HIS 1019 History of the Medieval Middle East
In the year 500 C.E., the Middle East was divided between two great empires, the Byzantine and the Persian. The Arabs were nomads and traders living in the Arabian peninsula and Syria, with no strong state of their own. But by 650, the Arabs would crush Persia and occupy Byzantine lands, uniting the long-divided Middle East in their new empire. Arabs and converts to their new religion, Islam, laid the foundations of a new society and culture, centered at the juncture of the Asian, African and European continents and spreading eastward to India and westward to Spain. In the early 1500s, Islamic society would produce two new empires: that of the Ottoman Turks who conquered Byzantium, and that of the Safavids, who resurrected in Islamic form the ancient Persian empire.