The Islamic conquest of the Near East cannot be viewed, then, as something separate from the career of Muhammad the Apostle or from the conquest of Arabia during the ndda wars It must be seen as an organic outgrowth of Muhammad's teachings and their impact on Arabian society, of Muhammad's political consolidation, pursued by traditional and novel means, and especially of his efforts to bring nomadic groups firmly under state control, and of the extension of that process of consolidation by the Islamic state and its emerging elite under the leadership of Abu Bakr These elements, together, formed the foundations on which the Islamic conquest movement rested