The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In (review)

The Great Arab Conquests is an updated account of a story that has been told many times before. Indeed, its author, Hugh Kennedy, explored the subject over twenty years ago in a chapter in The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates (1986) and in The Armies of the Caliphs (2001). Whereas these earlier works were decidedly scholarly and primarily intended for an academic audience, this more recent work appears to be aimed at the general reader, particularly those looking to gain a better understanding of the historical foundations of the Arab world. Kennedy, Professor of Mediaeval History at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, is a prolific author and one of the leading scholars of the classical period of Islamic history. He brings great talent and knowledge to the difficult task of crafting a compelling narrative of one of the most rapid and wide-ranging military campaigns in history. Two skills, in particular, allow him to successfully accomplish this task. First, he has an outstanding command of the Arabic sources from this period. Second, he possesses an approachable writing style that strikes a satisfying balance between scholarly precision and engaging narrative. These two skills ensure that this book is not just another retelling of an old story.

As Kennedy writes in the preface, he has three themes to address. First, he intends to present a narrative of the events of the Arab conquests "in so far as we can construct them." This qualification is important because the subject is vast, the chronology prolonged, and the geography extensive. The conquests began shortly after the death of Muhammad, the prophet and founder of Islam, in 632 A.D., and continued in two waves over the next century. During this period, the Arabs created an Empire empire that stretched from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in the West to the borders of India and Central Asia in the East. The chapter headings of the book demonstrate the geographic expanse of the enterprise and the stunning success of the armies moving in two directions simultaneously.

The second theme is an examination of the settlement of the Arabs after the conquest and the relations between rulers and subjects. This is perhaps the most important theme for readers who have little knowledge of the Arab Conquests and may be predisposed to the notion that the Islamic Empire was created on a foundation of violence and forced conversion. Kennedy explores the ways in which the Arabs established a regime that allowed for protection of person, property, and religious freedom for Christians and Jews. As Kennedy notes, conquest was accomplished quickly; conversion to Islam took centuries.

The third theme, which Kennedy calls "the elephant in the room," concerns the early Arabic sources, which are vague and incomplete, often frustratingly so, and have undergone several stages of modification and editing over the centuries. The purported unreliability of the sources has led some recent scholars to dismiss them entirely as inaccurate or, alternatively, to "cherry-pick" them for incidental details used in more specific and particularized analyses. Kennedy takes a different approach. In the preface and introduction of his book, he provides a thorough and informative assessment of the character, style, and content of the Arabic sources in general. In subsequent chapters, he discusses individual sources with objectivity and balance, pointing out the specific strengths and weaknesses of each. While acknowledging the shortcomings of the sources, Kennedy examines them for insight into how early Muslims reconstructed their past. The terms he invokes are "social memory" and the "construction of memory." The theoretical underpinnings of such an approach are not as fully articulated as some historians may wish, but this too is an advantage as it saves the narrative from becoming encumbered with literary jargon and theory.

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