ABSTRACT
The Historical works of the Islamic tradition portray the early Islamic conquests as the self-conscious and centrally managed expansion of a new state in the name of the new faith of Islam. Centralization means control of some process from “the centre” – in the traditional view of the Islamic conquests, control of the conquest movement by the Caliphs in Medina. A significant number of modern interpreters of the early Islamic conquests have accepted the main outlines of the traditional Islamic “centralizing thesis,” holding to the general notion of a set of central motivating concepts and a centralized execution directed from the centre in Medina. In any case, the communications time-lag faced by the early Islamic state certainly compares favorably with later colonial ventures such as the Portuguese or British expansions in the Indian Ocean. Many of the Prophet’s military campaigns do not seem to have been organizationally more sophisticated than the small tribal raiding parties of pre-Islamic Arabia.
