Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium. Episode 58, why did the Arabs win?

Part 3, they wanted it more. In the last two episodes we've discussed the problem of accepting

the traditional narrative as presented by Muslim historians writing in later centuries. We aren't

completely rejecting those accounts, we just can't rely entirely on them. Hopefully some combination

between the knowledge they give us and other sources will shed light on the problem. So let's just

remind ourselves of the position we're in. Since the beginning of this podcast, the role of the Arabs

on the international stage has grown significantly. The raids of the pagan luckmids so concerned Justinian

that he sought out the Christian gassanas and paid them to form a coalition of tribes to police the

Syrian desert. The status of that coalition vis-a-vis the Byzantines fluctuated. We then know that Muhammad's

career took place during the last great war between Rome and Persia and that by the mid-630s,

Arab armies had defeated both imperial powers in battle and by 652 they had conquered the whole

of Susanne territory and two-thirds of Byzantiums. So the question of why did the Arabs win seems to

zero in on that time between the breakthrough of Kusro the Seconds forces and the Battle of Yarmuk.

Where can we look that will help us find out more? Let's start with the Arabs as a people

and Arabia as a place. Something I'd not really thought about before is that Arabia is part of the

world's largest desert. It's clearly geologically connected to the Sahara. If you look at the map I

posted with episode 55, you can see this clearly. Because the Red Sea splits them, Arabia forms a

separate ecosystem. This meant that the Arabs were a homogenous people, pretty much everyone who

lived there spoke Arabic and shared in a common culture. There was very little history of statehood

in Arabia, either internal or external. Only in Yemen in the southwest corner is there enough

rainfall to establish large agricultural communities and small kingdoms usually ruled there. We

encountered one of these way back in episode 15, the Kingdom of Himya, the one that was then

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