– 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