Maps of the Mohammedan countries
AD 750 - 950 (top) and 1130 - 1380 (bottom)
Plate XI from A history of all nations from the earliest times (1905), vol VIII, pp 190 - 191
Expansion beyond the Arabian peninsula began in AD 633, when the Rashidun Caliphate launched an offensive against the Iranian Empire, an army under Khalid ibn al-Walid conquering towns along the western bank of the Euphrates which was inhabited by Christians from the Church of the East. Four years later, Rashidun armies took Babylon, then captured and sacked Ctesiphon, the Iranian (Sassanid) capital and see of the Patriarch of the Church of the East, after a three-month-long siege. Mosul, too, was captured after the battle of Jalula in April 637.
Following the fall of the core Sassanid territories, Persian Armenia sought Byzantine protection. However, Armenia, too, would be conquered by the Umayyads. Dvin was conquered in 642, followed by Theodosiopolis (645) and Yerevan (658).
Rashidun forces, again led by al-Walid, then turned their attention to the Levant, and defeated a Byzantine army in the battle of Ajnadayn in 634. Gaza fell to Muslim armies, followed by Joppa, Neopolis and Damascus. After the Battle of Yarmouk in August 636, the bulk of Palestine was annexed by the caliphate. Jerusalem, the holiest city in Christendom, was taken after a siege that lasted from November 636 to April 637. Antioch, first see of Saint Peter, fell after the battle of the Iron Bridge in 638. Edessa was conquered in 640 along with the greater part of Armenia. Tripolis, the last major Byzantine position in the Levant, was captured in 646, under the reign of caliph Othman.
Muslim expansion towards the east was temporarily halted in 644 under Omar, who established Makran (present-day Pakistan) as boundary for his empire; the mountain fortress of CalQat would be conquered in 660 but the entire region would be lost to a revolt three years later.
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Meanwhile, the conquest of the Levant had opened the gates to raids and further expansion on the Greek islands. Cyprus fell in 649, followed by Rhodes in 652. While Crete would remain under Byzantine hands until the mid-9th century, it would suffer constant raids in the meantime. The Rashidun prepared for new campaign, this time to attack Constantinople itself, but the plans were halted by the assassination of Othman in 655.
Concurrently with the Levantine campaign, the Muslims launched their invasion of Byzantine Africa, which began in December 639 with the capture of undefended Rhinocorura, in the Sinai. Pelusium was the first major city falling into Arab hands, after a two-month-long siege, followed by Babylon Fortress, which resisted for over seven months until its capture in December 640. Heliopolis in Augustamnica (present-day Cairo) was captured on July 6th, 640. By the end of the year, the Thebais province (Upper Egypt) had been annexed as well.
Alexandria, See of Saint Mark and the capital of Roman Egypt, was put to siege in March 641 and taken in September that same year. The fall of Alexandria marked the conclusion of the Rashidun conquest of Egypt, and the opening of their Maghreb campaigns, since the city could be used as the main base for further invasions. In 642, they began an offensive against the Byzantine Exarchate of Africa, capturing Antaeopolis in 644, then Leptis Magna (Provincia Cyneraica, present-day Libya) and sacking Sufetula (present-day Tunisia) in 647.
In the south, Arab advances were put to a stop in 642 when Rashidun forces were defeated by the numerically inferior army of the Christian kingdom of Makuria (Nubia), led by their king Qalidurut, and again in 652. This led to a the longest truce in recorded history, between the Radhidun Caliphate and its successor states on one side and Makuria on the other, until the latter fell to internal strife in the 14th century.
Neither would the Rashidun Caliphate nor its successor states make any campaigns from the Maghreb towards the south; instead, trade routes were established linking the main Arab cities such as Algiers and Tunis with the Sub-Saharan territories such as the Takrur (present-day Senegal), Kanem (present-day Chad) and Kitara (present-day Uganda) kingdoms, which thrived with the.trade of gold, salt and ,specially, slaves.
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Further Muslim offensives would take place after the conclusion of the First Muslim Civil War and the rise of the Umayyads. The campaign against Constantinople materialised in 674, when a force led by future caliph Yazid I blockaded the Christian capital over the course of four years, until the destruction of the Arab fleet in early 678.
In 669, an Umayyad army departed Alexandria. After arriving to Byzantine Sicily, they sacked Syracuse, which remained under Arab occupation for a month.
The Umayyads made further gains in the Levant with the fall of Sebastopolis in Cilicia (692) and Sis (704).
In Africa, the Umayyads launched a new offensive against the Byzantines. Led by Uqba ibn Naffi, Arab forces first besieged and took Saldae (present-day Begis, Algeria) and then Tangis (Tangier, Morocco), On their return to Egypt, however, they were defeated in the Battle of Vescera, in 682, by a coalition of Byzantine and native African forces under Berber king Kusalia. Six years later, Kusalia himself would be killed in action, and his forces defeated in the Battle of Mamma in 688 by Uqbar’s successor Zuhayr, who was in turn killed on his way back to Antaeopolis, which was retaken by the Byzantines.
This didn’t stop the invasions, however, and in 698 the Arabs returned with an army of 40 000 men under Hassan ibn al-Nu'man and attacked the Byzantine stronghold of Carthage, capital of the Exarchate and primatial see of Africa. The combined forces of the Byzantines, their Berber allies and even the Hispanics - send by Wittiza, King of the Visigoths, who anticipated a Muslim invasion - were defeated, and the city was razed to the ground. Most of the decimated Byzantine Army retreated to the Mediterranean islands.
Resistance against the invaders would then fall upon the local Berber tribes. Numidian queen Dihya achieved a victory over Hassan at the Battle of Meskiana (late 698), forcing him to retreat to Antaeopolis. This defeat didn’t prevent the Umayyads from launching attacks elsewhere, and in 700, Arab forces under Musa bin Nusayr attacked Icosium,(near present-day Algiers); he city was completely destroyed, with its inhabitants being either killed or sent to Damascus to be sold as slaves. In 703, another army under Hassan returned to Numidia,, resulting in Dihya being killed in battle while leading the Berbers, along with the remaining Byzantine troops in the region, in a last stand in deserted Thysdrus (present-day El Djem, Tunisia). Constantina, the last Byzantine city in Africa, fell that same year. An isolated Pomaria would be overrun five years later.
After the conquest of North Africa, the Umayyad Caliphate directed its forces towards the Iberian Peninsula, and launched their invasion aided by Julian, Visigothic governor of Ceuta, who was seeking support in the ongoing civil war in the mainland. The Arab army defeated the Visigoths under Roderic I in the Battle of Guadalete (711). Olisipo (present-day Lisbon) and Visigothic capital Toletum fell shortly after, followed by Hispalis (712), Corduba (712), Emerita Augusta (713) and Tarraco (714).
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In 744, Emperor Leo III the Isaurian defeated part of an Umayyad invading force at Akroinon (Phrygia), while the remainder of the Arab army, dedicated to raiding Anatolian towns, was forced to return to the Levant due to hunger and lack of supplies. The Byzantine victory turned the Anatolian campaign into a stalemate for the Arabs, with the Byzantines slowly regaining their lost territories in Asia Minor and the Eastern Mediterranean up to the twelfth century.
Muslim advances into the European mainland, in turn, were halted when the Iberian Christians, which had retreated to the Cantabrian Mountains, were led by Pelagius of Asturias to victory over the invading Umayyads at the Battle of Covadonga, which marked the beginning of the Reconquista. The Arabs succeeded in directing their offensive towards the Pyrenees instead, penetrating into Gaul until suffering a disastrous defeat at the hands of Charles Martel in 732.
The Umayyad Caliphate would eventually suffer from internal turmoil and disintegration. In addition to the first (656 - 661) and second (680 - 692) Muslim civil wars, which temporarily halted expansion into the core of the Byzantine Empire and Africa respectively, a third one broke out in 744, which eventually led to the fall of the Umayyads. When the Abbasids rose to power in 750, they had to face the loss of Muslim Iberia (then turned into an Umayyad rump state) and the western Magrheb (which became the Tlemcen Emirate after a Berber revolt).
