April 20 636 – 5 Iyar 4396
The battle which wrested control of Syria and the land of Israel from the Byzantine Empire, the Battle of Yarmouk was the first in a series of Muslim conquests beyond the Arabian peninsula. From here, the caliphate of Ali swiftly progressed into Christian Mesopotamia, just four years after the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632. The battle marked the beginning of the struggle between Islam and Christianity, in which the Jews were mostly observers except where they were unlucky enough to find themselves stuck in the middle. From this point on, their fortunes waxed and waned with the various changes of rule between the two religions.