Talk:Muslim conquest of Syria
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| On 21 December 2025, it was proposed that this article be moved from Muslim conquest of the Levant to Muslim conquest of Syria. The result of the discussion was moved. |
Use of Islamic tradition vis a vis contemporary non-Muslim accounts of the invasion
[edit]Per WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE, I believe that as of now, this article gives disproportionate undue weight to narratives and events of the later Islamic chronicles events though they are worth the same or less historical value as the Christian sources of the time, such as the sermons of Sophronius, letters between local religious leaders and the such. The editors are also being extreme resistant to the addition of such perspectives.
A glaring examples of this will be the instructions given by Abu Bakr to Yazid before he went on his campaign. Aside from it not being found in the earliest epistles and first appearing (to my knowledge) in the Muwatta of Malik Ibn Anas, it is dumped without question and without any historical contextualisation and analysis by secondary scholars, presenting the Arab invaders in an extremely positive light. Not only is it a violation of the very principles that the editors here believe that the Christian accounts should be excluded for (WP:RSUW, WP:PRIMARY), it is also a blatant violation of WP:NPOV should this stay up yet the Christian accounts are excluded.
Additionally. academic trends in early Islamic historiography, as noted by research fellow Dr Joshua Little [1] in his survey of recent modern works of Islamic history, more credence is given to the non-Muslim and Proto-Muslim sources of the time rather than later Islamic chronicles. Excluding these sources puts the article out of line with the current trends in Academia.
In an effort to improve the neutrality of the article, my opinion is to incorporate the non-Muslim accounts, not as concrete historical fact but as "perspectives," with clear attribution and scholarly context, rather than excluding them entirely. This would reflect the debate more accurately and align with Wikipedia’s core content policies.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yusufalhindi (talk • contribs) 06:28, 11 August 2025 (UTC)
02:47, 10 August 2025 (UTC)02:47, 10 August 2025 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yusufalhindi (talk • contribs)
References
- ↑ Little, Joshua, The New Historiography of Islamic Origins: A Review of Some Recent Trends in the Field, retrieved 21 October 2022
Christian views on the invasions?
[edit]This article seems to rely quite heavily on Islamicist views and Arab sources, I'd like to include a section regarding Christian views of the invasion from Syriac sources to balance it out —Preceding--Mondo Libero (talk) 20:00, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the article is written entirely from the Muslim perspective, and using Muslim sources.
There are a series of Byzantine and Armenian sources available however : these should be used, but it constitutes a very important effort.
Also, they would stand out in what is, right now, a coherent rendition of the classical Muslim historiography (Baladhuri, Wakidi, Tabari etc) which has only one problem: being written about 150 years after the event, and being rich in details which are, most likely, imaginary.Giordaano (talk) 13:57, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
- if any one can add stuff from armenian and byzantine source then its great ...
i my self have read some of the pieces from an armenian source written during 634, and amazingly it mentioned the same date for battle of yarmouk as mentioned by other tabari who compiled his work 159 years later ! even the sive of byzantine army was same.
- Any ways, i would like to add some thing which is, that most of the historians and readers around the world actually do a common mistake when doing assesment of muslim sources, they apparaently think that they were written after 150 years of the actual events (like that of mecedonian sources for alexander the great). Actually they were compiled after 150 years of the events. They were present in the form of written narrations in the official and military manuals of governments and educational institutes. Arabs had two ways for remembering their history even from pre islamic times, the oral and written. actually the oral way of transmitting the narration was based on the written documents.
الله أكبرMohammad Adil 15:55, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
- Except that Alexander's military expedition has swaths of archeological evidence that supports (or disapproves) the historical accounts. The problem lies with the volumes and volumes of extremely detailed writings that appeared in last quarter of the 8th century after the Abbasid rebellion, all from Central Asia. You can make a strong argument that most of what we have in terms of sources is Abbasid revisionist literature/propaganda. 2601:249:8200:71A0:7971:DF16:16D8:3D4F (talk) 20:10, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
- That is totally not true. There is not archaeological evidence to support alexanders campaigns (not saying that they are untrue). But to this day, we cannot even pinpoint the exact location of any of his battles with remains of battles. So i dont know what "swathes" of archaeologival evidence you are talking abaout. There is obviously coinage, busts of alexander and a few inscriptions, most of which were made after his death. So you end up with the exact same situation as in the arab-islamic conquest of the levant - we can only rely on historical, written sources as you cannot prove with the little archeological evidence there is the narrative as presented by Arrian, diodorus Siculus and the likes.
- You can point to archeological evidence of a greek colony founded in afghanistan in the 3rd century bc. You can also point to numerous arab-islamic colonies founded in the 7th centuries in the middle east, north africa, south asia etc. that has nothing to do with the veracity of the historical accounts. All surviving sources for alexander the great were written more than a century after his death, and they are extremely detailed aswell, so you can use the exact same arguments for the reliability for that as you can for the abbassid era historians who wrote about the islamic conquests 80.208.69.76 (talk) 20:33, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
- Arrian's accounts of the siege of Tyre for example were in fact validated later on. Boring logs conducted in 2007 even confirmed the construction of the causeway connecting the land to the Island in detail (link). Maybe Arrian's account of Alexander's speech during to the siege is not accurate, but stating that there is no amount of archeological evidence to prove Alexander's military campaign is something not true. Also, Alexander's character did not appear out nowhere when Arrian decided to write about him. Arrian did not adopt a Greek identity that we knew nothing about in order to write about Alexander, and so forth. So no, you cannot use the same arguments, you need to read more. 67.165.188.135 (talk) 20:17, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
- The extent to which the hyper-realism of the modern sensibility can lead is ever surprising. A previous comment called the details 'imaginary', which at least has the virtue of not being too strange, given the importance of the era in the cultural narrative and the propensity to dramatise it.
- The Islamic literature in question is as mentioned by another here a compilation of information that include deeds and records of fighters, as well Hadith-tradition, both of which are difficult to get away with falsifying given the financial interest of the former and the legal and theological implications involved in the latter. It further includes disputed and contradictory narratives when the compilor has found such (in fact many modern academic interrogations of the authenticity of narratives and even scripture are based on what western scholars have read in Islamic compilations. See Nöldeke).
- Furthermore, any potential Abbasid or Umayyad propaganda should, and did, go to matters of justifying their rule of Muslims and to them. (It is quite self-centric to assume any seemingly honest, humane or otherwise non-corrupt historical depiction had tricking you in mind). Such is the manaqib/merits literature, meant to defend certain critical figures whose actions were highly questionable, e.g. the first Umayyad kings. In this case, the time is rather removed from disputes of the right to the Caliphate. So there doesn't seem to any particularly Abbasid interest in influencing these narratives. If they had been modern-smart like goodest politicians they might have at least crossed out Yazid's name from the witness list Omar's treaty is supposed to have contained.
- Furthe points made-though irrelevant: the location of "Central Asia", was simply the scientific centers of the time, during a golden age of scholarly activity and, different and just as critically, scribal production; as to the amount of specifically historiographical work of the era, it was the trend_ hadith authentication sciences had reached maturity, and there was a move to better them by studying the larger historical context and placing the people in the chains within it, plus they were experimenting with carrying over their methods of authentication to the field of general history. (See Enc. Of Islam ✓Tabari) 109.43.113.194 (talk) 12:46, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
- Even when rigor is applied, it all boils down Malik Ibn Anas (fictional character). Sanad is typically authenticated by comparing it to another sanad, the more variance within a set of references, the more authentic all of them are (very robust scientific method as you mentioned). That's why they needed to batch all these ridiculous linear oral references (thru عنعنة, another scientific marvel). Im sorry, its all made up. All of it. The fact that Tabari is brought up in this really made me laugh (اختلف اهل التحريف في تحريف ذلك).Cheers. 2601:249:8200:71A0:595E:18B:BE76:8BA2 (talk) 05:30, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
- Yet you all reject Christian sources dating from around that time? Does WP:NPOV and WP:RSUW not matter to you? Yusufalhindi (talk) 13:46, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
Has any effort been made towards showing the Christian POV of this invasion ? The only info we have now is from the Muslim pov [ick, as far as non bias goes]. 107.222.205.242 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:08, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Requested move
[edit]- The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the move request was: consensus against — ækTalk 06:19, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
{{movereq}}
Muslim conquest of Syria → Rashidun conquest of Syria — It was not "muslim conquests", they were conquests under the Rashidun caliphate. Recently, consensus has agreed to this term, see the recent change from Muslim conquest of Persia to Rashidun conquest of Persia. warrior4321 23:28, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
- Arab conquest of Armenia → Rashidun conquest of Armenia
- Muslim conquest of Egypt → Rashidun conquest of Egypt
- Very strongly oppose Rashidun is not idiomatic, and is tendentious; our article titles are not intended to ratify anyone's view of the contending sides, but to be what English calls the subject of the article. While we're about it, move back to Muslim conquest of Persia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:52, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
- I see no problem in moving it to rashidun conquest, as muslim may refer to any muslim empire and at first thought reader may think which muslims ???? the answer must be clear i.e Rashidun Caliphate.
الله أكبرMohammad Adil 09:42, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
- I agree with Septenrionalis on both counts. ÷seresin 08:37, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
- I oppose for the reason that Rashidun doesn't mean a thing to most readers while Muslim on the other hand does ring a bell. That is important for non-muslim readers. Wereldburger758 (talk) 09:13, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Rashidun is likely more academically correct, in that it adds an appropriate time dimension to the name, but common usage (WP:COMMONNAME) is the current format. --Labattblueboy (talk) 22:44, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
Regarding those atrocities.
[edit]@Yujoong I have noticed that you decided to remove a section on atrocities which cited a source from Hoyland’s work, calling it unreliable and not neutral.
Yet a Hadith bearing a similar nature, just from the Islamic side, remains up, don’t you think both perspectives need to be mentioned? Sources of the period are rarely non-biased. Yusufalhindi (talk) 13:38, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- @YujoongRefer to the above talk on the Christian perspective. Don’t you think we should include some of it as a part of WP:NPOV? Yusufalhindi (talk) 13:41, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- Nevermind, guess I can’t include those sources after all because editors here apparently can’t tell that the Hadith is also regarded by historians as unreliable and is instead more akin to theological and moral writings rather than actual historical records. (Refer to Dr Joshua Little, Dr Javad Hashimi and basically most secular academics in the field.)
- I am done. Don’t reply to this @Yujoong Yusufalhindi (talk) 01:17, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- My removal wasn't due to the source’s Christian perspective, but because it was an "overly emotive, first-person account" presented under "Atrocities" without contextualization or corroborating scholarship.
- Per WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE, and WP:PRIMARY, a "single eyewitness" account, especially with vivid language, shouldn’t be given that much prominence without reliable secondary analysis to assess its weight and reliability. The same standard applies to comparable material from any perspective. Selenne (talk) 01:55, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- Well according to another person any primary source is problematic, despite me literally offering to provide context and analysis by the academic who compiled them. Yusufalhindi (talk) 04:38, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- You can refer to the newest topic of the talk section of @Skitash. Yusufalhindi (talk) 04:42, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- For some reason the wrong person was tagged, the guy that made the latest edit. Yusufalhindi (talk) 04:43, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- Finally, if the problem is the Christian account being a single primary-source narrative(it isn’t, Hotland mentions 3 or 4 sermons and accounts of a similar nature, the same would apply to the so-called “parting words of Abu Bakr,” which is also a single originating narration repeated in different early Islamic histories. Unless there’s a modern scholarly work contextualising it and giving corroborating evidence outside of that narration, both fall under the same WP:PRIMARY limitation. Keeping one while removing the other risks creating a WP:NPOV imbalance. Yusufalhindi (talk) 04:48, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- The “parting words of Abu Bakr” or "Abu Bakr's instructions" are likewise not from a single primary-source narrative, but are independently attested by al-Azdi, al-Waqidi, and Ibn al-Athir. Even if the Christian account has 3–4 similar sermons as noted by Hotland, these are variations on "one originating tradition", whereas Abu Bakr’s words come through "multiple independent" historical lines, giving them greater weight. Selenne (talk) 11:20, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- Cite me all the Isnaads. Usually different chronicles and different Hadith collections will cite the same Isnaad. In such a case it is just them repeating the same thing and not actually being independent. Especially since all those historians lived at least over a century after the events. (Ibn Al Athir, assuming you meant the one from Iraq, was born 500 years after the events).
- Besides, those sermons and traditions, as noted by Hoyland, aren’t a singular “tradition”, they are multiple eyewitness accounts of the giving their accounts of the invasion. Hoyland himself stated in his book.
- You are making a false equivalence. The instructions of Abu Bakr is relaying a message, whilst the Christian accounts are individual eyewitness testimonies.
- Reiterating my former comment, should you think that the Hadith of Abu Bakr, which exists only in collections over hundred years later, is somehow more reliable than Christian accounts derived from a host of literary sources, then you are blatantly violating WP:NPOV. Yusufalhindi (talk) 11:33, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- TL:DRA. Unless you can show that there are multiple different Isnaads that reliable, then the Hadith is as reliable historically (since historians don’t trust the Isnaad as well) as the Christian accounts. Even if it is, the fact that many scholars still saw the accounts are credible shows that academically, it is reliable as a primary source and the matter is no longer reliability but how one presented it. Yusufalhindi (talk) 11:37, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- How one presents it* Yusufalhindi (talk) 11:38, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- TL:DRA. Unless you can show that there are multiple different Isnaads that reliable, then the Hadith is as reliable historically (since historians don’t trust the Isnaad as well) as the Christian accounts. Even if it is, the fact that many scholars still saw the accounts are credible shows that academically, it is reliable as a primary source and the matter is no longer reliability but how one presented it. Yusufalhindi (talk) 11:37, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- I have checked the 3 scholars you cited:
- 1. Al Azdi’s work definitely wasn’t an independent source, the book itself contains chains that include the supposed author in the middle of the chain (none for the instructions), so the book is itself not written by him and current scholars date the first attributions of his work in the 4th-5th century which was about 100 to 200 years after he died.
- 2. Al Waqidi’s Futuh Al Sham is considered by historians (for quick reference, refer to Al Waqidi’s own Wikipedia page) to be a later work written during the Crusades and then falsely attributed to him with only a small portion possibly traceable back to the actual person. He was also hated by the Islamic scholars of his time and the generation after him.
- 3. Ibn Al Atir live 500 years after the events. Whatever he writes cannot be original or independent.
- The only source that may be deemed to be an original source is Al Malik’s Muwatta, the issue is, skepticism of Hadith aside, the Isnaad ends with someone who didn’t even meet Abu Bakr.
- All in all, it is as reliable if not more unreliable than those Christian accounts. Yusufalhindi (talk) 14:04, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- Malik’s Muwatta* Yusufalhindi (talk) 14:06, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- To clarify: al-Azdi, al-Waqidi, and Ibn al-Athir are all recognized by historians as "important sources", even if debated, and Wikipedia reflects this scholarly consensus rather than dismissing them outright.
- Per WP:PRIMARY and WP:V, editors must follow what reliable secondary sources say about narrations rather than undertake original isnad analysis, which is "outside" Wikipedia’s scope. Both the Islamic and Christian accounts have their scholarly "limitations", including questions of transmission and literary style.
- Most importantly, the content in the "Atrocities" section gave undue weight to a contested narrative, which violates WP:UNDUE. It "lacks" broad support among mainstream historians and is not grounded in a wide scholarly consensus. Presenting it prominently without adequate context or reference to opposing views risks overstating its acceptance and misleading readers. Selenne (talk) 20:37, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- Did I ever state that I meant to present them openly as “atrocities”? I meant to present them as merely “perspectives”.
- Also, you are clearly not aware of current trends in early Islamic historiography, secular academics, as indicated by Dr Little on his Islamic origins blog, have begun taking contemporary non-Muslim accounts of the time over the Muslim tradition in their recent works. There has been a growing and general skepticism with the Islamic tradition.
- Also, scholarly consensus that Al Waqidi and Al Azdi are reliable historians? Are you being serious? Many scholars, both Islamic and non-Islamic, regard Al Waqidi as unreliable, historians don’t really know much about Al Azdi and many believe that he is unreliable or that his narrative is more like an epic rather than actual history and Ibn Al Athir is not an independent source.
- You are beginning to sound like someone who blatantly violates WP:NPOV and prefers Islamic sources that are just as biased than Christian sources over Christian ones all because you adhere to the religious perspective of the Islamic one. Al Waqidi, Al Azdi and Ibn Al Athir are NOT reliable sources, not even close. Their accounts are no more reliable than those Christian accounts.
- Secondly, those Christian accounts are indeed used in Academia to describe how Christians responded to the invasions and early Islamic history. As much or even more so than the Islamic tradition, meaning that scholars do ascribe great historical weight to their narratives.
- Spare me your sophistry, answer the question, scholars regard both sources as having enough historical weight for the reconstruction of events and both suffer from similar problem as you have admitted. Why do you then refuse to present one whilst blatantly dumping the other on the site? Yusufalhindi (talk) 02:11, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
Did I ever state that I meant to present them openly as “atrocities”?
- Other than when you made additions to the article under a new section you labeled "Atrocities", or when you started this talk page discussion under the title Regarding those atrocities.? Is there some other open presentation I'm meant to be considering?
- In any case, as a third party it's rather clear to me @Yusufalhindi has been far too quick to decide the other people in the conversation are arguing in bad faith. They have not even directly engaged with the primary stated concern of @Selenne, which seems perfectly reasonable to have even if it's not totally clear these perspectives are wholly undue.
- At the same time, Yusufalhindi absolutely has a point we should not be citing historians or biographers from the 12th and 14th centuries CE directly as if they were a typical RS. If there are points it's felt we need to cite them for and can't do as well citing modern scholarship about them or what have you, then those claims shouldn't be in this article. We treat these generally as primary sources to handle with care. Remsense 🌈 论 03:13, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
- I do admit that my actions were a bit too rash.
- It wasn’t me that added that atrocities section, what I intended to do was to restore that section and then, once the positions are confirmed, reframe it as “Non-Muslim Perspectives” with context and all that.
- I do apologise if my behaviour was unprofessional. Yusufalhindi (talk) 03:15, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
- Also, am I permitted to still include them should I make sure to frame it properly with the correct attributions and the such? Alongside discussing how different groups of non-Muslims reacted to it? Yusufalhindi (talk) 03:33, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
- Happens to the best of us, thanks for clarifying. I think what would work best here is posting your proposed addition here so it can be discussed and revised so no further edit warring would need to occur on the live article. Remsense 🌈 论 03:34, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
- Alright. It will take a while though. Yusufalhindi (talk) 03:35, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
- Happens to the best of us, thanks for clarifying. I think what would work best here is posting your proposed addition here so it can be discussed and revised so no further edit warring would need to occur on the live article. Remsense 🌈 论 03:34, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
- The “parting words of Abu Bakr” or "Abu Bakr's instructions" are likewise not from a single primary-source narrative, but are independently attested by al-Azdi, al-Waqidi, and Ibn al-Athir. Even if the Christian account has 3–4 similar sermons as noted by Hotland, these are variations on "one originating tradition", whereas Abu Bakr’s words come through "multiple independent" historical lines, giving them greater weight. Selenne (talk) 11:20, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
[edit]The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 18:22, 25 November 2025 (UTC)
Revamp
[edit]I have begun a revamp of this article with higher quality sources (modern academic, peer-reviewed sources), including the seminal works about the subject, including Fred Donner's Early Islamic Conquests, Hugh N. Kennedy's The Great Arab Conquests, and others. Direct usage of the primary sources (highly discouraged by Wikipedia), including the edited/annotated histories of al-Tabari, al-Baladhuri, al-Azdi and other medieval authors, should only be used sparingly for supplementary purposes, if at all. This will probably be a slow work in progress due to time constraints and I hope other interested editors will participate. One thing to keep in mind is we already have comprehensive articles about all the major engagements and events of the conquest (Yarmuk, Damascus, Jerusalem, Fahl, Ajnadayn, Amwas, etc.), so the information in this article about the actual course of the conquest should remain concise. --Al Ameer (talk) 03:20, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
Requested move 21 December 2025
[edit]- The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: moved. Per consensus. – robertsky (talk) 19:40, 28 December 2025 (UTC)
Muslim conquest of the Levant → Muslim conquest of Syria – Restore title to the last consensus based on an RM (as still viewable on talk), per WP:RMUM — the page has been moved several times since then, but all of these moves were undiscussed Iskandar323 (talk) 13:31, 19 December 2025 (UTC) This is a contested technical request (permalink). TarnishedPathtalk 12:25, 21 December 2025 (UTC)
- Note: WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, WikiProject Religion, WikiProject Iraq, WikiProject Egypt, WikiProject Jordan, WikiProject Military history/Roman and Byzantine military history task force, WikiProject Greece/Byzantine world task force, WikiProject Lebanon, WikiProject Palestine, WikiProject Military history, WikiProject Western Asia, WikiProject Islam, WikiProject Arab world, WikiProject Syria, WikiProject Greece, WikiProject Israel, WikiProject Middle Ages, and WikiProject Turkey have been notified of this discussion. TarnishedPathtalk 12:26, 21 December 2025 (UTC)
- It seems to me that the problem with Muslim conquest of Syria as a title is that the conquest encompassed more that simply Syria, whether you interpret Syria as meaning the modern country or the Roman provinces of that name. The article discusses for instance the Siege of Jerusalem in 637, though Jerusalem is not in either modern Syria or ancient Syria. From that perspective the current title Muslim conquest of the Levant seems preferable. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 13:43, 21 December 2025 (UTC)
- In this case, Syria refers to the region of Syria, which is interchangeable with “Levant”. We can survey the sources if necessary, but in my observation “Syria” is the universally used term in this context. —Al Ameer (talk) 14:38, 21 December 2025 (UTC)
- I filed this as a technical move because WP:RMUM is often fairly uncontested. Here it is arguable that enough time has passed that WP:SILENT came to apply to the new title. However, the page was authored under the terminology of 'Syria' for a reason, and that reason is sourcing. Ngrams is particularly illuminating here in showing the wide gulf between the usage of 'Syria' and usage of 'the Levant'. There's also a pretty strong sourcing and consistency case for moving the page to 'Arab conquest of Syria', and not least that this conflict is part of the Arab-Byzantine wars. I'm also in favour of this, but not devoted to pushing it here. Outside of the sourcing case, the main argument that tends to be pushed in favour of the terminology of 'the Levant' is that this better reflects the geographical case in modern parlance – except unfortunately this is somewhat false, since 'Levant' is also an archaic and ambiguous term that can at times also refer to Anatolia and Egypt (the latter of which is notably out of scope, as part of the very distinct Arab conquest of Egypt). Iskandar323 (talk) 20:05, 22 December 2025 (UTC)
- Oppose. Per Caeciliusinhorto, this change is confusing and amibiguous. While it's true that Syria can mean the entire region, that doesn't mean the article needs to also follow that older, more archaic meaning. Andre🚐 06:35, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
- To better illustrate the problem of how 'conquest of the Levant' is an example of in-wiki thought, not a reflection of the sources, observe how it appears nowhere outside of the titling and labelling of page. By contrast, the 'conquest of Syria' is in the title of whole books on the subject: Nicolle's Yarmuk CE 636: The Muslim Conquest of Syria. (1994). And Scheiner and Hassanein's The Early Muslim Conquest of Syria: An English Translation of al-Azdī's Futūḥ al-Shām (2019). N.B. the naming also stems in part from that literal translation of the Arabic Futuh al-Sham. It is also in the title of Sharon's 2007 academic journal article The decisive battles in the Arab Conquest of Syria. So already, just from a first glance at the sources, we can see the clear gap in RS usage. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:56, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
- I wouldn't say it appears nowhere outside Wikipedia. Andre🚐 08:04, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
- Support
Having spent too much time reading and writing about this,"Syria" is far more commonly used than "the Levant" as the English term for the region both in the context of the conquest and Islamic rule there in general, which can be demonstrated by the ngrams and a manual survey of the sources. —Al Ameer (talk) 14:28, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
- Support
- I wouldn't say it appears nowhere outside Wikipedia. Andre🚐 08:04, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
- To better illustrate the problem of how 'conquest of the Levant' is an example of in-wiki thought, not a reflection of the sources, observe how it appears nowhere outside of the titling and labelling of page. By contrast, the 'conquest of Syria' is in the title of whole books on the subject: Nicolle's Yarmuk CE 636: The Muslim Conquest of Syria. (1994). And Scheiner and Hassanein's The Early Muslim Conquest of Syria: An English Translation of al-Azdī's Futūḥ al-Shām (2019). N.B. the naming also stems in part from that literal translation of the Arabic Futuh al-Sham. It is also in the title of Sharon's 2007 academic journal article The decisive battles in the Arab Conquest of Syria. So already, just from a first glance at the sources, we can see the clear gap in RS usage. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:56, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
- Support Very few scholarly sources discuss a "Muslim conquest of the Levant", as has been pointed out above, its a very inexact geographical term (and also anachronistic to use as the concept is a European one that emerged about a millennium after the events in question). Syria at this point on history included a much wider area than that inhabited by the modern state. And this is well understood by historians who discuss Byzantine Syria all the time. We should not be using fringe titles/terminology to discuss topics well defined by the scholarly sources. Tiamut (talk) 08:07, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
- Support since it's the common name of the HQRS User:Easternsahara 17:16, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
- Support per the proposr, Al Ameer son and Tiamut. M.Bitton (talk) 02:03, 27 December 2025 (UTC)
Colonialism
[edit]This page belongs in the Colonialism category. Settler colonialism is when foreign settlers aim to replace Indigenous populations, most commonly through forced assimilation by imposing the colonizer's culture, language, and religion on the Indigenous people. That is exactly what the Muslim conquest of the Levant (and the Arabization of the MENA region for that matter) was. Arabs deliberately and methodically took away the rights and land of the Indigenous Jews and Samaritans, leaving them exhausted, politically vulnerable, and struggling to survive. Jewish communities faced severe restrictions, burdensome taxes, and their vineyards were destroyed. The Hakim Edict forced Jews and Samaritans to either convert to Islam or be exiled. The al-Aqsa Mosque was built over the ruins of the Second Jewish temple. The Arab conquerors engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide and imposed their identities on the Indigenous populations. That is colonialism. ~2025-43502-85 (talk) 18:56, 28 December 2025 (UTC)
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