how bloody where the early Muslim conquests?

by dirtyoldmikegza

I have always understood that during the early Muslim expansion there was quite a bit of "conversion by the sword" is this true? and put in context of the times was this particularly brutal? or simply more brutality in a brutal age?

sunagainstgold

"Muslim conquests" in the early Middle Ages typically refers to the 7th, maybe into early 8th century military expansion under armies headed by usually-Arab Muslims, across the Near East, North Africa/Mediterranean islands, and into Iberia. This was absolutely military conquest, featuring armies headed by generals that absolutely fought pitched battles against resistance, so there is bloodshed from that end. How much, it is impossible to say, since our sources for any of these battles date from centuries after the fact. (The seventh century in the west is, in general, a very very bleak era in terms of contemporary sources.)

However, one thing is clear: these initial conquerors were interested in territory to rule, NOT in converting its inhabitants--by force or by evangelization. Under the later 'Abbasid caliphate, we do see some very localized attempts at forced conversion in the Near East, although in the most notorious cases there, it is not the 'Abbasid-affiliated local governor responsible but rather a splinter group who often gets suppressed later. True, official forced mass conversion to Islam is usually associated with the Almoravids and Almohads in high medieval Iberia, centuries later. Some Jews did convert, but most simply fled to Christian Iberia (which at the time was offering them quite favorable terms, including the nearly-unheard-of-for-Jews-in-Christian-territory ability to own land) or east across North Africa to the more tolerant Fatimid lands.