The Ridda Wars. Faith, Fire, and the Forging of the Islamic State - Gearóid Sullivan

The Ridda Wars: Faith, Fire, and the Forging of the Islamic State

The death of the Prophet Muhammad in June 632 CE plunged the Arabian Peninsula into its most dangerous crisis. Tribes from Yemen to the Persian Gulf repudiated their allegiance to Medina, rival prophets raised armies in the desert heartlands, and the fragile unity that Muhammad had forged over two decades of extraordinary effort began to dissolve along its oldest fault lines. The Ridda Wars, the Wars of Apostasy, were the caliphate's answer to that dissolution.

Under the resolute leadership of Abu Bakr, the first caliph of Islam, and the military genius of Khalid ibn al-Walid, the Sword of God, the Rashidun Caliphate launched one of history's most ambitious counter-offensive campaigns, eleven simultaneous military operations across the full extent of Arabia, suppressing rebellion, enforcing the obligations of the faith, and forging from the fires of civil war a unified Islamic state capable of challenging the greatest empires of the ancient world.

This is the story of that year of crisis, of the battles that decided it, the commanders who fought it, the prophets who died in it, and the scripture that survived it. It is the story of how Islam became an empire, and how a community on the edge of collapse became a civilisation that would reshape the world.