Muhammad dies after a prolonged illness. The Muslim community elects his father-in-law and close associate, Abu Bakr, as caliph, or successor. Muslims enter Egypt and rout the Byzantine army. Muslims consider their conquest as the liberation of subjugated people, since in most instances they were under oppressive rule.
This also marks the beginning of the Umayyad rule. Muslims enter Spain in the west and India in the east. Eventually almost the entire Iberian Peninsula is under Islamic control. The Abbasids take over rule from the Umayyads, shifting the seat of power to Baghdad. Islam continues to spread through the continent of Africa, including Nigeria, which served as a trading liaison between the northern and central regions of Africa.
European Crusaders take Jerusalem from the Muslims. Eventually Muslims defeat the Crusaders and regain control of the holy land. Islam continues to spread throughout Asia.
Malaysian traders interact with Muslims who teach them about Islam. Ottomans conquer the Byzantine seat of Constantinople and change its name to Istanbul. Circa C. Approximately 30 percent of Africans forced into slavery in the United States are Muslim.
Conversion to Islam was boosted by missionary activities, particularly those of Imams, who easily intermingled with local populace to propagate religious teachings.
Trading played an important role in the spread of Islam in several parts of the world, notably southeast Asia. Muslim dynasties were soon established and subsequent empires such as those of the Abbasids, Fatimids, Almoravids, Seljukids, and Ajurans, Adal and Warsangali in Somalia, Mughals in India, Safavids in Persia, and Ottomans in Anatolia were among the largest and most powerful in the world.
The people of the Islamic world created numerous sophisticated centers of culture and science with far-reaching mercantile networks, travelers, scientists, hunters, mathematicians, doctors, and philosophers, all contributing to the Golden Age of Islam. Islamic expansion in South and East Asia fostered cosmopolitan and eclectic Muslim cultures in the Indian subcontinent, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China. Within the first century of the establishment of Islam upon the Arabian Peninsula and the subsequent rapid expansion of the Arab Empire during the Muslim conquests, one of the most significant empires in world history was formed.
For the subjects of this new empire, formerly subjects of the greatly reduced Byzantine and obliterated Sassanid empires, not much changed in practice. The objective of the conquests was of a practical nature more than anything else, as fertile land and water were scarce in the Arabian Peninsula. A real Islamization therefore only came about in the subsequent centuries. Historians distinguish between two separate strands of converts of the time.
One is animists and polytheists of tribal societies of the Arabian Peninsula and the Fertile crescent; the other is the monotheistic populations of the Middle Eastern agrarian and urbanized societies.
At the outset, they were hostile to conversions because new Muslims diluted the economic and status advantages of the Arabs. Only in subsequent centuries, with the development of the religious doctrine of Islam and with that the understanding of the Muslim Ummah, did mass conversion take place. The new understanding by the religious and political leadership led in many cases to a weakening or breakdown of the social and religious structures of parallel religious communities such as Christians and Jews.
The generous terms that the invading armies usually offered made their faith accessible to the conquered populations. And if it was a new and upstart faith, its administration by simple and honest men was preferable to the corruption and persecution that were the norm in more civilized empires Simply put, Islam may have sped the conquests, but it also showed much greater staying power.
It is useful to realize that the power of Islam was separate from much and more permanent than that of the armies with which it rode. But the Arab military adventures do not seem to have been intended as a religious war of conversion. In the wake of the Ridda wars, and of the Arabs' sudden conquest of most of the Near East, the new religion became identified more sharply as a monotheism for the Arab people. As is well known, the Arabs made no attempt to impose their faith on their new subjects, and at first in fact discouraged conversions on the part of non-Arabs.
Jonathan P. Whether or not Islam provided the motivation for early Muslim imperialism, it could be used to provide justification for it - in the same way that it had previously been used to support Muhammad 's own actions against his opponents. The Qur'an has a number of passages that support military action against non-Muslims , for example:.
But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, even if they are of the People of the Book Other passages confirmed the rightness of the ancient military tradition of looting from the defeated, and specified how the booty should be divided.
This is not surprising, as the armies of those days were not like modern armies - but more like a federation of tribal mercenary groups who were not paid and whose only material reward came from the spoils of war.
The political status of Islam, and the role Muhammad had given it as a political as well as a religious force, was reinforced in the military conquests. A caliph such as Umar seems to have regarded himself, first and foremost, as the leader of the Arabs, and their monotheistic creed as the religious component of their new political identity.
After the death of Muhammad in CE, the young Muslim federation came under strain. Some of the tribes decided that as their loyalty to Islam had been primarily to Muhammad himself, his death allowed them to end their allegiance to Mecca and to Islam. To make things more difficult, the Prophet had not left clear instructions as to who should lead the community after his death. Fortunately the community immediately chose the Prophet's close companion and father-in-Law Abu Bakr, as his successor.
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