Chapter 14: The Expansive Realm Of Islam
Chapter 14 – The Expansive Realm of Islam
I. Chapter Intro A. “In 632 CE the prophet Muhammad visited his native city of Mecca from his home in exile at Medina, and in doing so he set an example that devout Muslims have sought to emulate ever since” (B&Z 355). Each year hundreds of thousands of Muslims travel to Mecca by land, sea, and air to make the hajj (“the holy pilgrimage to Mecca”) and visit the holy sites of Islam. As years went by the pilgrims decrease, but in the 9th c. it had become so popular that Muslim rulers went to the extent to meet the needs of travelers passing through their lands. When the pilgrimage season was nearing, crowds would gather at major trading centers such as Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo. There the …show more content…
The Abbasid Dynasty. The Abbasid dynasty was far more cosmopolitan than the Umayyad. The ranks were from the conquering of Arabs, but the Abbasid ruler didn’t show favor to the military aristocracy. Arabs still played a valuable role in government, but Persians, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and other rose to positions of wealth and power. The Abbasids were also different from the Umayyad because they weren’t a conquering dynasty. The Abbasids occasionally battled with the Byzantine empire, clashed frequently with nomadic people from central Asia, and in 751 defeated a Chinese army at Talas River near Samarkand. This battle was important because it ended the expansion of China’s Tang Dynasty into central Asia, and supported the spread of Islam to Turkish people. The Abbasid hardly spread their empire by conquest. The dar al- Islam continued to grow during the Abbasid era, but the caliphs didn’t have much to do with the expansion. “During the ninth and early tenth centuries, for example, largely autonomous Islamic forces from distant Tunisia mounted naval expeditions throughout the Mediterranean conquering Crete, Sicily, and the Balearic Islands while seizing territories also in Cyprus, Rhodes, Sardinia, Corsica, southern Italy, and Southern France” (B&Z
I. Chapter Intro A. “In 632 CE the prophet Muhammad visited his native city of Mecca from his home in exile at Medina, and in doing so he set an example that devout Muslims have sought to emulate ever since” (B&Z 355). Each year hundreds of thousands of Muslims travel to Mecca by land, sea, and air to make the hajj (“the holy pilgrimage to Mecca”) and visit the holy sites of Islam. As years went by the pilgrims decrease, but in the 9th c. it had become so popular that Muslim rulers went to the extent to meet the needs of travelers passing through their lands. When the pilgrimage season was nearing, crowds would gather at major trading centers such as Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo. There the …show more content…
The Abbasid Dynasty. The Abbasid dynasty was far more cosmopolitan than the Umayyad. The ranks were from the conquering of Arabs, but the Abbasid ruler didn’t show favor to the military aristocracy. Arabs still played a valuable role in government, but Persians, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and other rose to positions of wealth and power. The Abbasids were also different from the Umayyad because they weren’t a conquering dynasty. The Abbasids occasionally battled with the Byzantine empire, clashed frequently with nomadic people from central Asia, and in 751 defeated a Chinese army at Talas River near Samarkand. This battle was important because it ended the expansion of China’s Tang Dynasty into central Asia, and supported the spread of Islam to Turkish people. The Abbasid hardly spread their empire by conquest. The dar al- Islam continued to grow during the Abbasid era, but the caliphs didn’t have much to do with the expansion. “During the ninth and early tenth centuries, for example, largely autonomous Islamic forces from distant Tunisia mounted naval expeditions throughout the Mediterranean conquering Crete, Sicily, and the Balearic Islands while seizing territories also in Cyprus, Rhodes, Sardinia, Corsica, southern Italy, and Southern France” (B&Z