Mentioning Islam in mainstream media can make it sound as if it is monolithic and eternal. But it’s actually a much newer and less uniform phenomenon than many imagine, especially for those living outside the Middle East. Its history as a religion dates back “only” to the 7th century, when it was founded by the Prophet Muhammad. Islam as a powerhouse of large-scale civilization took some time to come into its own, but it has continued to divide, transform, decline, and regenerate ever since. Open Culture recently featured a video on our YouTube channel. Why Cover 1,000 years of medieval European history in 20 minutes. The one above does So was the first millennium of the Islamic world, which ended with the rise of the Ottoman Empire.
Muhammad lived another ten years after uniting the previously polytheistic Arab tribes under his new faith. His death in 632 was the last time all followers of Islam were on the same page. At that time, the title was caliphor successors, were defined, and the first four caliphs after Muhammad held power for 30 years, during which time the first Islamic states emerged.
Their territory, known as the Caliphate, expanded widely outward beyond the Arabian Peninsula and into the territories of the Byzantine and Sassanid empires. Supporters of early caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib claimed that he was the true successor of Islam, while detractors argued that he was not. Eventually, the former group became known as Shiites and the latter as Sunnis, and today virtually everyone has heard of both sides of the divide.
Although not well known to the general public, the Umayyads, Abbasids, Buyayids, and Fatimids were all major figures in the expansion of Islam into the Middle Ages. But still well-known place names such as Damascus, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Constantinople (or, as we know them, istanbul) are equally important in these chapters of the Islamic story, and without understanding that religion it is impossible to understand the diverse forms that civilization has taken in those places and in wider areas of the world around them. The crisis of authority that began after Muhammad’s death has, in some ways, continued for nearly fourteen centuries now, more than enough to characterize the Islamic world. It would take a prophet to know what that society would look like in the next millennium.
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Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages ​​and cultures. he is the author of the newsletter books about cities books as well Home page (I won’t summarize Korea) and korean newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
