History

Histo Video Notes

ry Video Notes

An Empire Across
Three Continents

Class 11ᵗʰ
 THEME II-EMPIRE
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By the 6th century BCE

Iranians - Assyrian empire benefited by trades routes
Greek - Eastern Mediterranean.
Three empires developed in this region:-
Roman Empire City centered
Persian Empire Strong military
Nomadic Empire Control over trade resources
Disintegration - Due to disputes and conflict over resources
DATES AFRICA EUROPE ASIA SOUTH ASIA AMERICAS AUSTRALIA

Bactrian Greeks and Shakas

Spartacus leads revolt ,
Cleopatra, queen of establish
100 BCE -1 CE Building of Colosseum in Han empire in China - -
Egypt (51-30 BCE) kingdoms, Satavahanas in the
Rome
Deccan

Hero of Alexandria
Roman invasion of
1-150 CE leads technological Roman Empire at is peak Establishment of the Kushana - -
Arabia
development

Constantine becomes
Christianity emperor,
technological Establishment of the Gupta City-state of
150 - 400 CE introduced in Axum Roman Empire divided into -
development in China dynasty (320) Mayan empire
(330) eastern and
western halves

Emigration (hijra) of
400 - 700 CE some Muslims to - Umayyad caliphate Chalukya in South India -
Abyssinia (615)

Maori navigator
crowned First city is built in
Rise of kingdom in Abbasid caliphate from Polynesia
700 - 1000 CE Holy Roman Emperor Arabs conquer Sind (712) North America
Ghana established ‘discovers’ New
(800) (c.990)
Zealand

Construction of the
Christian churches cathedral of Notre Dame Genghis Khan
Establishment of Delhi
1000 - 1300 CE established in (1163), Establishment of consolidates power - -
sultanate (1206)
Ethiopia the Hapsburg dynasty in (1206)
Austria

ROMAN EMPIRE Didn’t understand? Watch

the video (Click here)

EUROPE FERTILE CRESCENT NORTH AFRICA

From the 5th century AD, the empire fell apart in the west but remained intact eastern half.

SOURCES

Textual sources Documentary

sources

Material remains

TEXTUAL SOURCES
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Written by contemporaries historians
Annals’, narratives constructed on a year-by-year basis)
letters, speeches, sermons, laws, etc.
MATERIAL REMAINS
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Materials
Buildings
Monuments and structures
Pottery
Coins
Mosaics
Landscapes
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DOCUMENTARY SOURCES the video (Click here) Inscriptions papyri
Inscriptions - usually cut on stone in both Greek and Latin.
Papyrus - was a reed-like plant that grew along the banks of the Nile in Egypt and
was processed to produce a writing material .
Thousands of contracts, accounts, letters and official documents survive ‘on papyrus’.
Papyrologists - People who publish papyrus .

GEOGRAPHY Didn’t understand? Watch

the video (Click here)

River Rhine and Danube

Spain in Europe Syria

Sahara desert.
Two powerful empires ruled over most of Europe,North Africa
and the Middle East in the period between 1ST AD-7TH cent. AD

EUPHRATES
LAND OF
The Roman Empire can broadly be divided into two phases, ROME
EARLY EMPIRE 1ST CENT. AD
IRAN
3RD CENT. AD
NATURE -
LATE EMPIRE 7TH CENT. AD
RIVALRY

EARLY EMPIRE
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ROMAN EMPIRE PERSIAN EMPIRE

culturally diverse,with mosaic of ruled over a uniform population that was
territories largely Iranian.

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Language: the video (Click here) Latin
Greek
Administration → Latin and Greek
UPPER CLASS spoke and wrote → East - Greek
→ West - Latin
Boundary - middle of the Mediterranean.
Between the African provinces of Tripolitania (Latin speaking) and Cyrenaica (Greek-
speaking).
Subjects of a single ruler, the emperor, regardless of where they lived and what
language they spoke.
Political structure: Didn’t understand? Watch
the video (Click here)
Emperor
Source of
Authority

Senate
Body of Wealthy Families

Army
Paid & Professional
Emperor: Didn’t understand? Watch
the video (Click here)

Augustus, the first emperor, in 27 BCE was called the ‘Principate’.(Princeps - Latin) -
means ‘leading citizen’
He was sole ruler and the only real source of authority.
Senate-the Legislative body:
IN REPUBLIC ROME
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Senate - A body representing the aristocracy (landowners) → Rome → Italy.

The Republic → power lay with the Senate.
The Republic lasted from 509 BC to 27 BC,
When it was overthrown by Octavian(Augustus) → the adopted son & heir of Julius
Caesar.
Membership of the Senate was for life, and wealth and office-holding counted for more
than birth
Most of the Roman histories that survive in Greek and Latin were written by people
from a senatorial background.
ARMY Didn’t understand? Watch
the video (Click here)
Paid

Roman Army

Professional
The army was the largest single organised body in the empire (600,000 by the fourth
century) and the fate of emperors.
Soldiers had to give a minimum of 25 years of service.

better wages

service conditions
soldiers agitate

DON’T GIVE UP
felt let down by their generals or the emperor

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EFFECTS OF THE WAR the video (Click here)

Senate hated and feared the army → source of

unpredictable violence, Especially in the third century when
government was forced to tax more heavily to pay for its SUCCESSION FAMILY DESCENT,
mounting military expenditures.
TO THE THORNE

Emperors → his success depended on the control of the

NATURAL ADOPTIVE

army,
EVEN THE ARMY WAS STRONGLY WEDDED TO
THIS PRINCIPLE.
And when the armies were divided → civil war-armed TIBERIUS (14-37 CE), ADOPTIVE SON OF
AUGUSTUS
struggles for power within the same country (69 CE - four
emperors mounted the throne in quick succession,)
 AUGUSTAN AGE Didn’t understand? Watch
the video (Click here)
External warfare was also much less common in the first two centuries.
The empire was so vast that further expansion was felt to be unnecessary this
remembered for the peace.
Major Campaign-Trajan’s fruitless occupation of territory across the Euphrates,
in the years 113-17 CE ,later abandoned by his successors.
THE EMPEROR TRAJAN'S
DREAM - A CONQUEST OF
INDIA?
'Then, after a winter (115/16) in Antioch marked by a great
earthquake, in 116 Trajan marched down the Euphrates to Ctesiphon,
the Parthian capital, and then to the head of the Persian Gulf. There
[the historian] Cassius Dio describes him looking longingly at a
merchant-ship setting off for India, and wishing that he were as = np- nr
young as Alexander.'
FERGUS MILLAR, THE ROMAN NEAR EAST.

ADMINISTRATION
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Roman direct rule - accomplished by absorbing a whole series of ‘dependent’ kingdoms

into Roman provincial territory. The Near East-territories east of the Mediterranean -
chiefly the Roman provinces of Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia, Arabia .
By the early second century-captured areas which lay west of the Euphrates,
Herod’s kingdom-yielded the equivalent of 5.4 million denarii per year, equal to over
125,000 kg of gold
Denarius - was a Roman silver coin containing about 4½ gm of pure silver.
Except Italy, which was not considered a province in these centuries, all the
territories of the empire were organized into provinces and subject to taxation.
In Second century, the Roman Empire at its peak → stretched from Scotland to the
borders of Armenia, and from the Sahara to the Euphrates and sometimes beyond.

URBANIZATION Didn’t understand? Watch

the video (Click here)

Great urban centers → shores of the Mediterranean (Carthage, Alexandria, Antioch

were the biggest among them).
Cities → ‘government’ was able to tax the provincial countrysides.
↓
Local upper classes in administering and collect taxes their own territories at provincial
level. Shift
power
&

Italy → provinces.
Throughout the second and third centuries, Provincial upper classes
1. Supplied most of the cadre that governed the provinces.
2. commanded the armies.
Provincial upper classes (Support of Emperor) >> Senetorial class
The emperor Gallienus (253-68) → excluded senators from military
DO HARDWORK
command.
Cause To prevent control of the empire from falling into the Senetorial hands.

CITY Didn’t understand? Watch

the video (Click here)
City → Administration Officer → Magistrate → City Council-‘Territory’ Containing
Villages.
One city could not be in the territory of another city, but villages almost always were.
imperial favour
VILLAGE CITIES
Advantage of living in a city - better provided for during food shortages and even famines than the countryside.
 DOCTOR GALEN ON HOW ROMAN
CITIES TREATED THE COUNTRYSIDE
City
'The famine prevalent for many successive years in many provinces has
clearly displayed for men of any understanding the effect of
malnutrition in generating illness. The city-dwellers, as it was their
custom to collect and store enough grain for the whole of the next year
immediately after the harvest, carried off all the wheat, barley, beans
and lentils, and left to the peasants various kinds of pulse after taking
quite a large proportion of these to the city. After consuming what was
left in the course of the winter, the country people had to resort to
unhealthy foods in the spring; they ate twigs and shoots of trees and
bushes and bulbs and roots of inedible plants...'
GALEN, ON GOOD AND BAD DIET.

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AMENITIES IN CITIES the video (Click here)

Public Baths- Exclusive feature of Roman urban life.

When one Iranian ruler tried to introduce them into Iran, he encountered the wrath of
the clergy there!
Water was a sacred element and to use it for public bathing may have seemed a
desecration to them.
Amphitheatre- spectacula (shows) filled more than 176 days of the year.
Used for military drill and for staging entertainments for the soldiers.

THE THIRD-CENTURY CRISIS Didn’t understand? Watch

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1st and 2nd centuries - period of peace, prosperity and economic expansion.
From the 230s, the empire found itself fighting on several fronts.
In Iran - ‘Sasanians’ dynasty emerged in 225 , expanding rapidly in the direction of
the Euphrates.
Germanic tribes or rather tribal confederacies like, the Alamanni, the Franks and the
Goths → move against the Rhine and Danube frontiers,
From 233 to 280 saw repeated invasions in provinces that stretched from the Black
Sea to the Alps and southern Germany.
Effects: In a famous rock inscription cut in three
(i) Due to which Romans were forced to abandon languages, Shapur I, the Iranian ruler,
much of the territory beyond the Danube, claimed he had annihilated a Roman army
of 60,000 and even captured the
(ii) The emperors of this period were constantly in eastern capital of Antioch.
the field against what the Romans called ‘barbarians’.
The rapid succession of emperors in the 3rd
century(25 emperors in 47 years!)
SOCIAL LIFE IN ROMAN EMPIRE: GENDER, LITERACY, CULTURE Didn’t understand? Watch
the video (Click here)
Family - nuclear family.
Adult sons did not live with their families, exceptional for adult brothers to share a
common household,
Slaves were included in the family marriage.
Marriage:- By the 1st century BCE,
In marriages the wife did not transfer to Inference - Married couple was not one financial entity but two, where
her husband’s authority but retained full wife enjoyed complete legal independence.
rights in the property of her natal Thus Roman women enjoyed considerable legal rights in owning and
family. managing property.
The woman’s dowry went to the husband
for the duration of the marriage. Divorce was relatively easy and needed
The woman remained a primary heir of no more than a notice of intent to
her father and became an independent dissolve the marriage by either husband
property owner on her father’s death. or wife.
Marriageable age- Males - late twenties
or early thirties
Inference - An age gap between husband and wife , encouraged Women -late teens or early twenties,
a certain inequality. Marriages were generally arranged,
women were often subject to domination
by their husbands.
 Saint Augustine (354-430) was bishop of the North African city of Hippo from
396 and a towering figure in the intellectual history of the Church. Bishops
were the most important religious figures in a Christian community, and
often very powerful.
Augustine, the great Catholic bishop who spent most of his life
in North Africa, tells us that his mother was regularly beaten by 3

his father and that most other wives in the small town where he 2 4
grew up had similar bruises to show! Finally, fathers had substantial legal
control over their children – sometimes to a shocking degree, for example, a legal power of life
and death in exposing unwanted children, by leaving them out in the cold to die.
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LITERACY the video (Click here) 2

Rates of casual literacy → The use of reading and writing in every day, often trivial,
3
contexts → varied greatly between different parts of the empire.
Example:
(i) Pompeii - Buried in a volcanic eruption in 79 CE.
There is strong evidence of widespread casual literacy. Walls on the main streets of
Pompeii often carried advertisements, and graffiti were found all over the city.
(ii) Egypt - Hundreds of papyri survive, most formal documents such as contracts were
usually written by professional scribes, and they often tell us that X or Y is unable to
read and write.
Literacy was widespread among certain categories such as soldiers, army officers and
estate managers.
CULTURE Didn’t understand? Watch
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Diversity of religious cults and local deities.
The plurality of languages that were spoke.
The styles of dress ,costume and food.
Their forms of social organisation (Tribal/Non-tribal).
Their patterns of settlement.
Generally linguistic cultures were purely oral, until a
script was invented for them.
Armenian, - began to be written - fifth century,
Coptic translation of the bible - middle of the third
century.
Elsewhere, the spread of latin displaced celtic which
ceased to be written after the first century.

ECONOMIC EXPANSION
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Economic infrastructure- harbours, mines, quarries, brickyards, olive oil factories, etc.
TRADED AND
WHEAT, WINE
CONSUMED
AND
IN HUGE
OLIVE-OIL
QUANTITIES

SPAIN, THE GALLIC

CONDITIONS WERE
PROVINCES,
BEST FOR THESE
NORTH AFRICA,
CROPS.
EGYPT, ITALY

TRADE
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Liquids - Wine and olive oil were transported in containers.

From various regions:
 Rome - Amphorae (containers), The fragments and sherds of a very large
number of these survive (Monte Testaccio in Rome is said to contain the
remnants of over 50 million vessels!),
Spain - Spanish olive oil, was a vast commercial enterprise in the years 140-160.
The container was called ‘Dressel 20’ (named after the archaeologist who first
established its form).
Dressel 20 - across sites in the Mediterranean, wide circulation of Spanish olive oil.
Spanish producers succeeded in capturing markets for olive oil from their Italian
counterparts.
Cause-Spanish producers supplied a better quality oil at lower prices, the big
landowners from different regions competed with each other for control of the
main markets for the goods they produced
North Africa - Olive estates - dominated production -the 3rd-4th centuries.
West Asia - In the later 5th-6th centuries → the Aegean, southern Asia Minor
(Turkey), Syria and Palestine.
AGRICULTURE Didn’t understand? Watch
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According to writers like Strabo and Pliny:
Areas of exceptional fertility, -Campania in Italy, Sicily,
the Fayum in Egypt, Galilee, Byzacium (Tunisia), southern
Gaul (called Gallia Narbonensis), and Baetica (southern
Spain) were all among the most densely settled or weal
thiest parts of the empire.
Sicily and Byzacium exported large quantities of wheat to Rome.
Galilee was densely cultivated (‘every inch of the soil has been cultivated by the
inhabitants’, wrote the historian Josephus),
Spanish olive oil came mainly from numerous estates (fundi) along the banks of the
river Guadalquivir in the south of Spain.
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PASTORALISM the video (Click here)

Transhumance is the herdsman’s regular annual movement between the higher

mountain regions and lowlying ground in search of pasture for sheep and other flocks.
Transhumance was widespread in the countryside of Numidia (modern Algeria).
These pastoral and semi-nomadic communities were often on the move, carrying their
oven-shaped huts (called mapalia) with them.
Roman estates expansion in North Africa →
(i) the pastures were drastically reduced
(ii) their movements more tightly regulated.
Even in Spain the north was much less developed, and inhabited largely by a Celtic-
speaking peasantry that lived in hilltop villages called castella.

TECHNOLOGY Didn’t understand? Watch

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Areas Around the Mediterranean:

Diversified applications of water power.
Advances in water-powered milling technology.
Spain - The use of hydraulic mining techniques in the Spanish
gold and silver mines and the gigantic industrial scale on which
those mines were worked in the first and second centuries.
Well-organised commercial and banking networks,
Widespread use of money
 SLAVERY the video (Click here)
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Slavery was an institution deeply rooted both in the Mediterranean and in the
Near East.
Slaves were an investment.
One Roman agricultural writer advised landowners against using them in contexts where
too many might be required (for example, for harvests) or where their health could be
damaged (for example, by malaria).
These considerations were not based on any sympathy for the slaves but on hard
economic calculation. Roman upper
classes
BRUTAL
ATTITUDES
TOWARDS
SLAVES Ordinary SHOW
people COMPASSION

As warfare became less widespread with the establishment of peace in the first century,
Result-The supply of slaves tended to decline → the users of slave labour thus had to
turn either to slave breeding or to cheaper substitutes such as wage labour which was
more easily dispensable.
In fact, free labour was extensively used on public works at Rome → because an
extensive use of slave labour would have been too expensive.
↓
Slaves had to be fed and maintained throughout the year, which increased the cost of
holding this kind of labour.
This is probably why slaves are not widely found in the agriculture of the later period, at
least not in the eastern provinces.
Slaves and freedmen(slaves who had been set free by their masters) were extensively
used as business managers,
Masters often gave their slaves or freedmen capital to run businesses on their behalf or
even businesses of their own.
The Roman agricultural writers paid a great deal of attention to the management of
labour.
1. Columella - A first-century writer who came from the south of Spain
Recommended that landowners should keep a reserve stock of implements and tools,
twice as many as they needed, so that production could be continuous, ‘for the loss in
slave labour time exceeds the cost of such items’.
Management of labour. Supervision needed for both free workers and slaves.
To make supervision easier, workers were sometimes grouped into gangs or smaller
teams. Columella recommended squads of ten, claiming it was easier to tell who was
putting in effort and who was not in work groups of this size.
2. Pliny the Elder- The author - ‘Natural History’
Condemned the use of slave gangs as the worst method of organising production, because
slaves who worked in gangs were usually chained together by their feet.
The Elder Pliny described conditions in the frankincense factories (officinae) of
Alexandria, where, he tells us, no amount of supervision seemed to suffice. ‘A seal is put
upon the workmen’s aprons, they have to wear a mask or a net with a close mesh on
their heads, and before they are allowed to leave the premises, they have to take off all
their clothes.’
LABOUR Didn’t understand? Watch
the video (Click here)
Agricultural labour - fatiguing and disliked,
Edict of the early third century refers to Egyptian peasants deserting their villages ‘in
order not to engage in agricultural work’.
Factories and workshops labours - A law of 398 referred to workers being branded so
they could be recognised if and when they run away and try to hide.
 Many private employers cast their agreements with workers in the form of
pH Name of the Fluid pH
debt contracts to be able to claim that their employees were in debt to them
15
and thus ensure tighter control over them. Black Coffee 5

A lot of the poorer families went into debt

3 bondage
Tomatoin order to 4.2
juice survive.
Rural indebtedness was even more widespread;
Lemon juice 2.2
Example:- In the great Jewish revolt of 6610.5
CE the revolutionaries destroyed the
moneylenders’ bonds to win popular support.10 Gastric juice 1.2

Coercion of Labour - The late-fifth-century

7.8
emperor
1 M HCl Anastasius
solution 0built the eastern frontier
city of Dara in less than three weeks by attracting labour from all over the East by
Human blood 7.4 Concentrated HCl -1
offering high wages.
SOCIAL HIERARCHIES Didn’t understand? Watch
Milk 6.8
the video (Click here)

senators
(patres, lit.
‘fathers’);

leading members of
the equestrian class

the respectable section of the

people, attached to the great
houses

lower class (plebs sordida)-were BE PRODUCTIVE!!

addicted to the circus and
theatrical displays;

slaves.

Upper class - In the early 3rd century - Senate numbered roughly 1,000, approx. half
Italian families.
By the late empire → reign of Constantine I ( early part of the fourth century ).
Senators and leading members merged into a unified and expanded aristocracy, →
African or eastern origin.
This aristocracy was enormously wealthy.
But power- aristocracyratic class << military elites (non-aristocratic backgrounds).
Persons of imperial service in prosperous merchants and
‘Middle’ class → the bureaucracy and army + farmers of the eastern provincse
Tacitus described them as clients of the great senatorial houses.
Dependent on → government service and the State
Lower classes → called humiliores (lit. ‘lower’). ,
Comprised of:-
Rural labour force of -employed on the large estates;
Workers in industrial and mining establishments;
Migrant workers
Self-employed artisans
Casual labourers
Slaves - Thosands in number.

Didn’t understand? Watch

MONETARY SYSTEM the video (Click here)

Late empire --Discontinued the silver-based currencies (Denarius) of the early empire.
Because:-
a.the Spanish silver mines were exhausted
b. government ran out of sufficient stocks of the metal to support a
stable coinage in silver.
Constantine founded the new monetary system on Gold(Solidi)which
was in wide circulation throughout late antiquity.
 -CORRUPTION- Didn’t understand? Watch

pH
the video (Click here)

The late Roman bureaucracy → both thepH Name

higher of the
and Fluid echelons → was a
middle
affluent group 15 Black Coffee 5
Because → it drew the bulk of its salary in gold and juice
Tomato invested much of this in buying
3 4.2
up assets like land.
Lemon juice 2.2
Corruption → especially in the judicial system
10.5 and in the administration of military
supplies. 10 Gastric juice 1.2
The extortion of the higher bureaucracy and the greed of the provincial 0
governors
7.8 1 M HCl solution
were proverbial.
Concentrated -1
Humanrepeatedly
But government intervened blood to7.4
curb these forms HClof corruption .
Roman
Milk state - An 6.8
authoritarian regime
Dissent was rarely tolerated and government usually responded to protest with
violence (especially in the cities of the East where people were often fearless in
making fun of emperors).
Emperors’ powers were limited as the law was actively used to protect civil rights.
Powerful bishops like Ambrose to confront equally powerful emperors when they were
excessively harsh or repressive in their handling of the civilian population

LATE ANTIQUITY Didn’t understand? Watch

CHANGES
the video (Click here)

CULTURAL POLITICAL ECONOMIC RELIGIOUS

Cultural Change:- developments in religious life like;

1. The emperor Constantine deciding to make Christianity the official religion.
2.The rise of Islam in the 7th century.
Political Changes:-
1. Diocletian(284-305 AD)- a. Overexpansion had led him to ‘cut back’ by abandoning
territories with little strategic or economic value.
b. Also fortified the frontiers, reorganised provincial boundaries, and separated civilian
from military functions, granting greater autonomy to the military commanders (duces)
which now emerged as powerful group.
2.Constantine(312-37AD) -a. monetary sphere → introduced a new denomination, the
solidus, a coin of 4½ gm of pure gold. Solidi were minted and circulated in large scale.
b. Creation of a second capital at Constantinople (at the site of modern Istanbul in
Turkey, and previously called Byzantium).
As the new capital required a new senate, the fourth century was a period of rapid
expansion of the governing classes.
Features - Monetary stability ,expanding population, economic growth, investment in
rural establishments, including industrial installations like oil presses and glass
factories, in newer technologies such as screw presses and multiple water-mills, and in
a revival of the long-distance trade with the East.
Economic Developments:-
The ruling elites were wealthier and powerful.
Egypt - papyri show us a relatively affluent society where money was in extensive use
and rural estates generated vast incomes in gold.
For example, Egypt contributed taxes of over 2½ million solidi a year (roughly
35,000 lbs of gold) in the reign of Justinian in the sixth century.
Large parts of the Near Eastern countryside were more developed and densely settled
in the fifth and sixth centuries..
Religion Developments:-
Traditional religious culture of the classical world, both Greek and Roman -
polytheist.
Roman/Italian gods like Jupiter, Juno, Minerva and Mars
Greek and eastern deities worshipped in thousands of temples, shrines and sanctuaries
throughout the empire.
Polytheists had no common name or label to describe themselves
Another was Judaism. But Judaism was not a monolith(uniform) and have diversity within
the Jewish communities of late antiquity.
Thus, the ‘Christianisation’ of the empire in the 4th and 5th centuries was a gradual and
complex process.
Polytheism did not disappear overnight. Especially in the western provinces, where the
Christian bishops waged a running battle against beliefs and practices.
The boundaries between religious communities were much more fluid in the fourth
century due to the efforts of religious leaders, the powerful bishops who now led the
Church, to rein in their followers and enforce a more rigid set of beliefs and practices.
Population -
East -Population was increasing till the 6th century, despite the impact of the plague
which affected the Mediterranean in the 540s.
West- The empire fragmented politically as Germanic groups from the North (Goths,
Vandals, Lombards, etc.) took over all the major provinces and established kingdoms that
are best described as ‘post-Roman’.
The Visigoths in Spain, destroyed by the Arabs between 711 and 720.
The Franks in Gaul (c.511-687) the Lombards in Italy (568-774). beginnings of a different
kind of world that is usually called ‘medieval’.
In the East-the empire remained united and the reign of Justinian is the highwater mark
of prosperity and imperial ambition.
TOWARDS A NEW POWER Didn’t understand? Watch
the video (Click here)
Challenges ahead:-
Justinian - Recaptured Africa from the Vandals (in 533) but his recovery of Italy
(from the Ostrogoths) left that country devastated and paved the way for the
Lombard invasion.
War between Rome and Iran- By the early 7th century, the Sasanians launched a
wholesale invasion of all the major eastern provinces (including Egypt).
Byzantium, recovered these provinces in the 620s,But the final major blow came
from the south-east.
Expansion of Islam - By 642, barely ten years after the Prophet Muhammad’s death,
large parts of both the eastern Roman and Sasanian empires had fallen to the Arabs
in a series of war.
Conquest of Spain, Sind and Central Asia,- began in fact with the subjection of the
Arab tribes by the emerging Islamic state, first within Arabia and then in the Syrian
desert and on the fringes of Iraq.

ASIA MAP
WEST