The first Arab Muslim conquests (632–732), (, Fatah, literally "opening",) also referred to as the Islamic conquests or Arab conquests, began after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He established a new unified political polity in the Arabian peninsula which under the following Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion of Arab power well beyond the Arabian peninsula in the form of a vast Muslim Arab Empire with an area of influence that stretched from northwest India, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, southern Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees. 