The Early Islamic Conquests

Within a century of the Prophet's death, the Muslim community expanded from the Arabian Peninsula into one of the largest empires the world had yet seen — reaching the Atlantic in the west and the Indus in the east. This astonishing expansion was the work of a generation of gifted commanders and the caliphs who directed them, who carried the new faith and its administration across three continents.

This collection brings together the great commanders of the early conquests — Khalid ibn al-Walid, whose generalship secured Syria and Iraq; Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, victor over the Sasanian Persians; Uqba ibn Nafi, who drove across North Africa to the Atlantic; Tariq ibn Ziyad and Musa ibn Nusayr, who opened al-Andalus; and Muhammad ibn al-Qasim, who reached Sindh — alongside the decisive battles and the Umayyad caliph al-Walid I under whom the empire reached its greatest extent.

Together these lives and events tell the story of how a local community in Arabia became a world civilization, and of the military, administrative, and human dimensions of one of history's most consequential expansions.