The political status of Islam, and the role Muhammad had given it as a political as well as a religious force, was reinforced in the military conquests. Another major figure in the Islamic Golden Age was al-Farabi, who wrestled with many of the same philosophical problems as al-Kindi and wrote The Perfect City, which illustrates to what degree Islam had assimilated Greek ideas and then impressed them with its own indelible stamp. Under the 'Abbasids too a whole literature was created for the use and training of the clerical classes that had come into being. Geographical unity, however, was but one factor. If Western influences are important in the Middle East, however, they are by no means paramount. It is uncertain whether the Arabs or the Indians filled this need by inventing the zero, but in any case the problem was solved: now the new system could show neatly the difference between XXX II (32) and CCC II (302). In or about the year 570 the child who would be named Muhammad and who would become the Prophet of one of the world's great religions, Islam, was born into a family belonging to a clan of Quraysh, the ruling tribe of Mecca, a city in the Hijaz region of northwestern Arabia. Another and perhaps more important reason was a religious one. Three times Muhammad pleaded his inability to do so, but each time the command was repeated. Photo: At Hama in Syria, antique wooden wheels still lift the waters of the Orontes to gardens, baths, and cooling fountains. Photo: Pool in the Patio de los Arrayanes reflects the grandeur of the incomparable Alhambra. Al-Razi, for example, was a philosopher and a mathematician as well as a physician and al-Kindi, the first Muslim philosopher to use Aristotelian logic to support Islamic dogma, also wrote on logic, philosophy, geometry, calculation, arithmetic, music, and astronomy. There were specific agencies charged with keeping pay records; others concerned themselves with the collection of taxes. Some regions never fully recovered and the Muslim empire, already weakened by internal pressures, never fully regained its previous power. Negotiations over such grievances were opened by representatives from Egypt but soon collapsed and 'Uthman was killed - an act that caused a rift in the community of Islam that has never entirely been closed. In a very real sense the Quran is the mentor of millions of Muslims, Arab and non-Arab alike; it shapes their everyday life, anchors them to a unique system of law, and inspires them by its guiding principles. Arabic became and has remained the national language - the mother tongue - of North Africa and all the Arab countries of the Middle East. The tughra later came to be used both in Turkey and by rulers of t the Arab countries as a kind of royal insignia or emblem, on coins and stamps and wherever a coat of arms or royal monogram would be used by European governments. For the most part, however, Western domination tended to benefit the nations of Europe at the expense of the Arab world. But he also introduced much needed reforms. For fifty years, in fact, Greek remained the chancery language of Syria, Egypt, and Palestine, while Pahlavi, the chancery language of the Sassanians, continued to be used in Mesopotamia and Persia. Passages of impassioned beauty are no less common than vigorous narratives. In sum, modernization has not been entirely synonymous with Westernization. Photo: Persian miniature depicts students with a teacher of astronomy - one of the sciences to which scholars of the Golden Age made great contributions. By diverting Turkish strength and blocking the Turkish-German route to the Red Sea and India, the Arab Revolt contributed substantially to the Allied victory, but it did not result in full independence for the Arab lands. Photo: The Great Mosque of the Umayyads in Damascus dates from the early eighth century and numerous works of rebuilding have not changed its fundamental character. There, at the Battle of Tours, or Poitiers, the Arabs were finally turned back by Charles Martel. During the second Mongol invasion, Tamerlane had met and very nearly annihilated another rising power: the Ottomans. Western forms have been adapted as much as they have been adopted, and healthy hybrid forms and concepts abound. One of the main distinctions between the hajj and the 'umrah is that the 'umrah can be done at any time of the year, while the hajj must be performed on specified dates. The destruction by the Mongols of many of these achievements and of much of what the Muslims had accomplished by the end of the Golden Age was a tragic loss for the world as a whole. Photo: Hajjis spend one night camped at Muzdalifah between 'Arafat and Mina. In the thirteenth century still another threat to the Muslim world appeared in the land beyond the Oxus: the Mongols. At the beginning of this period, the European presence in the Islamic world was largely based on trade. In addition to enduring the hardships of desert life, he acquired a taste for the rich language so loved by the Arabs, whose speech was their proudest art, and learned the patience and forbearance of the herdsmen, whose life of solitude he first shared and then came to understand and appreciate. Dutch, French, English, and Portuguese merchants first arrived in the late fifteenth century, attracted by the wealth that could be acquired in exporting luxury items to the European market, and encouraged by the Mughal and Safavid governments, which desired trade partners to stimulate the . Indeed, the Quran is the cornerstone on which the edifice of Islamic civilization has been built. Today, therefore, one can hear Arabic spoken - at least for religious purposes - from Mauritania on the Atlantic, across Africa and most of Asia, and as far east as Indonesia and the Philippines. In fact, by emigration to North Africa and elsewhere, many Muslims carried remnants of the Spanish era with them and were thus able to make important contributions to the material and cultural life of their adopted lands. They not only sponsored translations of Greek works, but wrote a series of important original studies of their own, one bearing the impressive title The Measurement of the Sphere, Trisection of the Angle, and Determination of Two Mean Proportionals to Form a Single Division between Two Given Quantities. Particularly important were the guilds of artisans which often cut across the divisions of religion and location. Muiawiyah was an able administrator, and even his critics concede that he possessed to a high degree the much-valued quality of hilm - a quality which may be defined as "civilized restraint" and which he himself once described in these words: I apply not my sword where my lash suffices, nor my lash where my tongue is enough. Photo: The minaret of the Great Mosque at Kairouan in Tunisia became the prototype for the majority of North African minarets. In their sweep through the Islamic world the Mongols killed or deported numerous scholars and scientists and destroyed libraries with their irreplaceable works. Among these cultures, the Islamic world stands out for having made particularly important contributions, in part because of the location of Islamic . As was customary, Muhammad as a child was sent to live for a year or two with a Bedouin family. Although a member of the Umayyad family, 'Umar had been born and raised in Medina, where his early contact with devout men had given him a concern for spiritual as well as political values. Ironically, they also put an end to the centuries-old rivalry between the Arabs and Byzantines. After the death of 'Umar an advisory council composed of Companions of the Prophet selected as the third caliph 'Uthman, during whose rule the first serious strains on Islamic unity would appear. Instead of presenting a straight historical narrative, as do the Gospels and the historical books of the Old Testament, the Quran treats, in allusive style, spiritual and practical as well as historical matters. The Islamic empire began to expand beyond the Arabian Peninsula after the death of the prophet and founder of Islam, Mohammed, in 632 CE. Reigning with wisdom and justice, they treated Christians and Jews with tolerance, with the result that many embraced Islam. In the forefront was Saudi Arabia, the heartland of Islam, and the site of the momentous events which initiated Islamic history fourteen centuries ago. It extends over 2,000 miles from the Black Sea in the north to the Arabian Sea in the south, and about 1,000 miles from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the mountains of Iran. Scholars, for example, in collecting and reexamining the hadith, or "traditions" - the sayings and actions of the Prophet - compiled immense biographical detail about the Prophet and other information, historic and linguistic, about the Prophet's era. Another unusual variation of calligraphy, not often used nowadays, is the style called muthanna (Arabic for "doubled"). Islamic Empire to 750 CE. He wrote (originally cited in Robert Gottfried's Black Death):. Not everyone accepted God's message transmitted through Muhammad. Muhammad help to spread the religion of Islam. The inimitability of the Quran has crystallized in the Muslim view of i'jaz or "impossibility," which holds that the style of the Quran, being divine, cannot be imitated: any attempt to do so is doomed to failure. What the envoys saw and heard had impressed them and they had invited Muhammad to settle in Medina. And while Sunnis consider the caliph a guardian of the shari'ah, the religious law, the Shi'is see the imam as a trustee inheriting and interpreting the Prophet's spiritual knowledge. Immigration nevertheless continued and in the 1930s - with the rise of Adolf Hitler - and after World War II, Jewish immigration increased still further. 'Abbasid writers also developed new a genres of literature such as adab, the embodiment of sensible counsel, sometimes in the form of animal fables; a typical example is Kalilah wa-Dimnah, translated by Ibn al-Muqaffa' from a Pahlavi version of an Indian work. Then, in his forties he began to retire to meditate in a cave on Mount Hira outside of Mecca, where the first of the great events of Islam took place. Muslims believe that Muhammad is the last in a line of prophets that includes Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and that the Quran is the . And what is after them, All seemed quiet on these two fronts until the sudden rise of Islam early in the 7 th century. He pushed forward with the pacification of Persia, continued to defend the Muslim state against the Byzantines, added what is now Libya to the empire, and subjugated most of Armenia. Like the Umayyads who preceded him, 'Abd al-Malik was forced to devote a substantial part of his reign to political problems. Photo: Cursive script on Quran stand of wood, dated 1360, a fine example of Mongol art from western Turkestan. Later, in the early fall of 622, he learned of a plot to murder him and, with his closest friend, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, set off to join the emigrants. 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