630-649 Moslems Conquer Eastern Christian Lands

In this twenty year period the Arabs -- united by the new Moslem faith -- easily conquered all of the former Christian lands that had been torn asunder by Christian theological arguments.

In 630 Mohammed entered Mecca with an army of Bedouin followers and with so many disgruntled and alienated and persecuted people of all faiths in the old roman provinces, they were happy to accept a new religion and a new leader.

In 632 Mohammed died in Medina and, like the early Christians, his followers took up the cause with increased fervour.

The Moslem Arabs took Syria, Palestine and Persia in 637; captured Jerusalem in 638; Egypt in 641; and then took Africa and the Spanish enclave. The Arabs also penetrated central Asia to the frontier of India and China

The Islamic world was governed by the Ummayad caliphs with their capital at Damascus, and all that was left of the former eastern empire was an area around Constantinople, exclusively Greek, which had by then reverted to its former Greek name -- Byzantium -- and became known as the Byzantium Empire..

The Islamic invasions aided the Lombards in Italy who, in 643, under King Rothari took over the empire's remaining strongholds in Italy.

Although theological arguments had dogged the Christian church since its inception, Pope Honorius I (625-638) was responsible for the latest controversy over Monothelitism -- the belief that Christ did not possess simultaneously a divine will and a human will, but only one that he exercised through both his divine and human natures.