When Muhammad died, in 632, Islam could boast only semi-stable control over part of the Arabian peninsula. The prophet's territorial gains had been mainly pagan losses. Further expansion required conquest of Christian lands—a task that would prove all too easy, thanks to years of imperial and doctrinal wars.

To Islam's west lay Egypt and the rest of Christian North Africa. Once consolidated under the Roman Empire, by the sixth century the territory was divided between Latin-speaking Berbers in the west and Greek-speaking Byzantines in the east, with a few Baal-worshipers in the south.

Africa's theological divisions ran even deeper. Byzantines upheld the two-faceted definition of Christ's nature affirmed by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, but Egypt's Monophysite ("one nature") Christians, along with churches in Armenia and Syria, vehemently rejected it. African Christianity was also plagued by controversies among catholics, Donatists (who insisted that all other Christians were apostate), ...

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