The siege of Damascus and the battle of Yarmuk laid the foundations for an astonishingly rapid Arab conquest of Byzantine Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. In 638 Jerusalem was surrendered by the patriarch Sophronius—who handed over control of the city in peaceable fashion but later bewailed its fate in sermons, telling the faithful that the arrival of the “vengeful and God-hating Saracens” was more clear evidence of God’s irritation with Christian sinfulness.
