Question: In what period did Islamic armies conquer the country known for its Muslims and people who traded slaves into the Middle East?

Most Kurds (8.5%) and most Turkoman (3%) are Sunni and account for the difference between Sunnis and Sunni Arabs, while 13% of Syrians are Shia Muslims (particularly Alawite, Twelvers, and Ismailis but there are also Arabs, Kurds and Turkoman), 10% Christian (the majority are Antiochian Greek Orthodox, the rest are Syrian Orthodox, Greek Catholic and other Catholic Rites, Assyrian Church of the East, Armenian Orthodox, Protestants and other denominations), and 3% Druze. Sunni Muslims make up between 69–74% of Syria's population and Sunni Arabs account for 59–60% of the population. Druze number around 500,000, and concentrate mainly in the southern area of Jabal al-Druze.President Bashar al-Assad's family is Alawite and Alawites dominate the government of Syria and hold key military positions. In May 2013, SOHR stated that out of 94,000 killed during the Syrian Civil War, at least 41,000 were Alawites.Christians (2.5 million), a sizable number of whom are found among Syria's population of Palestinian refugees, are divided into several sects: Chalcedonian Antiochian Orthodox make up 45.7% of the Christian population; the Catholics (Melkite, Armenian Catholic, Syriac Catholic, Maronite, Chaldean Catholic and Latin) make up 16.2%; the Armenian Apostolic Church 10.9%, the Syriac Orthodox make up 22.4%; Assyrian Church of the East and several smaller Christian denominations account for the remainder. Many Christian monasteries also exist. Many Christian Syrians belong to a high socio-economic class. <SEP> the birth of islam on the opposite side of somalia's red sea coast meant that somali merchants, sailors and expatriates living in the arabian peninsula gradually came under the influence of the new religion through their converted arab muslim trading partners. with the migration of fleeing muslim families from the islamic world to somalia in the early centuries of islam and the peaceful conversion of the somali population by somali muslim scholars in the following centuries, the ancient city-states eventually transformed into islamic mogadishu, berbera, zeila, barawa and merca, which were part of the berberi civilization. the city of mogadishu came to be known as the city of islam, and controlled the east african gold trade for several centuries. <SEP> the atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved african people, mainly from africa to the americas, and then their sale there. the slave trade used mainly the triangular trade route and its middle passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. the vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were africans from central and western africa, who had been sold by other west africans to western european slave traders (with a small number being captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids), who brought them to the americas. the south atlantic and caribbean economies especially were dependent on the supply of secure labour for the production of commodity crops, making goods and clothing to sell in europe. this was crucial to those western european countries which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires. <SEP> Religious beliefs in the Eastern Empire and Persia were in flux during the late 6th and early 7th centuries. Judaism was an active proselytising faith, and at least one Arab political leader converted to it. [J] Christianity had active missions competing with the Persians' Zoroastrianism in seeking converts, especially among residents of the Arabian Peninsula. All these strands came together with the emergence of Islam in Arabia during the lifetime of Muhammad (d. 632). After his death, Islamic forces conquered much of the Eastern Empire and Persia, starting with Syria in 634–635 and reaching Egypt in 640–641, Persia between 637 and 642, North Africa in the later 7th century, and the Iberian Peninsula in 711. By 714, Islamic forces controlled much of the peninsula in a region they called Al-Andalus. <SEP> Guinea-Bissau was once part of the kingdom of Gabu, part of the Mali Empire; parts of this kingdom persisted until the 18th century. Other parts of the territory in the current country were considered by the Portuguese as part of their empire. Previously slaves had been traded by Arabs north to the northern part of Africa and into the Middle East. Portuguese Guinea was known as the Slave Coast, as it was a major area for the exportation of African slaves by Europeans to the western hemisphere.