As the Macedonian conquest, by breaking up the Achaemenian Empire (i.e. the Persian Empire of Cyrus and his successors), prepared the soil for the se… - Arnold J. Toynbee

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As the Macedonian conquest, by breaking up the Achaemenian Empire (i.e. the Persian Empire of Cyrus and his successors), prepared the soil for the seed of Hellenism, so the Arab conquest opened the way for the Umayyads, and after them the 'Abbasids, to reconstruct a universal state which was the equivalent of the Achaemenian Empire.