ABSTRACT
In world history, there are certainly examples to be found of large-scale conquests: some have been slow, others rapid but then short-lived: such conquests have left durable traces among the vanquished, but this has depended on the possession, by the victor, of a sophisticated level of civilization, superior to that of the vanquished. At the end of the Nineteenth Century, and during the years that followed, various academics have turned their attention to the question, intent on refuting the notion that the Arab conquest had a religious aspect. Approaching the subject in an absolutely novel fashion, that of a psychological and sociological comparison between the various imperialisms, over the course of time, Joseph Schumpeter also does not believe that the Arab conquest was, primarily, a religious phenomenon. It was Arnold who was the first to argue, in The Preaching of Islam, that the Arabs did not seek to convert the Christians in Egypt, in Syria, etc.
