatkine_arabs1.html

[Valin]

Patricia Crone's book, Slaves on Horses

Any good? Worth the time spent reading it?

[Knitting A Conundrum]

And as a careful watcher of anything involving the Islamicist movement, I can tell there has been a new ferment coming up...there's a lot more anti-Islam incidents. Some government responses...I don't know if it's a sea change yet, but the people in Europe seem to be getting tired of it...and that soccer hooligan streak is getting itchy.