History of Islam

The history of Islam concerns the political, social, economic and developments of Islamicate civilization. Despite concerns about the reliability of early sources, most historians believe that Islam originated in Mecca and Medina at the start of the 7th century CE, approximately 600 years after the founding of Christianity. Muslims, however, believe that it did not start with Muhammad, but that it was the original faith of others whom they regard as prophets, such as Jesus, David, Moses, Abraham, Noah and Adam. In 610 CE, Muhammad began receiving what Muslims consider to be divine revelations. Muhammad's message won over a handful of followers and was met with increasing opposition from Meccan notables. In 622, a few years after losing protection with the death of his influential uncle Abu Talib, Muhammad migrated to the city of Yathrib (now known as Medina). With Muhammad's death in 632, disagreement broke out over who would succeed him as leader of the Muslim community. By the 8th century, the Umayyad Caliphate extended from Iberia in the west to the Indus River in the east. Polities such as those ruled by the Umayyads (in the Middle East and later in Iberia), Abbasids, Fatimids, and Mamluks were among the most influential powers in the world. The Islamic Golden Age gave rise to many centers of culture and science and produced notable astronomers, mathematicians, doctors and philosophers during the Middle Ages. By the early 13th century, the Delhi Sultanate conquered much of the northern Indian subcontinent, while Turkic dynasties like the Sultanate of Rum and Artuqids conquered much of Anatolia from the Byzantine Empire throughout the 11th and 12th centuries. In the 13th and 14th centuries, destructive Mongol invasions and those of Tamerlane from the East, along with the loss of population in the Black Death, greatly weakened the traditional centers of the Islamic world, stretching from Persia to Egypt. Islamic Iberia was gradually conquered by Christian forces during the Reconquista. Nonetheless, in the Early Modern period, the Islamic Gunpowder Empires -- the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Iran and Mughal India -- emerged as great world powers. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, most of the Islamic world fell under the influence or direct control of European 'Great Powers.' Their efforts to win independence and build modern nation-states over the course of the last two centuries continue to reverberate to the present day, as well as fuel conflict-zones in regions such as Palestine, Kashmir, Xinjiang, Chechnya, Bosnia and Myanmar. The following timeline can serve as a rough visual guide to the most important polities in the Islamic world prior to the First World War. It covers major historical centers of power and culture, including Arabia, Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), Persia (modern Iran), Levant (modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel/Palestine), Egypt, Maghreb (north-west Africa), al-Andalus (Iberia), Transoxania (Central Asia), Hindustan (including modern Pakistan, North India and Bangladesh), and Anatolia (modern Turkey). It is necessarily an approximation, since rule over some regions was sometimes divided among different centers of power, and authority in larger polities was often distributed among several dynasties. For example, during the later stages of the Abbasid Caliphate, even the capital city of Baghdad was effectively ruled by other dynasties such as the Buyyids and the Seljuks, while the Ottomans commonly delegated executive authority over outlying provinces to local potentates, such as the Deys of Algiers, the Beys of Tunis, and the Mamluks of Iraq. The study of the earliest periods in Islamic history is made difficult by a lack of sources. For example, the most important historiographical source for the origins of Islam is the work of al-Tabari. While al-Tabari was an excellent historian by the standards of his time and place, use of his work as a source is problematic for two reasons. For one, his style of historical writing permitted liberal use of mythical, legendary, stereotyped, distorted, and polemical presentations of its subject matter. Second, al-Tabari's descriptions of the beginning of Islam post-date the events by a large amount of time, al-Tabari having died in 923. Differing views about how to deal with the available sources has led to the development of four different approaches to the history of early Islam. All four methods have some level of support today. The descriptive method uses the outlines of Islamic traditions, while being adjusted for the stories of miracles and faith-centred claims within those sources. Edward Gibbon and Gustav Weil represent some of the first historians following the descriptive method. On the source critical method, a comparison of all the sources is sought in order to identify which informants to the sources are weak and thereby distinguish spurious material. The work of William Montgomery Watt and that of Wilferd Madelung are two source critical examples. On the tradition critical method, the sources are believed to be based on oral traditions with unclear origins and transmission history, and so are treated very cautiously. Ignaz Goldziher was the pioneer of the tradition critical method, and Uri Rubin gives a contemporary example. The skeptical method doubts nearly all of the material in the traditional sources, regarding any possible historical core as too difficult to decipher from distorted and fabricated material. An early example of the sceptical method was the work of John Wansbrough.