Christianity Face to Face with Islam

ROBERT LOUIS WILKEN

No event during the first millennium was more unexpected, more calamitous, and more consequential for Christianity than the rise of Islam.

Few irruptions in history have transformed societies so completely and irrevocably as did the conquest and expansion of the Arabs in the seventh century. And none came with greater swiftness. Within a decade three major cities in the Byzantine Christian Empire -- Damascus in 635, Jerusalem in 638, and Alexandria in 641 -- fell to the invaders.

When reports began to circulate that something unusual was happening in the Arabian Peninsula, the Byzantines were preoccupied with the Sassanians in Persia who had sacked Jerusalem in 614 and made off with the relic of the True Cross. And in the West they were menaced by the Avars, a Mongolian people who had moved into the Balkans and were threatening Constantinople. Rumors about the emergence of a powerful leader among the Arabs in the distant Hijaz seemed no cause for alarm. the rest