I was thinking a lot about the success of Islam in the 7th century during its emergence as a regional superpower. Divinely ordained or lucky break?
I thik the Arabs got lucky. Right place, right time. Emperor Heraclius Augustus thought he was doing well, winning a massive, protracted compaign against the Sassanid Persians that would enable the Empire to eliminate Zoroastrianism once and for all in the region and establish orthodoxy as the major religion. Heraclius led the victorious Roman armies on a major rampage through Persia in 629 that effectively eliminated Persia as a coherent political and social force (a process already set in motion by the Zoroastrian heretic, Mazdak). Heraclius was so taken with his success that he marched into Jerusalem in 630 to demonstrate its status as an unquestioned possession of the Roman Empire. He was right that Zoroastrianism was finished as a major power, however.
Little did he know that as a result of its defeat, Persia would fragment into a multi-decade funk of civil war and social chaos at exactly the same time that the Arab tribes were unifying under a common, expansive ideology. Persia had always been able to smack down any overly powerful Arab kingdoms that had emerged over the past few centuries and I think the Romans never really understood how finally eliminating their age-old Persian rival would change the balance of power in the region.
Somewhat before this time Yemen, a traditional southern counterweight to the central Arab tribes had been in turmoil. Its ruler had converted to Judaism at the turn of the 6th century and began slaughtering Christians. This just pissed off the Romans and some Christian neighbouring countries immensely and an African Christian country, Axum, invaded Yemen and weakened it, enabling the Persians to eventually seize control. And of course, when the Romans eliminated Persia then Yemen was up for grabs and went Muslim.
During the first major clash between Rome and Islam, at Yarmuk in 636, several factors contributed to a surprise Roman loss. A major portion of the Roman foederati army, the Ghassanids, switched sides. They were Christian Arabs of the monophysite tendency, and they seem to have believed they would suffer less persecution under the Caliphate than under the Roman Orthodoxy. Monophysitism seems to me to have been more compatible with Islam and Judaism in their stricter monotheism than other, more northern and western Christian sects with more polytheistic influences.
The Romans also faced the Arab armies with no cavalry, as Heraclius had rather unwisely sent all the cavalry off with his brother Theodore, who managed to get beaten separately and completely. Finally, as a result of the Persian conquest, the Roman kitty was drained and they had ceased paying tribute and in fact increased tax levies throughout Syria, Lebanon, and Paleastina. Heraclius was also aware that if he again raised a huge army to go on an all-out war of conquest against the Arabs then the Empire would be weakened in the north and the Franks/Lombards/assorted barbarians would take the opportunity to seize more of the territories in Italy, Spain, Africa, and the Balkans.
Finally, working against continued Roman occupation were the shifting loyalties of the local tribes, already ethnically closer to the invading Arabs, who probably figured they would get a better deal from the local newcomers rather than paying for the defence of far off New Rome. In the end, all politics is local.
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