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Muhammed
and Islam
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Page 16
As early as the fifties of the seventh century, in the time of Constans II, the Arabian vessels of Muawiya began their attacks upon Byzantine districts and occupied the important maritime center, the island of Cyprus. Near the coast of Asia Minor they defeated the Byzantine fleet commanded by the Emperor himself, seized the island of Rhodes, destroying there the famous Colossus of Rhodes, and reached as far as Crete and Sicily, menacing the Aegean Sea and apparently heading for the capital of the Empire. The captives taken during these expeditions, particularly those of Sicily, were transported to the Arabian city of Damascus.
The Arabian conquests of the seventh century deprived the Byzantine Empire of its eastern and southern provinces and caused it to lose its important place as the most powerful state in the world. Territorially reduced, the Byzantine Empire became a state with a predominating Greek population, though not so completely as is believed by some scholars. The districts where the Greeks were in the great majority were Asia Minor with the neighboring islands of the Aegean Sea, and Constantinople with its adjoining province. By this time the Balkan peninsula in general, including the Peloponnesus, had changed considerably in its ethnographic composition because of the appearance of large Slavonic settlements. In the West the Byzantine Empire still possessed the separated parts of Italy which were not included in the Lombard kingdom, namely, the southern portion of Italy with Sicily and several other neighboring islands of the Mediterranean Sea, Rome, and the exarchate of Ravenna. The Greek population, which centered primarily in the southern portion of these Byzantine possessions in Italy, increased very greatly in the seventh century, when Italy became the refuge for many inhabitants of Egypt and North Africa who did not wish to become subjects of the Arabian conquerors. It may be said that the Roman Empire was at this period transformed into a Byzantine Empire whose problems became narrower and lost their former sweeping nature. Some historians, for instance, Gelzer, think that the heavy territorial losses were indirectly even beneficial for the Byzantine Empire because they removed the foreign national elements, while the population of Asia Minor and those parts of the Balkan peninsula which still recognized the authority of the Emperor, formed, by language and faith, a perfectly homogeneous and solidly loyal mass. From the middle of the seventh century the attention of the Empire had to be directed chiefly to Constantinople, Asia Minor, and the Balkan peninsula. But even these diminished possessions were constantly threatened by the Lombards, Slavs, Bulgarians, and Arabs. L. Brehier wrote that this period initiated for Constantinople that historical role of perpetual defense which lasted until the fifteenth century with alternate periods of contraction and expansion.
A History of the Byzantine Empire - Table of Contents
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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/muhammed-islam.asp?pg=16
