After “Christianity and inflation”, many of you may wonder whether “The plague and the rise of Islam” is another one of Hugo’s hair-raising theories. Well, it actually is.. Let me walk through.
Whilst the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed from within and was taken over by German tribes who had served as Roman mercenaries, the Eastern half was wealthier, stronger and could preserve its army and thus its existence. With access to wheat from Egypt, the Byzantine Empire had enough wealth to put up formidable resistance. Not long after the demise of the last Western Emperor in 476 AD, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian launched a counteroffesive. His troops defeated the Goths in Italy and the Vandals in Northern Africa. The Franks were supposed to be next.
Hand of a person suffering from bubonic plague The dream of restoring the Roman Empire in its old glory came to naught when the bubonic plague struck in 541 AD. The disease carrying fleas, arriving from Africa through Egypt, travelled with rats thus spread very quickly along the lines of seaborne trade and naval activities. Within a year, most sailors, harbour officials, merchants and navy staff were gone. Trade stoped dead in its track. The fleets bringing wheat did not show up any longer. The Byzantine Empire lost half of its people (15 million). The army was decimated. Emperor Justinian barely survived the infection. Byzantium became a hollow empire.
Siege of Constantinople in 626 AB by a coalition of Slavs and Persians Sensing the weakness of Byzantium, the Persian Sassanids decided to renew hostilities in 540 AD. Over the next 88 years, Rome and Persia were almost continuously at war. From 602 - 626, Syria and Palestine were occupied by Persia who aligned itself with the Bulgarian slavs. Not wanting to be out-manoeuvred, Byzantium invited the Turks into the fray and paid them to attack Persia from the north - a choice Constantinople came to regret a few hundred years later. The war ended in 628 AD. Both parties were totally exhausted, their resources depleted.
The poverty induced by the plague, the high tax burden resulting from these wars plus Byzantium’s increasing intolerance towards the Coptic and Syrian Churches alienated the local population from Byzantium. Given the religious tolerance of the Persian occupiers, Constantinople lost its image as the defender of the faith. More and more, people in the Eastern provinces came to see Byzantium as an oppressive regime that was more interested in its own well being than the one of its people.
Arab cavalry It was precisely at this moment in history when the Arabs united under Muhammad’s leadership. Many Arab troups had fought in the Roman-Persian wars and were well familiar with Roman military tactics. When these wars ended in 628 AD, Arab Auxiliaries lost their jobs and went on raiding Roman and Persian towns and villages for a living. These hostilities quickly escalated. Byzantium mobilised its imperial army who met the more agile Arab forces in 636 AD at Yarmuk, just east of the Jordan river. After three days of pitched battle, the Roman army disintegrated and was slaughtered during the retreat to the coast. The door to Eastern Rome or Byzantium was now wide open. There were no armed forces left. Relatively small cavalry units conquered Damascus, Jerusalem, Antioch and eventually overrun Egypt in 642 AD with just 4’000 men.
Arab expansion after 632 AD, the year Muhammad died The consequences of Egypt’s loss were devastating. The dreams of Renewing the Roman Empire were over for ever. No large Imperial Army could be maintained without the wheat from Egypt. In the overrun towns and provinces, people made arrangements with their new rulers. Being treated as “People of the Book”, both Jews and Christians enjoyed the greater religious freedom the new rulers granted. Safty was restored and commerce restarted. Plague and continued war had prepared the ground for a new world order, the first Califat. The Muslim world had arrived and was here to stay
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