Aftermath

Rashidun, Muslim conquest, and Succession to Muhammad

Muhammad united the tribes of Arabia into a single Arab Muslim religious polity in the last years of his life. With Muhammad(SAW)'s death, disagreement broke out over who would succeed him as leader of the Muslim community.^[12] Umar ibn al-Khattab, a prominent companion of Muhammad(SAW), nominated Abu Bakr, Muhammad(SAW)'s friend and collaborator. Others added their support and Abu Bakr was made the first caliph. This choice was disputed by some of Muhammad(SAW)'s companions, who held that Ali ibn Abi Talib, his cousin and son-in-law, had been designated the successor by Muhammad(SAW) at Ghadir Khumm. Abu Bakr's immediate task was to make an expedition against the Byzantine (or Eastern Roman Empire) forces because of the previous defeat, although he first had to put down a rebellion by Arab tribes in an episode referred to by later Muslim historians as the Ridda wars, or "Wars of Apostasy".^[174]

The pre-Islamic Middle East was dominated by the Byzantine and Sassanian empires. The Roman-Persian Wars between the two had devastated the inhabitants, making the empires unpopular amongst local tribes. Furthermore, most Christian Churches in the lands to be conquered by Muslim such as Nestorians, Monophysites, Jacobites and Copts were under pressure from the Christian Orthodoxy who deemed them heretics. Within only a decade, Muslims conquered Mesopotamia and Persia, Roman Syria and Roman Egypt.^[175] and established the Rashidun empire.