The universe established in Frank Herbert's "Dune" recalls the aforementioned Holy Roman Empire as well as the Byzantine and Islamic empires, especially given the role of hitherto disregarded desert-dwellers who, due to a powerful new religion, expand to topple an old empire and build a new one. For example, the Egyptian-Canadian commentator Khalid M. Baheyeldin has enumerated the obviously Islamic concepts and references appearing in "Dune" to the level of finding multiple similarities between the career of Herbert's Paul Atreides and that of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.