These were vassal states

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jul 3, 2020 at 09:01

You wrote:

>So it appears that these nomadic tribes were powerful enough to sometimes challenge the major powers such as Assyria and Babylonia for a brief period.

True, even the Sassanian empire was the subject of many raids by the Arab tribes in Mesopotamia and this is the source of the Aramaic word for Arabs: Sarqaya (those that steal) However, the so called Arab polity was no more than vassals to either the Romans, the Greeks or the Sassanids. In other words: pay tribute and stay safe.

The year 622 AD (the so called the year of Muhammad's Hijra) is called in extant Syriac texts: The year of the Kings of the Arabs. Why? well, the Greeks won major battles in Upper Mesopotamia in their long and expensive war with Persia. A political vacuum was created and the Arab polity took over. Or as the Islamic tradition tells us it was the leadership of Muhammad who told his followers to go and fight the Greeks so they can get booty and Banat al-Asfar (capture blond women) and the rest is history.

More? There is evidence that Mu'awiyya expected to pay tributes to the emperor in Constantinople! Go figure!

Why were Arab invasions starting in 633 AD so successful? As per Patricia Crone and I'm paraphrasing here: The God of Muhammad as well as Muhammad told his followers that they should invade and loot. and it worked and the converts to Islam loved it as they were able to loot the properties on their own people in the name of an Arabian deity!

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