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Khusrau planned a multifront offensive, unleashing Khoream, a Parthian princeling married to the shah’s sister who revelled in the title Shahbaraz or Royal Boar, against Armenia, then against Syria. Phocas was out of his depth, his legions breaking before Royal Boar’s cataphracts. But the Romans turned to a competent young nobleman, Heraclius, son of the exarch of Africa, who was ready to step up. Heraclius sailed for Constantinople, killed Phocas, seized the throne and tried to stop Royal Boar. But the empire was collapsing.

RECITE! I CANNOT RECITE! RECITE! THE REVELATION OF MUHAMMAD

The Persians swept west. Royal Boar took Damascus and Jerusalem, sparking apocalyptic fervour among the Jews, whom he delivered from centuries of Christian persecution. In Antioch his soldiers castrated the Christian patriarch and threw his genitals in his face. Khusrau restored Jerusalem to the Jews, who ruled there for a few years – the last time before 1967 – while Royal Boar tortured that city’s patriarch until he handed over the relic of the True Cross, which was then sent to Queen Shirin.

Emperor Heraclius was chastened. The fall of Jerusalem seemed to herald the End of Days – not just to Christians but to pagan Arabs too: in Mecca, the merchant Muhammad, now in his forties, heard of these astonishing Roman defeats which signalled a new era, a new revelation. ‘Rome has been vanquished in a land nearby,’ he reflected. Admired for his decency, geniality and serenity, he was nicknamed al-Amin – the Reliable. He had travelled into Roman lands, first visiting Syria with his uncle, then being sent there by an older female merchant, Khadija, when he was twenty-five. She was wealthy, the personification of female independence. Muhammad’s conduct on this trip earned him another nickname, al-Sadiq – the Truthful – and afterwards, he married Khadija, who was still young enough to have six children. The boys died young, but Fatima and three other daughters survived. Along with their own children, Muhammad’s cousin Ali (son of his guardian Abu Taleb) was brought up in the household, together with a boy named Zayed who had been kidnapped and enslaved before being freed and adopted by Muhammad. Muhammad lived happily with Khadija for twenty-five years.

At forty, he was meditating in a cave at Hira when he felt strange, feverish and limp. Engulfed in humming sounds, sweat pouring from him, he believed he was visited by the Archangel Gabriel, who told him he was God’s Messenger and Prophet. ‘Recite!’ ordered Gabriel.

At first Muhammad told no one except his wife Khadija, then he disclosed the visitation to a small coterie led by a friend, Abu Bakr. His message, incanted in mesmeric rhyming Arab poetry that dazzled its listeners, was universal and lucid, yet often expressed in the obscure language expected of sacred texts. Muhammad knew the Bible, partly from his travels in Palestine and Syria, partly from the many Jews and Christians in Arabia. His teachings co-opted and commandeered the prophecies and prophets of the Jews and Christians that bestowed ancient, sacred legitimacy on a new message. At its heart was a creed of pure monotheism, shorn of Jewish ritual and exclusivity and the Christian worship of a man and his image with its tangled concept of the Trinity. ‘There is no god but God,’ recited Muhammad, in the earliest version of the shahada, and this God had no son. The only path was submission – Islam – living according to the rules of worship in a religion that welcomed everyone, regardless of class, gender or nation, offering moral universality, the incentive of afterlife, and easily understood rituals and rules. Unlike Christianity Islam allowed polygamous marriage, permitting up to four wives and multiple concubines.

Anyone could join Islam. One of his first followers was an enslaved African, Bilal ibn Rabah known as al-Habashi – the Abyssinian. All the People of the Book – Jews and Christians – were welcomed: Muhammad called them ‘the Believers’. He would form a community, the ummah, of faithful believers to spread his message: the apocalypse – the Hour – was imminent. That could take place only in Jerusalem; he had dreamed that he visited the city in what is known as the Night Journey. When he prayed, he turned towards the Holy City, an orientation later called the qibla. But God had withdrawn his blessing from Jews and Christians: the Jews had lost their Temple, Rome was falling before the Persians. The revelation of Islam was the third and last of the revelations.