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The Mongols, and all related people of the steppe, showed a continuous history of raids, invasion and conquest for thousands of years.

The Arabs had a history similarly thousands of years old. Lots of raids, but few or no successful conquests. Then a century with one of the greatest conquests in history, then a return to centuries of no conquest. For that matter, a history of being invaded.

My question is simply what can account for the discrepancy.

I think the simplest explanation is the birth of a new religion.

I agree the evidence for Jesus is not identical to that for Mohammed. I merely pointed out that similar objections to whether he really existed have been made. Which they have.

I plan to read the book. However, my initial impression is that of the old science saw, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

IOW, the lack of evidence does not prove he didn’t exist, only that the evidence he existed is minimal.

Scientists and historians have for centuries now been claiming that all sorts of mythical characters had no basis in fact. Quite often as additional evidence is found it shows the guy really existed and may have been exaggerated. But very seldom that there was no basis in a real person.

The Xia and Shang dynasties in China, for instance.

The Normans (Vikings) had a long history of raiding without much critical mass and then, between 900 and 1100 AD managed to establish a vast network of kingdoms from England to Sicily to the Ukraine. Most historians agree that the impetus for this was an extended period of relative prosperity in which the Nordic population grew very rapidly, to the point where chieftains needed to expand their raids to keep the growing cohort of young warriors in their clans happy. This spurred the refinement of the longship, providing the technology for expanding further.

The Arabs of the 600s had a similar population explosion and it occurred when the Byzantine empire was weak.

Patricia Crone has pointed out that before the canonical text of the Koran was established, the Caliphs of the Muslim empire called themselves khalifa allaha "God's deputy" and the title did not change until a generation after the canonical text was disseminated into khalifa rasul allaha or "deputy of God's prophet."

In the case of Christianity, the doctrines and history were well-established traditions among believers long before Christianity had any political or military significance. In the case of Islam, the doctrines and history seem to have been elaborated long after the movement had become a powerful force in geopolitics.