ABSTRACT

There are three foci of interest in the centuries preceding the wave of Arab conquests of the Near East region in the seventh century. The Christian Byzantines had some influence over the Red Sea, extending at times to an alliance with the Monophysite Christians of Abyssinia; the Zoroastrian Persians, with their capital in Ctesiphon in Mesopotamia, had influence which reached at times the eastern side of Arabia and along the south coast to the Yemen; and the south Arabian kingdoms whose fluctuating fortunes, last manifested in the Himyar dynasty of the sixth century, had lost virtually all semblance of vitality by the time of the rise of the Arabs. The Arabian peninsula, although having had settled centres for several millennia, did not contain a power to be reckoned with in the world at the time. The only partial qualification to this resided in the various tribal areas which had become pawns in the hands of external kingdoms, perhaps thereby creating the human forces which would eventually expand out of the peninsula and subjugate the earlier rulers.