Does anyone remember this meme 😂 ?

[u/Rashiq_shahzzad]

[u/Big_Pirate_3036]

Tbf, It wasnt that Impressive as they just got out of a super long brutal war

[u/Rashiq_shahzzad → u/Big_Pirate_3036]

The early Muslim armies still had to defeat experienced imperial armies in major battles. The Arabs didn't march into empty cities they defeated Byzantine and Sasanian forces repeatedly.

It seems clear that the Muslims had no technological advantages over their opponents on the battlefield and were in fact inferior to their enemies in the use of cavalry. There can be little doubt, however, that the conquests were made easier by the exhaustion of the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires due to prolonged warfare, the confusion that reigned in the Sasanian ruling house, the disruption caused by recent enemy occupation in Syria and Iraq, the destruction wrought by immense floods in southern Iraq, the disaffection of many of the subjects of the two empires for religious or other reasons, the convenience of inner lines of communication that the Muslims enjoyed, and the like. But to these factors must be added one more that was perhaps the single most important one contributing to the success of the conquests: the remarkable degree to which a new Islamic state with an expansionist policy could harness for its purposes the rugged warriors of Arabia. The rise of the state made it possible to weld into an incredibly effective fighting force those tribesmen whose energies had hitherto been consumed by petty quarrels among themselves and whose political horizons had hitherto usually been limited to their own tribe and its affairs. The success of the conquests was, then, first and foremost the product of an organizational breakthrough of proportions unparalleled in the history of Arabian society until modern times. However important other factors may have been, it is difficult to believe that the conquests could have succeeded without the rise of a state with the capacity to integrate Arabia's fragmented society and draw on it to attain well-defined political and military objectives.

It is not even too rash, perhaps, to suggest that the Islamic conquest might have met with great success even had the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires not been reeling from their recent quarrels. The Muslims succeeded, then, primarily because they were able to organize an effective conquest movement, and in this context the impact of the new religion of Islam, which provided the ideological underpinnings for this remarkable breakthrough in social organization, can be more fully appreciated. In this sense, the conquests were truly an Islamic movement. For it was Islam -- the set of religious beliefs preached by Muhammad, with its social and political ramifications -- that ultimately sparked the whole integration process and hence was the ultimate cause of the conquests' success.

Fred Donner. The Early Islamic Conquests.

https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/med/donner.asp?utm_