Arab conquests

The early Muslim conquests or early Islamic conquests (Arabic: الْفُتُوحَاتُ الإسْلَامِيَّة, romanized: al-Futūḥāt al-ʾIslāmiyya), also known as the Arab conquests, were a series of religious wars initiated by Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and continued by the early Muslims. In 622, he established the first Islamic state at Medina in Arabia, from where Muslim armies expanded rapidly under the succeeding Rashidun Caliphate and then the Umayyad Caliphate, culminating in Islamic law being extended throughout most of West Asia and North Africa, parts of South Asia and Central Asia, and parts of over the following century. According to Scottish historian James Buchan: "In speed and extent, the first Arab conquests were matched only by those of Alexander the Great, and they were more lasting." At the height of the expansion, Muslim-ruled territory under the caliphates is estimated to have covered 13,000,000 square kilometres (5,000,000 sq mi), stretching from the Indian subcontinent (at Sind) in the east to the Iberian Peninsula (at the Pyrenees) in the west.