[muawiyah]

Whatever you and other art historians think of the term "Dark Ages" the fact is it began within a specific small segment of time associated with two major volcanic eruptions ~ one of them quite near on Iceland, and the other in the Indonesian archipelago.

It literally became dark, all sunsets were red for many decades afterward, plant growth withered in Northern and Western Europe, and a good deal of the event was reported in the British chronicles of that day (SEE: King Arthur, et al).

Europe's economy collapsed for roughly the next 500 years, and China's for the next 300 years. Things weren't all that good for several centuries later either.

All you need to understand how a bunch of un-educated guys dressed in last year's rags were able to move out of Arabia and conquer Damascus is note that even Byzantium hadn't paid its troops in over a century when the legions met the guys from Mecca.

The early Moslems did most of the conquering with Byzantine armies and Byzantine navies ~ who they paid!

[livius]

The early Moslems did most of the conquering with Byzantine armies and Byzantine navies ~ who they paid!

Yes, that's true.

Also, North Africa itself had long supplied mercenaries to other states or kings, and hiring an army was quite an acceptable practice in all of those societies. The first Muslim armies that invaded Spain were actually mercenaries hired by a Visigothic king to defeat his rivals. Needless to say, he was one of the first people killed, and then the Muslims simply pushed their way into Spain from the Mediterranean coast.

Nobody at the time understood the fact that this new cult meant that hiring North African mercenaries was no longer a good idea...

[aruanan]

All you need to understand how a bunch of un-educated guys dressed in last year's rags were able to move out of Arabia and conquer Damascus is note that even Byzantium hadn't paid its troops in over a century when the legions met the guys from Mecca.

The early Moslems did most of the conquering with Byzantine armies and Byzantine navies ~ who they paid!

The Bedouins of the Arabian Peninsula had long served as mercenaries for both Rome and Persia in their internecine conflict. It was the advent of a plague originating in Africa that weakened both Rome and Persia to the extent that they didn't need/couldn't afford these mercenaries who, organized by Mohammed under the banner of Islam, took advantage of the weakened North African/Mediterranean world and swept through it like a plague, concentrating not on rule but on plunder (look at the letter back to Caliph Omar at central command, so to speak, listing all the houses and other stuff to be had in Alexandria: "I have captured a city from the description of which I shall refrain. Suffice it to say that I have seized therein 4000 villas with 4000 baths, 40,000 poll-tax paying Jews and four hundred places of entertainment for the royalty"), not too distant from when Muawiyah, your namesake, the first Arab governor of Palestine, was made the first Omayyad Caliph of Damascus.