The Arab Conquests

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Arab conquests - an extraordinary period in the 7th and 8th centuries when the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula conquered the Middle East, Persia, North Africa and Southern Europe and spread the ideas of the Islamic religion. In 632 the prophet Muhammad died and left behind the nascent religion of Islam among a few tribes in the Arabian Desert. They were relatively small in number, they were divided among themselves and they were surrounded by vast and powerful empires. Yet within 100 years Arab armies controlled territory from Northern Spain to Southern Iran and Islamic ideas had begun to profoundly refashion the societies they touched. It is one of the most extraordinary and significant events in world history that began the slow and profound transformation of Greek and Persian societies into Islamic ones. But how did the Arab armies achieve such extensive victories, how did they govern the people they conquered and what was the relationship between the achievements of the Arabs and the religious beliefs they carried with them?

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Hugh Kennedy 11 episodes
  Professor of Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
• Amira Bennison 10 episodes
  Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge
• Robert Hoyland 2 episodes
  Professor in Arabic and Middle East Studies at the University of St Andrews

Related episodes

• The Abbasid Caliphs
  
  2 Feb, 2006 900 History
• The Translation Movement
  
  2 Oct, 2008 500 Science
• The Battle of Talas
  
  9 Oct, 2014 950 History of Asia
• The Almoravid Empire
  
  3 May, 2018 960 History of Africa
• Muslim Spain
  
  21 Nov, 2002 940 History of Europe
• The Mamluks
  
  26 Sep, 2013 950 History of Asia
• The Battle of Tours
  
  16 Jan, 2014 940 History of Europe
• Third Crusade
  
  29 Nov, 2001 940 History of Europe
• Byzantium
  
  19 Jul, 2001 940 History of Europe
• Maths in the Early Islamic World
  
  16 Feb, 2017 510 Mathematics

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: b00c5xzc

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c5xzc

Auto-category: 956 (History of the Middle East)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In 632, the Prophet Muhammad died and left behind the nascent religion of Islam among a few tribes in the Arabian desert.