Question

Muslim Arab armies marched north and west from Arabia soon after the death of Muhammad. At the time of their conquest by Arab armies, Palestine and Egypt were __________.

Answer 1

Palestine and Egypt were provinces of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, ruled from the capital at Constantinople. The emperor was Heraclius, who in his youth had been considered a great hero of the empire but by the 630s had been widely discredited by failed religious reforms (monothelitism). The majority of the population of Egypt and Palestine belonged to the monophysite sect of Christianity (which believed that Jesus was a purely divine entity of God and that his body that died on the cross was only a kind of illusion). The official ideology of the Empire was diophysite (Jesus had two forms, one spiritual and one mortal that died on the cross). The Diophysite rulers of the empire cracked down on monophysites from time to time.

An old theory is that the monophysites of Egypt and Palestine detested the empire's diophysite rulers so much that they were eager to rebel and join the Arab Muslims in order to get free of the empire. However, there is virtually no actual evidence for this interpretation. The population of Egypt and Palestine may not have enthusiastically fought for the Empire, but neither did they throw open the gates and join the Arab conquerors in any place.