In Egypt the Arab conquest initiated a cultural transformation that left unchanged the constants of the country's history over the past three thousand years. The end of the Arab supremacy was complete when in 219/834 the Arabs were struck from the diwan, the list of those entitled to pay as members of the jund, despite their protest that it was theirs by right. The extirpation of the Tulunids brought the return of Egypt to provincial status with a recrudescence of provincial unrest, immediately manifested in the welcome at Fustat to one ibn al-Khalij, or al-Khaliji. Ibn Tughj had no difficulty in returning to Syria to secure its possession, and reconstitute the empire created by Ibn Tulun when he invaded Syria from Egypt. Like that of the Tulunids, that of the Ikhshidids was a ghulam state, in which the payment of the army was central to the administration. After the retreat from Alexandria in 324/936 the threat of Fatimid invasion receded.

The subjugation of barbarian envoys in front of Theodosius I, as depicted in the Constantnople's obelisk in 390, soon turned out to be hollow. The same barbarians later became embroiled in a series of conflicts that would seriously undermine the stability of the empire and eventually produce a very different balance of power between the empire and its neighbours. This chapter traces this changing balance of power in late antiquity and its ramifications for imperial international relations. After 378, the balance of power shifted in favour of Rome's enemies, as the Roman Empire was consistently on the retreat with any territorial expansion. The substantial geopolitical transformations experienced by the Empire between Diocletian and the Arab conquest affected its perspectives both in terms of the ideological underpinnings that guided policy and the goals it sought to achieve through diplomacy. The late Empire relied on a fluid decision-making process that meant the implementation of foreign policy was rarely consistent.

The Arab conquests, which created a great new empire and led to the establishment of Islam as one of the great religions of the world, are one of the traditional landmarks of history. The Egyptian papyri form an invaluable record; they also demonstrate that the written tradition, when it made its appearance in Egypt from the middle of the eighth century onwards, was indebted to an archive going back to the establishment of a regular administration under Arab control. The movement of soldiers, slaves and tribute to and fro along the North African coast from Egypt to Spain had revived the market economy after the lapse into subsistence of the late Roman and Byzantine period. In the ninth century, all the great mosques of Egypt and North Africa which dated from the early days of the conquest were enlarged to their present size, while new ones were founded.

The religious evolution of Iran during the centuries from the Arab conquest to the rise of the Saljuqs was determined by a number of factors which, so far, have not been adequately isolated and analysed. This chapter identifies the politico-economical dimension of rebellions and heresies, and at the same time single out a few recurring and typical traits deserving the attention of the student of Iranian religious phenomena. It considers political and social developments of Iran by analysing their factual background before proceeding to a religious interpretation. The leader's wealth stressed by sources and the claim to Abū Muslim's treasure do not allow one to bracket this revolt together with other purely "protest" movements. The very term of Khurramdīn can in fact incorporate a number of meanings ranging from ambiguous though plausible identification with a reformed branch of new Mazdakism adjusted to Islamic pattern, to a vague sort of common denominator for a number of small sects mentioned by heresiographers.

In the first years after the conquest of Byzantine and Sāsānian lands the invaders made use of the existing currency, the Byzantine gold solidus or denarius aureus and the copper follis in Palestine and Syria, the Sāsānian silver drahm in the east. During the latter half of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth decades of the Hijra, a number of innovations were introduced and several radical iconographical changes were experimented. Excavations in recent years have disclosed the fact that during the transitional years following the Arab conquest, there were local issues of copper coinage. 'Abd al-Malik's monetary reform, began with gold coins in the year 77 and two years later mints in Iran and Iraq started issuing the purely epigraphical dirham which was to become the most popular coin in the Near and Middle East. The ‘Abbāsid and Khārijite movements are well reflected in the coinage.