4في بِضعِ سِنينَ ۗ لِلَّهِ الأَمرُ مِن قَبلُ وَمِن بَعدُ ۚ وَيَومَئِذٍ يَفرَحُ المُؤمِنونَMuhammad Asadwithin a few years: [for with God rests all power of decision, first and last.1 And on that day will the believers [too, have cause to] rejoiceLit., "before and after". The defeats and victories spoken of above relate to the last phases of the centuries-long struggle between the Byzantine and Persian Empires. During the early years of the seventh century the Persians conquered parts of Syria and Anatolia, "the lands close-by", i.e., near the heartland of the Byzantine Empire; in 613 they took Damascus, and in 614, Jerusalem; Egypt fell to them in 615-16, and at the same time they laid siege to Constantinople itself. At the time of the revelation of this surah - about the seventh year before the hijrah, corresponding to 615 or 616 of the Christian era - the total destruction of the Byzantine Empire seemed imminent. The few Muslims around the Prophet were despondent on hearing the news of the utter discomfiture of the Byzantines, who were Christians and, as such, believed in the One God. The pagan Quraysh, on the other hand, sympathized with Persians who, they thought, would vindicate their own opposition to the One-God idea. When Muhammad enunciated the above Qur'an-verses predicting a Byzantine victory "within a few years", this prophecy was received with derision by the Quraysh. Now the term bid' (commonly rendered as "a few") denotes any number between three and ten; and, as it happened, in 622 - i.e., six or seven years after the Qur'anic prediction - the tide turned in favour of the Byzantines. In that year, Emperor Heraclius succeeded in defeating the Persians at Issus, south of the Taurus Mountains, and subsequently drove them out of Asia Minor. By 624, he carried the war into Persian territory and thus put the enemy on the defensive; and in the beginning of December, 626, the Persian armies were completely routed by the Byzantines.