[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by Skybird;1497321[U

630[/U] Two years before Muhammad's death of a fever, he launches the Tabuk Crusades, in which he led 30,000 jihadists against the Byzantine Christians. He had heard a report that a huge army had amassed to attack Arabia, but the report turned out to be a false rumor. The Byzantine army never materialized. He turned around and went home, but not before extracting 'agreements' from northern tribes. They could enjoy the 'privilege' of living under Islamic 'protection' (read: not be attacked by Islam), if they paid a tax (jizya).
This tax sets the stage for Muhammad's and the later Caliphs' policies. If the attacked city or region did not want to convert to Islam, then they paid a jizya tax. If they converted, then they paid a zakat tax. Either way, money flowed back to the Islamic treasury in Arabia or to the local Muslim governor.

So I was correct... Muhammad never launched any military campaigns on non-Muslims precisely because they were not Muslims. The brief affair known as the Tabuk "Crusades" amounted to the Byzantines and Arabic peoples threatening one another with imposed warning acts hinting to possible future hostilities- such fighting never materializing under Muhammad, of course. Yuhanna Ru’ba, governor of Aylah, called upon Muhammad at Tabuk, and he made a treaty of peace with the proclaimed prophet, paying the Jizyah tributary funds for the commotion caused. So did the people of Jarba and Adhruh, and they were all granted peace under Muhammad as well as guaranteed safety of their territory and their ships and caravans by land and sea transversing the Arabic peninsula which Muhammad had since taken from the hostile confederate tribes. The treaties were written by Muhammad and Yuhanna, and they were delivered to the respective parties. Yuhanna was received by Muhammad for his contributions cordially and was given due respect.

The armies never met and fought each other.

There was no major talk of these events between the Byzantines. Muhammad saw that there was no movement of troops by the enemy who seemed to have abandoned the border towns, and so he gave orders for his army of 40,000 men (30,000 infantry supported with 10,000 cavalry) to march home. Only a Christian tribal chief, Ukaydir Abdul Malik, who was the ruler of Dumatul Jandal and enjoyed the patronage of the Byzantines, was reported to be harboring hostile designs against Muhammad due to anti-Meccan sentiments. Muhammad sent a confidant, Khalid, with 500 troops to captured Ukaydir so that he might be brought to Muhammad to explain his actions. Muhammad spared Ukaydir's life on the condition that he surrender unconditionally and would pay the Jizyah for his hostility.

In consequence of all these events, many tribes of the region agreed openly to join Muhammad- abandoning the Byzantines and consequently enlarging the existing Islamic state. The rest of what you have posted there has no relevance whatsoever to Muhammad's life, nor the supposed militaristic action you imply he carried out on the "nonbelievers".

Originally Posted by Skybird

I also want to remind you that Muhammad in the last decade of his life has orderd and led roughly 70 predatory raids and wars and punishing expeditions against other tribes that had not already converted to Muhammad's ideology and claim for power, or who threatened or were in danger to become apostates again, refusing to pay the protection money and to follow Muhammad.

The raids you speak of were over trade goods and resources. This is nothing new or uncommon to the old nomadic Arab tribes of the region- simply because so many vital assets like food and water are scarce there and always have been. Actually, it's because of these raids over these resources that Muhammad came to own Medina (and later Mecca), for at Badr, almost all the Quraysh leaders had been killed or had disappeared into the desert and were never seen again (this same clan owned Mecca). Similarly, this was done with at Banu Qaynuqa, which was one of the most powerful strongholds for goods in the region, Thi Amr, Bahran, Uhud, al-Asad, Banu Nadir, and Nakhla. The Battle of the Trench was a siege the aforementioned confederate tribes launched at Medina- which ended in a great victory for the Muslims there. The few other battles Muhammad fought in or presided over were between the remnants of the Quraysh, Bedouins, Jewish nomadic tribes (Khaybar), and remaining Arabic confederate tribes (as was the case with Ta'if and Autas) in the region who were never friendly towards the Meccans- let alone Muhammad who owned the city.

The claim that there were a total of 70 raids and wars he led is a remarkably unfounded one- let alone that he led them solely based upon the issue of religion.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Muhammad's late life also already saw direct clashes with troops of the Bycantine empire -

There were no "direct clashes" as you put it between Muhammad's forces and the Byzantine Empire in his lifetime. The closest the two sides ever came to fighting was at Tabuk. It's called a crusade, yet it involved forces that were hardly suited for the times for a single battle and nobody died in it. The first time Arabs and Byzantines fought one another was in 674 AD, not over religion- but over weapons and food trade routes. The families in the region rejected the notion that Byzantine caravans should be allowed to pass through without having to pay taxes. The first actual war between Muslims and the Byzantines came in 820 following Michael II's rejection of the Abbasid Caliphate's border settlement plans over the Anatolian Peninsula.

Originally Posted by Skybird

and it was not the Bycantines invading the Arabab peninsula, but Muhammed's "movement" reaching out at all directions.

It's kind of hard for a 188-year-old corpse to launch... well, anything, really, let alone a war. You've evidently forgotten, too, that the Byzantines did not become such a well-known empire in history because of their usage of peaceful methods. They conquered and killed for land like everybody else did.



They were pushing into the Arabian peninsula and had been doing so since Justinian's time, indeed continuing throughout the remainder of the 6th century. Not only had they done it to the Arabs, but they were also doing it in Africa and Europe.