How Constantinople Almost Fell In AD 717 (And Why It Didn’t)
Islam nearly took the city hundreds of years before its final demise
In AD 622, the religion of Islam was founded by the Prophet Muhammad. The religion instantly exploded and became one of the most powerful forces in the world. Islam swelled and consumed the Arabian Peninsula before pouring outward into the surrounding regions. Within a few decades, large caliphates had sprung up atop the bones of the old Roman Empire. By the start of the 8th century, Muslim armies were pillaging and burning their way through the hinterlands of the Byzantine Empire.
But this is years, centuries even, before the final collapse of Constantinople in the face of a Muslim onslaught. Constantinople would eventually fall in 1453, and like Rome before it, the demise of Constantinople is a demarcation point in history. There is the world before Constantinople fell and the world after. (Some people use 1453 as the year to mark the end of the Medieval Period and the start of the Renaissance Era.) But the Fall of Constantinople came 736 years after the first major siege of the city in AD 717.
Following twenty years of harassing actions, raids, and minor battles, the Islamic armies of the Umayyad Caliphate made it to the formidable walls of Constantinople in 717. This was not…
