The history of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods from around 500 through 700 AD is a history of a Middle East composed of many relatively small agricultural communities, a few large urban areas, nomadic tribes, and marked by warfare between different groups over commerce and territory.
The Byzantine Empire stood at one end of the region. This was the first Christian Empire in the world and was founded by Constantine in 330 A.D. The city of Byzantium was on the European side of the Bosporus and was a worthy city that overlooked both Europe and Asia and thus was fitted to be a power in both. One of the most fertile periods in Byzantine history came during the reign of the Emperor Justinian, which was in the sixth century AD in the pre-Islamic era. Under his leadership, the city grew to greater splendor than had ever been seen there before. In the city of Ravenna the walls of the Church of San Vitale were raised, and buildings of all sort were erected in Constantinople. The city tripled in size. Justinian built many harbors, and masses of people were always coming by boat into Constantinople to petition the emperor to carry out legal business. Since many of the people were very poor, Justinian built a huge lodging-house where they could stay for nothing. He also built many aqueducts to provide water for the city, and to improve the system he built a huge reservoir underground which is still present in Constantinople today. He took pains to improve the grain supply for the city. He built a huge granary near the Hellespont where grain was taken from Egyptian ships and stored while the ships waited for a good wind so the grain could be delivered the rest of the way.
The mightiest construction of the period was the Church of St. Sophia, or Holy Wisdom. There had been such a church on the same spot for some time, but it had changed its appearance many times, growing larger and larger under the various Byzantine e...