The Emergence of the Islamic World

This lecture was about the centrality of the Islamic lands in the Afro-Eurasian landmass, and the role played by the religion in linking disparate peoples into a single world, the Dar al-Islam, or 'abode of Islam'. Islam did more to unify peoples across Eurasia than either christianity or buddhism. This was partly because of the centrality of Islam, geographically, and also because of the nature of Islam itself. This was because in Islamic culture, there was a more cohesive cultural space, a cultural commonality. It came out of the urban centres of the middle-east and spread to reach right across Eurasia.

The Nature of the Religion

"Islam" means submission to the will and law of God. A "Muslim" is therefore, one who submits. "Allah" is the arabic name of God. Islam is a revealed religion through its succession of prophets (the last and greatest being Muhammad ibn Abdullah (c.570-632), whose origins lie in a poor, semi-nomadic family based around Mecca, in Bedouin Arabia, the nomadic pastoralists of Arabia), and is uncompromisingly monotheistic. They believed that good muslims (those that prayered the necessary amount of times etc) would be rewarded and that bad muslims, punished. Their distinctive type of society was to be a characteristic of the entire Islamic World, stretching from Spain to Indonesia.

Factors behind the rapid spread of Islam

Muhammad converted the community of Medina in 622AD and by the time of his death, has also converted Mecca. From there it had spread throught the entire peninsular within 10 years. Within 100 years, it had spread from spain all the way to the Indus Valley.

Bedouin military power

Cohesive role of the faith (talked about before as the nature of Islam itself). Before this time, the Arabian peninsular was divided and in conflict. Islam provided the cohesive glue to bind the tribes into a single unit (a common language (arabic) had helped).

Balance of power in Middle East. The Byzantine Empire (the old Greco-Roman World) and the Sasanian Empire (the old persian world) lost ground to Islam because they were able to use converts to attack the imperial establishments from within.

Religious tolerance, their ability to let people believe what they wanted. Islam was seen as the religion of the Arabs, and thus non-arabs were allowed to do as they wanted, which meant that because nothing was forced, they tended to gain support anyway.

The Creation of an Islamic world

The "Caliph" or 'deputy' of God became the successors to Muhammad as the leaders (of administration etc) of the islamic world, leaving the Imam as the religious leader. The Umayyad Caliphate (661-750) and the Abbasid Caliphate (749-1258) were the main Caliphates of the period. From the 11th century onwards, Islam spread gradually into sub-Saharan Africa, further into Inner Eurasia, into India and Southeast Asia. Politically, during the Abbasid Caliphate, there was a fragmentation of the Islamic world because the "Arab" character of the Islamic faith weakened as new communities adopted the religion.

Islam was able to cross the divide between steppe and sown (so called barbarian and civilised lands).

Expansion into India was a slow process, as was the establishment of Islam in Southeast Asia (from the 13th to the 15th centuries). The two Islamic regions included the old core of the Middle East, North Africa & Persia (first Arabic, then Persian dominated); and the new periphery of Sub-Saharan Africa, Inner Asia, India & Southeast Asia (less influenced by the Persian heartland & more diverse). This second phase was driven more by commerical contact, although there was some conquest, particularly in India. The trans-saharan slave trade was big; approximately 1.7 million African slaves between 900 and 1100 were transported across the sahara.

Zheng He (Cheng Ho), the Chinese Muslim who led the great maritime expeditions was an example of the extent of islamic influence around the indian ocean. He was deliberately chosen because of his faith, so as to make trade easier around this region.

Common cultural practices

• Salat (5 daily prayers)
• Qur'an (Koran)
• Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca)
• Shariah (guide or law for the faithful)
• Umma (a community of believers)

The Islamic 'world system' was created between the 7th and 15th centuries and the period of peak Islamic influence in Eurasia was bounded by two other major periods of cultural and political efflorescence, by an earlier Chinese pre-eminence, which infused the Islamic world, and the later Renaissance in Europe, which was greatly stimulated by the period of Islamic efflorescence.