Commenter Sasha Hrongmitts had a rather interesting follow-up question to my last post about the early history of Islam:

Are you sure the Persian Empire used Arabs as troops against the Byzantines? I could be mistaken, but I thought one of the reasons the Arabs were so successful against the Byzantines was their war manual, the Strategikon, did not have any info on Arab armies.

I don't discount the possibility that the Byzantines simply didn't know how to fight the Arabs, but it's worth asking whether the Arabs had made any significant military impact on the world stage before Islam's rise. The answer is almost certainly "no".

In this Domain Query podcast, I explain why, at least based on what evidence we have today:.