The following are quotes taken from, Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests, by Walter E. Kaegi, Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Muslim strategy allowed those non-Muslims who so wished to evacuate conquered regions, in some cases with movable property. They could depart where they wished, for example to Byzantine territory. Their departure of course allowed the Muslims to seize and redistribute, if they wished, their landholding in the countryside and in the towns. (page 165)

Heraclius did not receive unanimous support from Armenians. His ecclesiastical policies aroused cosiderable opposition from many Armenian clerics and monks. (page 182)

Although ecclesiastical disagreements concerning Chalcedon and Monotheletism had some real effect, and their ecclesiastical leaders, the Catholicos Ezr and then Nerses, definitely influenced events, the fundamental local impetus favoring the Muslims was internal division and strife between Armenians, making it impossible for them to present a unified resistance, with or without Byzantine assistance, against the Muslims. (page 183)

O course, 'Iyad b. Ghanm was sufficiently opportunistic to take advantage of opportunities for enriching himself and his men by plundering Armenian towns and countryside. (page 192)

Yet Armenia's population generally did not convert to Islam or become assimilated to Islamic and Arabic civilization. Its peripheral location and impulse to local autonomy contributed to that lack of assimilation. Yet the church and the will to remain distinctively Armenian were the most important reasons for non-assimilation. When the Muslims later pressured for conversion and for the imposition of higher taxes, the Armenians united in revolt. (page 198-199)

Thus St. Anastasius the Sinaite (d. c. 700 or shortly after) expressed it: "the first and fearful and incurable fall of the Roman [Byzantine] army, I mean the bloodshed at Gabitha and Yarmuk and Dathesmon, after which there were the captures and burning of Palestine and Caesarea and Jerusalem, then the Egyptian destruction, and in order the imprisonments and incurable devastations of the peninsulae and islands of all Romania [Roman Byzantine Empire]." . . . and they attributed all of these military defeats, as well as other lost battles, such as the naval defeat at Phoenix, to erroneous religious policy. (page 205)

The terminology of the anti-Jewish apologetical treatise known as Doctrina lacobi nuper baptizati, written c. 634, is nervous and severe in its judgment on the condition of the empire: "humiliated" . . . "diminished and torn asunder and shivered" . . . "fallen down and plundered" . . .

The same author spoke with shock of the news of the death of Sergios at Dathin in 634, "They said 'The candidatus is slain!' And we Jews rejoiced very much. They said that the prophet appeared coming with the Saracens and proclaimed the arrival of one to come, the expected one, the anointed." The author claimed that the convert Justus continued, "'And what do you tell me concerning the prophet who appeared among the Saracens?' And he groaned a lot and said 'That he is false. For do prophets come with sword and chariot? These are the works of confusion today ... And inquiring Abraham heard from those who had met the prophet that you will find no truth in the said prophet, except for the bloodshed of men. For he says that he posseses the keys of paradise, which is false.'" (page 211)

The seventh-century Syriac treatise called The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles speaks of, indeed ostensibly predicts, the difficulties that resulted from the Muslim invastions:
"He shall lead captive a great captivity amongst all the peoples of the earth and they shall spoil a great spoil, and all the ends of the earth shall do service and there shall be made subject to him many lordships; and his hand shall be over all, and also those that are under his hand he shall oppress with much tribute: And he shall oppress and destroy the [rulers of the] ends [of the earth]. And he shall impose a tribute on [the earth], such as was never heard of ... he that has shall be reckoned in their days as though he had not, and he that builds and he that sells as one that gets no gain." (The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles Together with the Apocalypses of Each One of Them, ed. and trans. by James Rendall Harris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900) 36-7)

For the late seventh-century Pseudo-Methodius, it was a very pessimistic vision: (page 215)

"The path of their advance will be from sea to sea, [and from the East to the West] and from the North to the desert of Yathrib. It will be a path to calamities; old men and women, rich and poor, will travel on it, while they hunger and thirst, and suffer with heavy chains to the point that they will bless the dead. For this is the chastisement of which the Apostle spoke ... Men will be persecuted; wild animals and cattle will die; the trees of the forest will be cut; the most beatiful plants of the mountains will be destoyed; opulent cities will be laid waste, and they will capture places because there is no one passing through them. The land will be defiled with blood, and its produce will be taken away from it."

In similar fashion, John Bar Penkaye in the late seventh century interpreted the Muslim military achievements as reflections of divine wrath: . . .

Again: "Their robber bands went annually to distant parts and to the islands, bringing back captives from all the peoples under the heavens." . . .

"Who can relate the carnage they effected in Greek territory, in Kush, in Spain and other distant regions, taking captive their sons and daughters and reducing them to slavery and servitude. Against those who had not ceased in times of peace and prosperity from fighting against their Creator, there was sent a barbarian people who had no pity on them." (page 216)

A Maronite chronicle that terminates in 664 referred to the Umayyad Caliph Mu'awiya's unsuccessful attempt to issue gold and silver coinage without the traditional features of Byzantine coinage in AD 661: "He also minted gold and silver, but the populace did not accept it because there was no cross on it." (page 224)

Pseudo-Athanasius, a Christian Egyptian text dated to c. AD 700, also takes note of the Muslim destruction of the cross on gold coinage, . . . "that nation will destroy the gold on which there is the image of the cross of Our Lord, Our God, in order to make all the countries under its rule mint their own gold with the name of a beast written on it, the number of whose name is six hundred and sixty-six." (page 225).