2-5: Yarmouk And Qadisiyyah

- Where we are so far
-- In 632 CE Prophet Muhammad died and Abu Bakr was chosen by the residents of Medina as the Caliph
-- Soon after, several of the Arab tribes that were allied with the Prophet rebelled against Abu Bakr
-- Abu Bakr and his general KIW led a successful campaign to bring these tribes back in line
-- These were known as the Ridda, or Apostasy Wars
-- Abu Bakr commanded KIW to begin an invasion of southern Persia.
-- KIW was successful and conquered most of the area around the Euphrates River
-- At the same time, Abu Bakr also ordered Abu Ubaidah to lead an invasion into Syria
-- Abu Ubaidah ran into strong resistance so Abu Bakr had KIW come from Persia to assist
-- KIW led the Muslims to conquer Syria all the way up to Damascus
-- Back in Medina, Abu Bakr died and Umar ibn Al-Khattab became the Caliph
-- Umar removed KIW as the leader of the Muslim armies and put Abu Ubaidah back in charge
-- The Romans and Syrians got over their initial shock of the Muslim invasion and began a strong counterattack.
- In the last episode we discussed how the Romans and Persians began to make a comeback
- Now we'll go into the details of that comeback and the result
- We will first discuss the events in Syria and then those in Persia