<Ul> <Li> Syria </Li> </Ul> <Li> Campaigns of Basil II </Li> <P> The Muslim conquest of the Levant (Arabic: اَلْـفَـتْـحُ الْإٍسْـلَامِيُّ لِـلـشَّـامِ ‎, Al - Faṫṫḥul - Islāmiyyuash - Shām) or Arab conquest of the Levant (Arabic: اَلْـفَـتْـحُ الْـعَـرَبِيُّ لِـلـشَّـامِ ‎, Al - Faṫṫḥul - ʿArabiyyu Lish - Shām) occurred in the first half of the 7th century, and refers to the conquest of the region known as the Levant or Shaam (Arabic: شَـام ‎,' Syria'), later to become the Islamic Province of Bilad al - Sham, as part of the Islamic conquests . Arab Muslim forces had appeared on the southern borders even before the death of prophet Muhammad in 632, resulting in the Battle of Mu'tah in 629, but the real invasion began in 634 under his successors, the Rashidun Caliphs Abu Bakr and Umar ibn Khattab, with Khalid ibn al - Walid as their most important military leader . </P> <P> Syria had been under Roman rule for seven centuries prior to the Arab Muslim conquest and had been invaded by the Sassanid Persians on a number of occasions during the 3rd, 6th and 7th centuries; it had also been subject to raids by the Sassanid's Arab allies, the Lakhmids . During the Roman period, beginning after the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70, the entire region (Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee) was renamed Palaestina, subdivided into Diocese I and II . The Romans also renamed an area of land including the Negev, Sinai, and the west coast of the Arabian Peninsula as Palaestina Salutaris, sometimes called Palaestina III or Palaestina Tertia . Part of the area was ruled by the Arab vassal state of the Ghassanids' symmachos . During the last of the Roman - Persian Wars, beginning in 603, the Persians under Khosrau II had succeeded in occupying Syria, Palestine and Egypt for over a decade before being forced by the victories of Heraclius to conclude the peace of 628 . Thus, on the eve of the Muslim conquests the Romans (by now conventionally called Byzantines) were still in the process of rebuilding their authority in these territories, which in some areas had been lost to them for almost twenty years . Politically, the Syrian region consisted of two provinces: Syria proper stretched from Antioch and Aleppo in the north to the top of the Dead Sea . To the west and south of the Dead Sea lay the province of Palestine . Syria was mostly a Syriac and Hellenized land with some Jewish presence and with a partly Arab population, especially in its eastern and southern parts . The Syriac Christians, Jews and Arabs had been there since pre-Roman times, and some had embraced Christianity since Constantine I legalized it in the fourth century and moved the capital from Italy to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople), from which the name Byzantine is derived . </P>

When did muslim armies invade syria and iraq