History of Iraq 5 – the Arabs and Islam (637 A.D.)

After the fall of the Chaldean empire in 538 B.C., a series of foreign dynasties ruled the country of the two rivers. These included the Achaemenians, Alexander of Macedon, the Seleucians, Parthians and Sassanians.

During the reign of the Sassanian king, Yazujord iii in 637 A.D., Said Ibn Abi Waqqas at the head of the Arab-Islamic army of liberation freed Iraq from Sassanian rule at the famous battle of Al-Quadissiya. He pursued their armies as far as Iran and finally defeated them at the battle of Nafawand in 642 A.D. The Persian king fled and after he was killed in 651 A.D., Persian domination came to an end and the foundations were laid for the Arab-Islamic empire.

In addition to the states which existed on the Arabian Peninsula in pre-Islamic times, the Arabs had settled also in Iraq and Syria. They had established staging posts along the caravan routes during the Parthian, Byzantine and Sassanian periods. These staging posts developed into towns surrounded by walls, and since the caravan routes were also military routes, these towns had great strategic importance during the Persian, Roman and Byzantine Middle Eastern campaigns.

They also became important trading points between their Arab inhabitants and the Persians and Greeks. The most important ones and the tribes inhabiting them were:

The Nabataeans at Al-Bataa, the AI-Nasru at Al-Hadhar, the Tadmur and Cjassanian Arabs living in the Hauran valley south of Damascus and the Manadhira Tannukians and the Lakhmids at Hira.
The independance of these tribes and settlements ended with the Muslim conquest.