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History Of The Spread Of Islam

The history of the expansion of Islam goes through conquest, but also through trade and missions to the Philippines.
Dating: the advent of Islam to the present.

Map of the history of the expansion of Islam.

Summary

/ / First century
Arab expansion under Muhammad (I) and the first three caliphs , Abu Bakr (II), Omar (III) and Uthman (IV)

Born in Arabia , Islam spread in its early decades, rapidly north-east to Iraq , the Iran , senior Mesopotamia , and west to Syria , the Palestine and Egypt ( the richest provinces of the Byzantine Empire ).

Islam penetrates the Christian and Greco-Roman shortly after the death of the Prophet of Islam Mohammed. Under the Umayyads , the expansion continues, the territorial gains being made by overland to North Africa in the late seventh century until the Spanish coast in the early eighth century. In 712, the Moors crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and invaded Spain. They stopped at Poitiers in 732 troops by the mayor of the palace, Charles Martel.

Expansion into the Central Asia , Bukhara , Kabul , and they reach the border of the Indus. Contact with the Byzantine Empire , the Caspian and Caucasus in the north.

The Mediterranean Sea is controlled by the Byzantine Empire which is a threat to the Arab conquests. The Arabs built a fleet and attack Constantinople unsuccessfully three times, the Greek fire playing a role in favor of the Byzantines. The Romans remained masters of the sea and thus block the Muslim expansion, and trade with the Arabs. The sea is a boundary, but becomes a sea of trade. After a rapid conquest of a century, the boundaries do not move until the eleventh century.

When the Arabs conquered territory, they established camps and are living apart from the fruit of their conquests and tax (the jizya ) paid by non-Muslims in exchange for restricted freedom and protection. Muslims in turn pay another form of taxation, zakat (alms to the poor) that forms one of the five pillars of Islam.

The eighth century is marked by the strong resistance of the Byzantine Empire, but also by the commotion, both political and religious, inside the Arab-Muslim world. We observe the unification and the Arabization of the conquered territories (for language, currency, government) and its Islamization (schools are set up to learn the Koran , the judges are trained to spread Islamic law).

But there are many political and religious secessions. Indeed, the Abbasids founded Baghdad. So there is a movement towards the political center of Arab-Muslim has resulted in the transfer of current arrivals from the Far East, but also an imbalance because the center is from the Pan Western empire. This leads to secessions leading to the formation of three major areas where emerging caliphate.

These are areas Abbasid , Fatimid and Andalusian , so we can speak of religious rivalry between the successors of Mohammed.

In the ninth century and the tenth century, the Arab-Muslim empire no longer extends under the Abbasids.

From the seventh to the fifteenth century

Ruins of the Muslim city of Ayla ( Aqaba in Jordan ), built in 650

In East

Arabian Peninsula

We date the revelation of the prophet Mohammed about 610. The first years were difficult and Muslims are often persecuted, some migrate to the Abyssinian. In 622 , Mohammed , driven from Mecca , fled to Medina , is the year I of the Hegira. From that date, it begins to expand its audience and its power (see Muslim and Jewish tribes of Yathrib ) and manages to conquer Mecca. At his death in 632 , he conquered the entire Arabian Peninsula.

Middle East

Middle East arrival of Arabs , the Byzantine Empire was greatly weakened by its fight against the Persians Sassanid. They had taken Jerusalem in 614 and had kept fifteen years, until 629. The Muslims are so weakened by a city 638.

Middle East and Central Asia

Two of the three madrasahs of the Registan at Samarkand

The Arabs , led by the troops of General Qutayba ibn Muslim , conquered to 712 territories of present Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. They come in contact with the Chinese during the reign of the first Abbasid Abu al-Abbas in the victory of Talas. They learned Islam Peoples Central Asian practicing until the Zoroastrianism.

The Arab control of Central Asia was consolidated following the Battle of Talas (in Kyrgyzstan near the present city of Kazakhstan in Taraz ) against the Chinese in 751. This victory marked the most advanced in the east of the Arab armies was also an opportunity to acquire a number of techniques including the Chinese manufacture of paper. At the Battle of Talas, the Arabs, victorious, many Chinese are prisoners and recover the secret. They quickly understand the value of this new medium to spread the Islam , and Samarkand will be the first center of paper production in the world Muslim. Moreover, they will improve manufacturing by incorporating in its preparation rags. Harun ar-Rashid imposed the use of paper in all jurisdictions of the empire. The paper is passed through the rest of the known world and the West through the Arab conquests in Central Asia. It is found in Baghdad in 793 , to Cairo in 900 , at Xativa ( San Felipe , Spain ) in 1056 and finally in France in the early fourteenth century.

Jama Masjid or Grand Mosque at Delhi

The Arab conquerors to rub as Persia and go east, to the Indus. Some Turkish people convert to Islam. In the thirteenth century , the Islamic world is important for trade between Europe, India and China, the Arabs who at that time and until the Portuguese arrived in India, the trade monopoly on the Malabar coast. Arabs sailed a small boat sailing dhow named. Tamerlane (1336-1405), Turkish converts to Islam, said Mongol Empire founded a Turkish but in fact, whose existence will be fleeting. One of his successors, Babur restore the empire, especially India, which will be called Mogul. In India occur many whose attempt syncretism of the Mughal Emperor Akbar , who enacts one of the first edicts of tolerance.

The expansion of Islam continues to the South-East Asia and China, first through the merchants.

Africa

The troops of Ibn Nafaa Oqba come into Ifriqya , name given to this ancient Roman province, but faces resistance from Kusayla. In 683 , during a terrible battle, Oqba died and most of his men. Kusayla while walking on Kairouan , there will reign almost five years, but reinforcements from Syria, overthrew the king.

The conquest of the Maghreb and resumed soon rise again win the region Aures , Dihya ( Kahena ) manages to gather several tribes Berber and temporarily repels Muslim soldiers until Tripoli (now Libya ). Carthage is taken in 698 , the resistance is dominated from 702 and North Africa is "officially" conquered in 711. That same year, the first Arab and Berber troops pass in Andalusia , headed by Tariq ibn Ziyad. At the organizational phase of military conquest, will replace the administration of a territory still partially unruly and unconverted.

The Afro-Arab-Persian African's who for centuries traded with the Arabs themselves to Islam since the eighth century. The Swahili culture is both the result of interbreeding and the Islamization of the region.

Europe

From the seventh century , the Arabian Peninsula until the Iberian Peninsula , the expansion of Islam is based on the principle of just war or Jihad. This land, then Christian , had been worn by infighting on the heretic ( Arian in the Iberian Peninsula and Donatists in North Africa ) and, thus, long persecuted by the imperial power. This explains the welcome to the conquerors made easy by the majority of them at least in North Africa. This land became the Spanish al-Andalus country for 800 years.

Alczar of Seville , the Salon des Ambassadeurs dome.

However the currents of Christianity were first considered very negatively to the emergence of Islam. This new religion was an obstacle to their claim of universalism ("Catholic" means universal), and references to the messages of the Bible appeared to them, as well as Jews , rather like a heretical schismatic (for streams that use this concept) that such a recognition. The reference to the message Christian used in the Koran could not be transmitted to Muhammad by Christians Monophysite , dioctes or Nestorians , that is to say current deemed heretics from the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople , since the foundation of the Quran based on a strict distinction between God (as a single deity) and His Messenger (as human beings chosen by God) as Adam, Abraham, Jesus, Noah, or Mohammed. "Verse 45. When the angels said: O Mary, God gives you good news here is that a word from Him whose name is the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, illustrious in this world as in the hereafter, and one closer to God. "V.46. He will speak to people in the cradle and in manhood and he will be among the righteous." V.47. - She says: "My Lord, how would I have a son when no man has touched me? "-" So! "He said. God creates what He wills. When He decrees a thing, He only says: "Be," and it is. "(Surah Al-Imran)" For God, Jesus is like Adam He created him from dust, then He said "Be" and he was. "(Surah Al-Imran v .59)

At best, Islam appeared to them as a mild form of competition, sharing his appreciation of the one God, but denying the other hand the idea of Trinity and who also need evangelization.

Until the arrival of Turks Seljuks , however, coexistence in Jerusalem passes without major problems, despite repeated invasions of Europe by troops Moors claiming Islam. The situation changed completely with the Turkish occupation, which aims to prohibit the passage to the Christian holy places.

A voltage is then created. For the Christian West , the Moslem becomes the infidel par excellence, and Muhammad (sometimes distorted baphomet ) that of a treacherous devil who preaches in the name of god to distract the faithful from the true faith. Sometimes it is equated with the Antichrist , sometimes we simply remember a speech given by the Gospels to Jesus and warning against false prophets who come after him.

The Islamic conquest, and later the Crusades , are also motivated

  • for the warlords, by the desire to expand their territory
  • people prepared for this purpose by a perceived need to spread the true faith

The peak of Islamic civilization (in terms of scientific and technological development) is the eighth and ninth centuries.

The technical and cultural benefits accruing to the western territories from Muslim expansion are debated by historians concerning transmissions.

Progress is such that one can speak of " first renaissance , "well before the phenomenon that takes place in Italy during the fifteenth century. Conquerors are not the authors, but they have received from countries of ancient civilization they conquered by force ( Syria , Lebanon , Egypt , Mesopotamia , Roman province of Africa ). Europe then about two centuries behind the Muslim World, although cities like Venice have a status in this regard a little extraordinary. The printer will then reverse the time difference.

Battle of Poitiers , in October 732

More than the victory of 732 by Charles Martel , who repels invasion Poitiers is the failure of the siege of Constantinople , which halts the progression of the Arab armies. Moorish settlements persist long on the shores of the West European Mediterranean, Sicily was conquered from 827 , Malta in 870 , the Balearic Islands in 902.

We know the reverse movement of war just as, centuries later, in the Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula beginning to really battle of Las Navas de Tolosa , the first victory this season, and ends at the XV century by the conquest of the last Reinos Taifa in 1492 (conquest of Granada). This date is also according to Jacques Attali and Arnold Joseph Toynbee in the extermination of the last pockets of resistance in Christian Egypt. Some crusades prerequisites for regaining the tomb of Christ in Christian countries had reopened the road of spices by taking possession of the Levant as the port of Ascalon , in Palestine , the origin of the word " onion ".

The Ottoman conquest

Map of the conquests of the Ottoman Empire until 1683

In the ninth century , there was progression of Turco-Mongol peoples of the mountain region Altai and Lake Baikal to the West, these people gradually s'islamisent. Subsequently called in by the Caliph Abbasid to calm the unrest, the Turkish people called the Seljuks settled in Baghdad in the eleventh century.

Islam spread in Asia Minor and India. An Afghan prince converted to Islam establishes a sultanate in India. There are several influential families in the Turkish tribes in Asia Minor, and the Osman family, located near Istanbul , will undertake the conquest of Asia Minor and the Balkans. Constantinople fell in 1453. The expansion of Islam in Europe has been the work of the Ottomans who have achieved significant military successes in the Balkans , particularly the Albanians and the Slavs of Bosnia.

The Asian insular Southeast

Main article: Islam in Indonesia.

Contemporary Period

The Islam today has 1.5 billion believers, more than 20% of the world's population . It should be noted that there is very little religious exchanges between the North and South of the Sahel. However, the rivalry between the Sahelian countries of Black Africa, and the coastal strip, dating from well before colonization, and ethnic background.

This expansion is also a source of tension and conflict. In Cte d'Ivoire or Nigeria , for example, the opposition between the Muslim populations in the north and the Christian population of southern powers a permanent instability which may lead to armed conflict at the national level (Coast Ivory) or in any case, attacks and reprisals in the regions "mixed" (Nigeria). Religious questions are supplemented, however economic and political interests (sharing of wealth and political power) in the genesis of the clashes.

The spread of Islam outside the traditional Arab-Muslim world is also partly explained by the growth in migration from countries of Muslim religion and culture. This is the case in western countries where immigration of Muslims has grown since the 1950s. This immigration does not seem to affect the number of conversions of the local population remains minor.

Islam also continues its distribution eastward to Asia. In Indonesia in particular, Islam, arrived with Arab traders, Indians and Chinese who made stopovers in the ports of Java and Sumatra since at least the twelfth century, had a rather slow progress. Nowadays, 88% of Indonesia's population is administratively registered as Muslim.

Chronology

References

Related articles

Sources and bibliography


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