The Great Islamic Conquests

Uthman's caliphate (23-35 AH / 644-656 CE) witnessed the continuation and significant extension of the Islamic conquests that had begun under Umar. The conquests of this period brought Azerbaijan, parts of Armenia, Khurasan, Kirman, Sijistan, and ultimately the entire Sassanid Empire under Islamic rule, while in the west the campaigns in North Africa reached Tripolitania and the first Islamic naval battles were fought in the Mediterranean. These were extraordinary military and geopolitical achievements that laid the territorial foundation of the classical Islamic world.

The naval campaigns represent a particular innovation of Uthman's caliphate. Umar had been reluctant to commit Muslim forces to naval warfare, but Uthman accepted the proposal of Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, governor of Syria, to build a Muslim fleet. The Battle of the Masts (Dhat al-Sawari) in 654 CE, fought in the eastern Mediterranean, was the first major naval battle of Muslim history and resulted in a significant victory over the Byzantine fleet. This naval capacity opened the western Mediterranean to Muslim expansion and began the eventual incorporation of North Africa and, ultimately, the Iberian Peninsula into the Islamic world.

In the east, the completion of the conquest of Persia under Uthman involved the absorption of a sophisticated civilization with deep cultural, administrative, and intellectual traditions. The early Islamic treatment of Persian converts was, on balance, just — the jizya tax was collected fairly, Persian Muslims gradually achieved full equality of rights with Arab Muslims, and Persian cultural and intellectual traditions were allowed to develop within an Islamic framework. The resulting synthesis of Arab-Islamic and Persian cultural elements would produce some of the greatest intellectual achievements of classical Islamic civilization.

Sallaabi is careful to address the administrative and financial controversies of Uthman's caliphate that contributed to the political crisis of his later years. Uthman appointed several relatives from the Umayyad clan to key governorships, a decision that critics at the time and historians since have debated. His defenders argue that these appointments were based on genuine competence — Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan's governance of Syria was by all accounts effective and just — and that nepotism charges reflect partisan criticism rather than objective assessment. His critics argue that the concentration of authority in Umayyad hands created resentments and structural problems that undermined the caliphate's unity.

The conquests of Uthman's caliphate brought enormous wealth into the Islamic state — wealth that was distributed according to the diwan established by Umar, providing for veterans and their families. But the influx of new territories, new peoples, and new wealth also created new social tensions that the aging caliph was increasingly unable to manage with the authority that Umar had exercised. These tensions would prove tragically fatal.