Arab-Byzantine Wars

The Arab-Byzantine Wars were a long series of conflicts fought between the Byzantine Empire and successive Islamic caliphates, beginning with the first Muslim raids into Byzantine Syria around 629 and continuing intermittently for over four centuries. The initial Rashidun and Umayyad conquests of the seventh century stripped Byzantium of Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa in rapid succession, and Arab forces twice besieged Constantinople itself, in 674-678 and again in 717-718, both times repelled with the aid of the incendiary weapon Greek fire. Fighting continued for centuries along a shifting Anatolian frontier through the Abbasid and later periods, with the balance of advantage swinging repeatedly between the two powers; a sustained Byzantine resurgence in the tenth century under emperors such as Nikephoros II Phokas and John I Tzimiskes recovered substantial territory in Syria and Mesopotamia. The long rivalry only wound down as new powers, notably the Seljuk Turks, emerged to challenge both empires from the mid-eleventh century onward.