How Were the Arabs Able to Conquer the Middle East?
When people think of the modern Middle East, most instantly think of the Arabic people and Islam, as the dominant people and religion of the area. This, however, was far from being the case in the pre-Islamic times, as Arabia and the Arabic-speaking tribes, from a purely political point of view, were a constant, but rather insignificant feature of the Antique and Late Antique Middle East.
Rather than the Arabs, it was the Eastern Roman and the Sassanid Empires who dominated the region and were considered the two ancient superpowers of the Middle East. Both these empires had riches and manpower that far exceeded what any Arabic tribal chief could hope to deploy, and used divide and conquer tactics to control the more troublesome elements of their southern neighbours, usually by subsidising Arab chiefs allied to them who policed their southern borders( the Lakhmids did the job for the Sassanids, the Ghassanids did it for the Romans). That’s not to say that the Arabs were completely powerless, but in comparison to the might of Sassanid Persia or the Eastern Roman Empire, even the power of the strongest Arabic rulers looked pale.
This status quo remained constant for centuries, yet out of nowhere, the newly united Arabic tribes poured out of Arabia after the death of the Prophet and in a matter of two decades, conquered the Sassanid…
