The period between 600 and 1000 witnessed the emergence of powerful new empires centered in Europe and the Middle East. In both cases, expansion and conquest were justified, at least in part, on religious grounds. At the time of Muhammad’s death in 632, Islam was largely confined to the Arabian peninsula, but the caliphs who followed him led a series of aggressive military campaigns, creating a vast Muslim empire that stretched all the way to the Iberian Peninsula. In western Europe, the spread of Roman Catholicism was intertwined with political consolidation. In the eighth and ninth centuries, Charlemagne, king of the Franks, conquered an empire which included much of western and central Europe. Although a large part of this new empire was already Christian, Charlemagne forcibly converted pagans, most notably the Saxons, as he incorporated new territories. While Charlemagne’s empire was short lived, disintegrating rapidly in the century following his death, it had a lasting impact on European political, social, and cultural development. The documents in this chapter explore these new empires, giving particular attention to the relationship between conquest and conversion in Charlemagne’s Europe. ■