THE DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION

 The history of Islam is the history of the Muslim people.

 They have impacted political history, economic history, and military history.

 Following its origin in Mecca and Medina, the Islamic world expanded to include people
of the Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization.

 Three centuries after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the Arab Caliphates
extended from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to Central Asia in the east.

 The subsequent empires of the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Ghaznavids, Seljuqs,

 The Islamic civilization gave rise to many centers of culture and science and produced
notable scientists, astronomers, mathematicians, doctors, nurses and philosophers
during the Golden Age of Islam.

 Technology flourished; there was investment in economic infrastructure, such as

 The importance of reading the Qur'an produced a comparatively high level of literacy in
the general populace.

 In the later Middle Ages, destructive Mongol invasions from the East, and the loss of
population in the Black Death, greatly weakened the traditional centre of the Islamic
world, stretching from Persia to Egypt.

 The Ottoman Empire was able to conquer most Arabic-speaking areas, creating an
Islamic world power again, although one that was unable to master the challenges of
the Early Modern period.

 Later, in modern history (18th and 19th centuries), many Islamic regions fell under the
influence of European Great powers.

 After the First World War, Ottoman territories (a Central Powers member) were
partitioned into several nations under the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres.

 Modern interpretations of Islamic texts advocate the unification of religion and state
ruled by a Caliph.

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  Such a polity has not existed since the early Islamic city-states and universal imperial
period beginnings.

 Although affected by ideologies such as communism during much of the 20th century,
the Islamic identity and the dominance of Islam on political issues intensified during the
early 21st century.

 Global interests in Islamic regions, international conflicts and globalization changed the
influence of Islam on the 21st century.

ABOUT PROPHET MOHAMED

 He was born at Mecca and raised by family of modest means. His father had died in the
year of his birth and his mother died when he was 6 years old.
 At the time of Muhammad's birth, Mecca was one of the most prosperous caravan
cities.

 However, Mecca was still tied to the traditional social and religious life of the Arabian
world. , it was governed by the tribal societies of the desert.

 Membership in the tribe was determined by blood descent.

 In such an order, the interests of the individual were always subordinate to those of the
group or tribe.

 Each tribe worshipped its own gods in the form of objects from nature (moon, sky, dog,
cat, ram) but all Arabs worshipped one object in common: the Kaaba, a large black
stone enshrined at Mecca.

 (FB) It was the Kaaba that made Mecca significant as a place of worship and pilgrimage.

 As a youth, Muhammad worked as a merchant's assistant, traveling the major trade

 When he was 25, he married the widow of a wealthy merchant and became a man of
means. He also became a kind of social activist, critical of Meccan materialism,
paganism, and the unjust treatment of the poor and needy.

 Muhammad worked hard at his career but like so many "saviors" and prophets,
Muhammad was plagued by doubts. His doubt increased to such an extent that he left
Meccan society and lived a life of isolation in the desert.

 In 610, and at the age of 40, he received his first revelation and began to preach. He
believed his revelations came directly from God.

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  A God who spoke to him through the angel Gabriel, who recited God's word to him at
irregular intervals.

 These revelations grew into the Qur'an which his followers compiled between 650 and
651.

 The basic message Muhammad received was a summons to all Arabs to submit to God's
will.

ABOUT ISLAM

 (FB) Islam means "submission to the will of God." 

 The Qur'an also recognized Jesus Christ as a prophet.

 Like Judaism, Islam was a monotheistic and theocratic religion, not a Trinitarian one like
Christianity.

 The basic beliefs of Muhammad's religion were:

o that God is good and omnipotent,

o that God will judge all men on the last day and assign them their place in either
Heaven or Hell,

o that men should thank God for making the world as it is,

o that God expects men to be generous with their wealth, and

o that Muhammad was a prophet sent by God to teach men and warn them of the
last judgment.

o It ought to be clear that many of these beliefs are similar to those of the Judeo-
Christian tradition.

 Muhammad's religion grew as a result of the social and economic conditions of Mecca
itself.

 Christianity was produced in an urban environment while the faith of Muhammad was
fashioned from his life in the desert.

 For Muhammad, there were also five obligations which were essential to his faith:

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  (1) the profession of faith ¨C there is no God but Allah and Muhammad was the last
prophet,

 (2) prayers had to be uttered five times daily,

 (3) the giving of alms, or charity,

 (4) fasting, and

 (5) the pilgrimage to Mecca.

 These laws are recorded in the Qur'an, a book which contains all of the revelations of
Muhammad.

 Muhammad believed that God had chosen him to be the last prophet.

 Abraham and Moses were prophets. So too was Jesus Christ.

 But Muhammad believed that Jesus was not the son of God.

 The Jews and Christians, according to Muhammad, had strayed from the true faith, a
faith which Muhammad believed he had had revealed to him by the angel Gabriel.

 It was his task to convert them and bring them back to the true word.

 Despite the faith of his flock, Muhammad met with disappointment as he preached his
religion at Mecca.

 Jews and Christians failed to convert.

 His faith was totally rejected by the authorities at Mecca.

 He left for the northern city of Medina in the year 622.

 The journey to Medina ¨ the hegira (the "breaking of former ties") ¨ became the true
foundation of the Islamic faith.

 The hegira also marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar.

GOLDEN AGE OF ISLAM

 The period of roughly 750-1000 C.E. is known as a cultural golden age for Islam. 
 During this period, the vigorous desert tribesman from Arabia assimilated the older
cultures of the Near East and Mediterranean and infused new life into them.

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 The basis for such a golden age was the orderliness and resulting prosperity that Arab
rule brought the empire from India to the Atlantic. 

 The Arabs flourished as middlemen in a trade that involved silks and porcelains from
China, gems and spices from India, slaves and gold from Africa, and slaves and furs from
Europe. 

 The stability and range of this trade are seen by a custom of writing letters of credit that
would be honored in other cities of the empire. 

 (FB) The Arab word for this, sakk, is the origin for our word "cheque". 

 The Italian city-states would adopt these practices to become the premier centers of
business in Europe in later centuries.

 There were three main cultures the Arabs assimilated and fused into what we call
Muslim civilization:  Indian, Persian, and Greek. 

 (FB) From India, the Arabs picked up two concepts essential to the evolution of
mathematics: the place value digit and zero.  Both of these were vital to being able to do
much more complex calculations than the old system of using letters to represent
numbers.

 From the Persians, the Arabs inherited the full scope of Near Eastern cultures that
extended back to the early days of Sumer.

 Much of Muslim art and literature was heavily influenced by Persia.

 The classic One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, with such tales as Sinbad the Sailor
and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, dates from this period. 

 Poetry also flourished, although it should be noted that the Arabs already had a strong
poetic tradition before the conquests. 

 Even such games as Backgammon, Chess, and Polo came to Islamic civilization by way of
Persia.

 The Greeks also contributed substantially to Muslim culture in the fields of philosophy,
math, science, and architecture. 

 However, the Muslims were great builders who owed much of their architectural skill
and style to the Greeks.

 It takes little imagination to see the relationship between the dome of a Moslem
mosque and the dome of a Byzantine church such as the Hagia Sophia.

 Arab rule and civilization had important results by way of providing economic stability
and the spread of civilization. 

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 In time, it would pass many of its ideas to India, modern Islamic culture, and even
Western Europe where they would be instrumental in the flowering of culture known as
the Italian Renaissance.

 Modern science, received its legacy of Greek science and math not directly from the
Greeks, but by way of Islam. 

 (FB) Indeed, one of Islam's greatest cultural legacies was the preservation of Greek
philosophy, math, and science. 

 Islam and the rise of the Arab empire affected Arab math and science in two ways.   First
of all, rather than rejecting ancient Greek learning, Muslim culture remained quite open
to it. 

 The story goes that the caliph al-Ma'mun had a dream where the Greek philosopher
Aristotle assured him that there was no conflict between reason and faith.  This
revelation led al-Ma'mun to start gathering the works of the Greek philosophers.

 Second, the rise of their empire directly exposed the Arabs to Byzantine and Persian
cultures that still carried on ancient scholarship.  Therefore, the Arabs were both willing
and able to absorb Greek math and science.

 There were three things the Arabs needed to do: get copies of the Greek texts, translate
them, and provide funding for these endeavors. 

 As far as getting the books was concerned, many of them had fallen into Arab hands
through conquest.  However, there were still many texts that they needed. 

 Sometimes they would negotiate with the Byzantines for copies of these books. 

 At other times, raids into Byzantine territory would actually be aimed at seizing such
works along with more material plunder.

 Once these works had been gathered, the Arabs needed to translate them into Arabic.

 Islam attracted a large number of converts, among them many men educated in Greek. 

 However, since the Koran at that time was written only in Arabic, new converts had to
learn that language in order to read Islam's holy book.  As a result, Islam's appeal
created a number of brilliant translators.

 Funding largely came from the caliphs themselves

 All this led to a level of scholarship that was unsurpassed in its day. 

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 Since books were hand written, and thus prone to a growing number of mistakes as
each generation of books was copied, the translators would gather as many copies of a
particular book as they could.  They would then compare these texts to see which was
probably closest version to the original text. 

 Just compiling such critical texts alone was one of Islam's greatest legacies to us.

 Starting with this excellent base of Greek knowledge, the Arabs made their own
advances in the fields of Mathematics, medicine, and physics. 

 Since Islam also encompassed part of India, its math was assimilated into the larger
body of mathematical knowledge and passed on to us. 

 The Muslims embraced Greek geometry wholeheartedly.  One need only look at Islamic
art and architecture to see their fascination with various geometric shapes and the
ingenious things they could do with them. 

 The religious ban on portraying the human figure certainly spurred Muslim art to excel
in this direction.

 However, the Muslims did not just slavishly copy the Greeks.  Rather, they made their
own original contributions in the fields of mathematics, medicine, physics and art.

 The mathematician al-Khwarizmi wrote the first textbook on algebra and was probably
the first to solve quadratic equations with two variables. 

 In future centuries his textbook would be the basis for European algebra. .

 The Arabs also excelled in medicine. They used animal gut for suturing wounds and
developed mercurial ointments for treating skin and eye diseases.  Keep in mind that
the accomplishments of Muslim science were done without the microscope. 

 Muslim scientists also made advances in physics and optics, anticipating later European
theories on specific gravity and developing formulae for figuring specific and absolute
weights of objects. 

 They calculated the size of the earth to an unprecedented degree of accuracy, though
they still followed Aristotle in their belief in the geocentric (earth centered) universe. 

 Muslim scientists disproved the Greek theory that light emanates from the eye to the
object perceived. 

 Muslim civilization peaked around 1000 C.E.  But, as with other civilizations, a higher
level of culture tended to make the Arabs soft and open to attack.

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  Arab civilization was also running into problems of internal decay that triggered two
waves of invasions. 

 First came the Seljuk Turks out of Central Asia.  Although they did adopt Islam & restore
some of its unity, the arrival of these Asiatic nomads initially had a somewhat disruptive
effect on Arab culture and its attitudes toward the outside world. 

 Even more upsetting in this respect were the Crusades, wars of conquest waged by
Christians from Western Europe to recover Palestine for their faith. 

 Unlike the Turks, the Crusaders were not about to convert to Islam and were much
more hostile and destructive of Arab civilization, especially in the early years of the
crusading era. 

 Finally, the most destructive invasions of all came from the Mongol onslaught in the
1200's.

 The wholesale massacres of populations and destruction of cities, dealt a terrible blow
to Islamic civilization. 

 These invasions were such a shock to the Arabs that Muslim culture became much more
resistant to new ideas and foreign influences, making it more conservative and inward
looking.

 This helped cause a religious reaction against putting too much emphasis on science and
reason and too little emphasis on faith. 

 Except for the House of Wisdom, science and learning were largely supported by
religious institutions and thus subject to their conservative influences. 

 There arose a mystical movement known as Sufism, which discredited learning and
reason, believing in a more direct and mystical experience with God.  From this point on,
Muslim science and math started to stagnate.

 However, Islamic science spread to Western Europe and survived. 

 By the 1100's, translations of Arabic texts were making their way from Muslim Spain
into European universities.

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