IMPORTANT NOTE: I am aware of the Islamic ideals on image and idolatry. For this reason the image on this post does not represent Muhammad. This is a work of history, not of religion. For an analysis of Islam, see Religion page, above.
Islam is the faith of the Muslim as revealed through their prophet, Muhammad. The same God as Jews and Christians, He is Allah, Muhammad being seen as the seal of the prophets, the final messenger of God. Their holy book is the Koran, revealed to Muhammad about 616AD by the Angel Gabriel.
MUHAMMAD
Muhammad was born to the Quraish tribe in Mecca about 570AD. Orphaned, he became contemplative and married the elder Khadija, a wealthy widow. Beginning to hate the idolatry around him, in 610 he had a vision of the Angel Gabriel, dictated the Koran, began preaching about the One God and spoke of the inevitability of moral judgement.
Facing hostility from the Meccans, he left in 622, his flight known as the Hegira, beginning the Muhammadan Era. In Medira he set up the first Islamic community but in 624 the Meccans went to destroy him.
Muhammad won the Battle of Badr and Mecca capitulated in 630, much of the Arabian peninsula taking up Islam. Muhammad died two years later and Muhammad’s father-in-law, Abu Bakr, became the first caliph, or ‘deputy of god’.
RIVAL DYNASTIES
Abu Bakr was followed by Umar, Uthman and Ali, the four known as the Rashidun, or ‘rightly guided’ caliphs. Following Ali’s death, authority centred on the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus, rising to power through civil war from 656 and turning more to conquest than religious justice.
In 750 the Umayyads were overthrown by the Abbasid dynasty, which founded Baghdad. By 850 central control was gone, local dynasties rising to supremacy. These included the Fatamids, who gained control of Egypt.
The Umayyads escaped the Abbasids, taking Spain from 756-1031, the Abbasids wiped out by the Mongols in 1258. Islam remained unco-ordinated until the 16th century Ottomans from Turkey. But at the time, Islamic expansion was substantial.
EXPANSION
Reasons for the expansion vary from typical empire building to the requirement of a buffer zone to protect Islam from the Byzantine Empire and Persians. Abu Bakr began the expansion by subjugating Arabia and entering Palestine, Umar advanced to Damascus and old Mesopotamia before turning to Asia Minor.
By 643 Persia was over-run, a second force taking Egypt, Islam also becoming a naval force with the fall of Alexandria. In Palestine, Jews and Christians were tolerated and with the Umayyads Spain was invaded after 709, only checked at Poitiers by the Franks. Constantinople repelled Islam in 673 and 717 and managed to remain independent until 1453.
From Persia, Islam moved into the Punjab in the 10th century and through trade they would later spread the religion as far as Nigeria and the Malay archipelago.
CULTURE
With the rise of the Abassids in 750, Islam began to turn in on itself, wondering what it was all about, beginning the ‘Golden Age’ of Islamic thought and culture. In Alexandria they found Classical texts and merged them with influences from India and China.
Paper making produced the first modern books and past knowledge was translated into Arabic. Libraries and debating societies arose, forming into Madrassahs, or colleges, storytelling also becoming a pre-occupation.
Neo-Platonism was accepted – an other-world, now with Allah at the apex – and the rational arguments of Aristotle taken into account. Where this knowledge conflicted with the Koran a compromise came with the philosopher, Averroes, arguing that faith and reason to do not necessarily conflict, but were two separate ways of reaching the truth. Rationalism was released into Islam, hundreds of scientists beginning to study nature. The modern numeral system of counting came from this, adapted from the Hindus.
However, as the 11th century approached, a great conflict arose with Christian Europe. In the next post, we narrate the Crusades.
© Anthony North, August 2007
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