The Arab-Muslim conquests and Arabization
The pre-modern empire that tests whether “colonialism” is post-1500-only
Between 632 and c.750 CE, Arab-Muslim armies conquered a territory larger than the Roman Empire at its peak — the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, North Africa, and Iberia — imposing Arabic as the language of state, Islam as the ruling order, a small Arab military aristocracy, and the jizya/dhimmi regime on subject peoples. Two very different crowds now frame this as “colonialism”: indigenous-rights scholars (Amazigh, Coptic, Assyrian, Kurdish) for whom Arabization was and remains an internal colonialism, and an Israeli/Jewish-nationalist counter-narrative that calls the 7th-century conquest “a textbook example of settler-colonialism” to argue the Arab — not Jewish — presence in the Levant is the colonial one. The dominant academic view categorizes it as pre-modern empire-conquest (the same bucket as Rome and the Mongols), not colonialism, which it reserves for the post-1500 capitalist world-system. Whether the label applies therefore turns entirely on which lens is privileged.
The 7th–8th-century conquests and Arabization (632 – c.750)
632 – c.750 CEGenuinely contestedWhat happened
Within a century of the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632, Arab-Muslim armies had overthrown the Sassanian Persian Empire, reduced Byzantium to a rump around Constantinople, and ended Visigothic Spain. Under the Umayyads (661–750) ʿAbd al-Malik made Arabic the language of administration and coinage; a small Arab-Muslim ruling and military elite monopolized state policy while non-Arabs paid the jizya poll tax as protected dhimmis. Over centuries, Coptic, Aramaic, Latin/African Romance, Pahlavi, and (in North Africa) Berber gave way to Arabic and Islam as elite and then vernacular tongues.
In just over one hundred years following the death of Mohammed in 632, Arabs had subjugated a territory with an east-west expanse greater than the Roman Empire, and they did it in about one-half the time. (Hugh Kennedy, The Great Arab Conquests)
Under each definition
A foreign Arab-Muslim elite extracted tribute and administered subject peoples — fitting exploitation colonialism in form — but there was no overseas metropole-periphery capitalist extraction of the post-1500 kind, so the lens is genuinely split.
Arab armies and an Arab ruling class settled atop existing populations and Arabization replaced many native languages; but Wolfe’s “logic of elimination” (demographic replacement of the native) is disputed — conversion and assimilation mostly absorbed rather than eliminated the conquered (Hoyland, Lapidus).
Neo-colonialism is a post-independence external-control category; it does not apply to a 7th-century conquest empire.
“Arab colonialism” / “Arab colonization” is widely used in loose and minority-rights discourse, and in the Israeli-nationalist counter-narrative, as an everyday characterization of the conquests and Arabization.
The case that the label applies
The conquests installed a foreign Arab-Muslim ruling elite that extracted tribute (jizya/kharaj), imposed its language and religion on subject peoples, and privileged Arabs and Muslims in law — fitting the exploitation template of classical colonialism and, on a “mixed settler society” reading (Shafir/Veracini), the settler template too. Indigenous-rights scholars use the frame directly: the Amazigh historian Brahim El Guabli lists the Arabs among “multiple colonialisms… by the Romans, the Arabs, the French, and the Spanish”; Coptic and Assyrian advocates describe a 639 CE colonization and the “erasure of Iraq’s indigenous community.” An Israeli-nationalist literature (Peters; Schwartz/BESA; Solomon/JNS) goes further, calling the conquest “a textbook example of settler-colonialism” to argue the Arab presence in the Levant is itself colonial.
The case against
In world-systems theory (Wallerstein), “colonialism” denotes a post-1500 capitalist world-economy with colonial appendages; the Arab caliphate was a redistributive world-empire — the same category as Rome and the Mongols, not as British or French overseas empire. Settler-colonial theory’s defining feature (Wolfe) is the “logic of elimination,” demographic replacement of the native; the Arab case operated through gradual conversion, intermarriage, and assimilation, with the conquered populations remaining as the demographic base of the new society (Hoyland, Lapidus). Postcolonial critics add that “Arab colonialism” is often a polemical, anachronistic move to relativize European colonialism and Israeli settlement, and that the demographic keystone of the Israeli-nationalist version (Joan Peters’s claim that Palestinian Arabs are recent immigrants) was demolished by historians (Porath, Finkelstein).
In their words
Historically, Imazighen were subjected to multiple colonialisms by the Romans, the Arabs, the French, and the Spanish… The Arab invasion in the eighth century and French colonization of Tamazgha starting in the nineteenth century have had the most enduring ramifications.
The Muslim conquest of Byzantine Palestine in the 7th century CE is a textbook example of settler-colonialism, as is subsequent immigration, particularly during the 19th and 20th centuries under the Ottoman and British Empires.
The Jews are indigenous; the Arabs are the colonists… Arabs wouldn’t make their mark in the land of the Jews until the 7th century AD with the emergence of the Muslim empire… At its height, the Arabs had colonized everything from Spain and North Africa in its west to the Indian subcontinent to its east.
the so-called nineteenth-century empires, such as Great Britain or France, were not world-empires at all, but nation-states with colonial appendages operating within the framework of a world-economy. World-empires were basically redistributive in economic form… It was only with the emergence of the modern world-economy in sixteenth-century Europe that we saw the full development and economic predominance of market trade. This was the system called capitalism.
it tends to be assumed that the Arabs conquered most or all of the lands that are majority Muslim today, whereas a large proportion of them were actually conquered much later, by local Muslim dynasties, of non-Arab origin, or were Islamized slowly by traders, missionaries, and wandering ascetics.
about four hundred thousand Arabs — the great majority of whom were Muslims — lived in Palestine… Some of these people were the descendants of the pre-Islamic population that had adopted Islam and the Arabic language.
[non-elite groups] were integrated into the state in that they paid taxes to it and were dominated by it, but they had… no role in formulation or execution of state policy, which remained the exclusive domain of the elite.
From the seventh to the tenth centuries, Arab conquerors brought Islam and the Arabic language and culture to North Africa and Spain, Iran and Transoxania. Persians, Turks, and Soghdians in the east and Berbers and Goths in the west were incorporated into the Arab-Muslim empire.
Modern state Arabization — the “Arab Belt,” Kirkuk, and Algerian Arabization (1962 – present)
1962 – presentGenuinely contestedWhat happened
Where the “Arab colonialism” label has its strongest scholarly traction is not the 7th century but 20th-century state Arabization: Syria’s “Arab Belt” (Baʿth Decision No. 521, 24 June 1974) resettling Arab families in “Model Villages” on expropriated Kurdish land in al-Hasakah and displacing ~140,000 Kurds; Saddam Hussein’s “Arabization of Kirkuk” expelling Kurds and Turkmen and resettling Arabs (alongside the al-Anfal genocide, usually framed separately); and Algeria’s post-1962 Arabization laws substituting Modern Standard Arabic for French and Berber in public life, triggering the Berber Spring (1980) and feeding the 2019 Hirak.
Baʿthist regimes implemented aggressive Arabization campaigns… Iraq’s Baʿthist government under Saddam Hussein began the ‘Arabization’ of northern Iraq in the mid-1970s, forcibly relocating Kurds. (PoLAR, 2025)
Under each definition
Classical colonialism requires a foreign metropole ruling a distant periphery; these are a sovereign state’s policies within its own borders, so the lens does not apply.
The Arab Belt and Kirkuk Arabization — Arab settlers relocated onto expropriated Kurdish land — fit Wolfe’s demographic-replacement template; Algerian Arabization (language policy without settlement) does not, so the lens is split across the modern cases.
Neo-colonialism is external control over a nominally independent state; these are internal policies of the state itself.
“Internal colonialism” and “Arab colonialism” are the standard characterizations in Amazigh, Kurdish, and Assyrian rights scholarship and activism.
The case that the label applies
These are concrete, documented state projects of demographic engineering and linguistic-cultural suppression directed at named indigenous peoples (Kurds, Assyrians, Amazigh). The Syrian Arab Belt — Arab settlers moved onto expropriated Kurdish land to sever Kurdish geographic continuity — maps directly onto Wolfe/Veracini’s “structure, not an event.” Amazigh scholars frame post-independence Arab-nationalist rule as “internal colonialism” (El Guabli), and Kurdish sociologist İsmail Beşikçi theorized Kurdistan as an “international colony” divided among four states. On these facts the colonialism label — specifically internal and settler colonialism — is applied by the affected communities and by peer-reviewed anthropology.
The case against
These are intra-state policies of a sovereign government within its own recognized borders, not the rule of a foreign metropole over a distant periphery — so under the classical and neo-colonial lenses (which require an external metropole or post-independence external control) the label does not fit. Linguistic and cultural assimilation policy, however coercive, is a category most historians and political scientists treat as authoritarian nation-building or “internal colonialism” rather than colonialism proper; reserving “colonialism” for it risks stretching the term to cover almost any state’s language policy. Critics also note the frame is sometimes deployed by outside actors to relativize the settler-colonialism charge against Israel rather than from the affected communities’ own interests.
In their words
Independence marked the beginning of a classic state of ‘internal colonialism,’ whereby the Arab-nationalist governments established a political system that stripped the Imazighen of their linguistic and cultural rights… French colonialism was direct and visible, whereas internal colonialism has been more hidden, even as it has used colonialist methods to homogenize intrinsically heterogeneous Amazigh societies.
Baʿthist regimes implemented aggressive Arabization campaigns. Kurdish regions in both countries are geopolitically and economically significant, containing fertile land, water sources, and oil resources. Iraq’s Baʿthist government under Saddam Hussein began the ‘Arabization’ of northern Iraq in the mid-1970s, forcibly relocating Kurds.
The project aimed to alter the demographic composition of Kurdish-majority areas in the northeast of the country and sever the geographical and cultural continuity between Syrian Kurds and their counterparts in Turkey and Iraq.
The Coptic people were first ‘truly’ colonised with the Arab Invasion beginning on the 12th of December 639 AD… Since the Copts were colonised in 639 AD, they have thus been living as an indigenous people for nearly 1,400 years.
The verdicts above are how each definition would most likely classify this situation — illustrative guidance, not court rulings. Colonialism has no treaty crime, so no application is a legal “finding”; every characterization is attributed to the person or body that made it. The lenses diverge most on two questions — whether there is a “metropole” and who counts as “indigenous” — and on the difference between a historical judgment and a moral analogy. See the Definition tab for each definition’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.