We start off with a brief lecture on the Riddah Wars (Wars of Apostasy), Islamic Conquests/Expansion, and the Umayyad and Abbassid Caliphates. We then move on to some important questions: Why did the Muslims expand? Why were the Muslims successful against the larger Byzantine and Sassanian Empires? How did religious minorities respond to the Muslim expansion? What was conversion like in that early period? Was it forced? Were there any incentives to convert? What was the rate of conversion? Dr. Jessica Mutter is Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Bowdoin College. She earned her PhD at the University of Chicago (NELC) under the supervision of Dr. Fred Donner.