On January 2, 1492 - the year they sent Columbus to America - Ferdinand and Isabella hoisted the banner of Christian Spain above the Alhambra and Boabdil, the last Muslim king, rode weeping into exile with the bitter envoi from his aged mother, "Weep like a woman for the city you would not defend like a man!". Here, you will also find the links to the most visited sections of IslamiCity, such as Prayer times, Hijri Converter, Phonetic Search, Quran Section, IslamiCity Bazar and more. In this manner the Indians would render Roman CCC XX 111 as: 3 2 3. Persia and Byzantium faced the challenge of a new faith that had a very active political component. Abu Bakr's caliphate was short but important. Until that time the Egyptian, Greek, and other cultures used their own numerals in a manner similar to that of the Romans. In Iran, for example, there came into use a particularly graceful and delicate script called ta'liq, in which the horizontal strokes of the letters are elongated and which is often written at an angle across the page. '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. The Dome was built in 780, while the mosque was completed in 715. The conflict over Palestine actually goes back to 1896, when Theodor Herzl published a pamphlet called Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State"), in which he advocated British-backed Jewish colonization in Argentina or Palestine - with the hope of eventually creating a sovereign Jewish state. The system of numeration employed throughout the greater part of the world today was probably developed in India, but because it was the Arabs who transmitted this system to the West the numerals it uses have come to be called Arabic. The Middle East would be a tremendous place to begin this process, but the fact is there are many situations across the globe . Instead, there is the ummah - the community of the believers - whose cohesion is guaranteed by the sacred law. At their peak they ruled North Africa, the Red Sea coast, Yemen, Palestine, and parts of Syria. In 1917, however, Lord Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, issued the Baltour Declaration, which promised British support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine providing that "nothing shall he done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities" - a reference to the Arabs, who then were 92 percent of the population. But at the beginning, when its institutions were responsive to the needs of the people and the state, the Ottoman Empire was a model of administrative efficiency. Because Islam became the predominant religion of . Even in recreation and amusement, Western influences are strong. As societies become larger and more complex, its people become more likely to join monotheistic religions. He wrote (originally cited in Robert Gottfried's Black Death):. Its restoration, begun in the early years of this century, is still under way. Photo: The mosque of Bibi Khanum named for Tamerlane's favorite wife, was once the most imposing building of Samarkand. They were called ghazis, warriors for the faith, and their highest ambition was to die in battle for their adopted religion. In 1184 (580 H) a traveller described it as being like an enormous palace in size. The most imposing of the many fortresses built by the Crusaders the elegant Krak des Chevaliers in Syria (top) held out against the Muslims for over a century and a half. In the wake of the Balfour Declaration, and during the British mandate, Jewish immigration increased. Kuran: There are problems that are rooted in traditional Islamic law, which govern business until the 20th century that have kept businesses small and short-lived. If you hold fast to this you will never go astray.". Clearly, the number intended was not thirty-two but three hundred and two. Although the religious authority of the 'Abbasid caliphate remained unchallenged, the next four centuries saw political power dispersed among a large number of independent states: Tahirids, Saffarids, Samanids, Buwayhids, Ziyarids, and Ghaznavids in the east; Hamdanids in Syria and northern Mesopotamia; and Tulunids, Ikhshidids, and Fatimids in Egypt. During this period, from 750 to 950, the territory of the Muslim Empire encompassed present-day Iran, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Palestine, North Africa, Spain, and parts of Turkey and drew to Baghdad peoples of all those lands in an unparalleled cross-fertilization of once isolated intellectual traditions. He also destroyed the idols in the Ka'bah, to put an end forever to pagan practices there. Even where Arabic did not become the national language, it became the language of religion wherever Islam became established, since the Quran is written in Arabic, the Profession of Faith is to be spoken in . At the beginning of this period, the European presence in the Islamic world was largely based on trade. Led by Genghis Khan, a confederation of nomadic tribes which had already conquered China now attacked the Muslims. Then, in 1497, five years after Ferdinand and Isabella ended Islamic rule in Spain, Vasco da Gama led a fleet of four Portuguese ships around Africa and in 1498 found a new sea route to India from Europe. The opinions expressed herein, through this post or comments, contain positions and viewpoints that are not necessarily those of IslamiCity. It must also be remembered that the Quran was originally transmitted orally to the faithful and that the Holy Text is not meant to be read only in silence. Photo: This tughra (monogram or insignia) of the Ottoman Sultan Abdu Hamid shows the three elongated vertical strokes which are characteristic of this style. He directed the cleaning and reopening of the canals that irrigated the Tigris-Euphrates Valley - a key to the prosperity of Mesopotamia since the time of the Sumerians - introduced the use of the Indian water buffalo in the riverine marshes, and minted a standard coinage which replaced the Byzantine and Sassanid coins, until then the sole currencies in circulation. Because Islamic rule unified much of the Eastern world, thus abolishing many boundaries, trade was freer, safer, and more extensive than it had been since the time of Alexander the Great. Islam, in Arabic, means "submission" - submission to the will of God. The important office of wazir or vizier, chief counselor, may well have developed from Sassanid models. The struggle with the Sassanid realm had opened in 687 at al-Qadisiyah, near Ctesiphon in Iraq, where Muslim cavalry had successfully coped with elephants used by the Persians as a kind of primitive tank. The volunteers - a mixed assemblage of kings, nobles, mercenaries, and adventurers - had to cross thousands of miles of unfamiliar and hostile country and conquer lands of whose strength they had no conception. The month of fasting is also joyous. The Roman numeral CCC II, for instance, presented a problem. Called Banu Musa - "the sons of Musa" - these three men, Muhammad, Ahmad, and al-Hasan, devoted their lives and fortunes to the quest for knowledge. Marwan ibn Muhammad, the last Umayyad caliph, was defeated and the Syrians, still loyal to the Umayyads, were put to rout. In the cities, Arab intellectuals debated whether modernization or a return to their roots would be the more effective path to the removal of foreign dominance and, consequently, to independence. Most important of all, he introduced Arabic as the language of administration, replacing Greek and Pahlavi. Some of the most beautiful existing buildings in the Muslim world were constructed at their instigation - buildings such as the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and the lovely country palaces in the deserts of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. In order to settle the conflict, numerous United Nations Resolutions have been passed calling for peace, the return of the refugees to their homes, Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, and the establishment of permanent boundaries. Establishment of a national home did not imply a Jewish state, the commission said. Al-Mamun died in 833, in the town of Tarsus, and was succeeded by his brother, al-Mu'tasim, under whose rule the symptoms of decline that had manifested themselves earlier grew steadily worse. Just a short time before, Muhammad had to leave the city of his birth in fear of his life. To make things more difficult, the Prophet had not left clear instructions as to who should lead the community after his death. The Arabic alphabet has twenty-eight letters (additional letters have been added to serve the needs of non-Arabic languages that use the Arabic script, such as those of Iran and Pakistan), and each of the letters may have up to four different forms. No description, however, can fully capture the overwhelming importance of the Quran to Muslims. But then, in 1380, a new Turko-Mongol confederation was hammered together by another world conqueror: Tamerlane, who claimed descent from Genghis Khan. Not everyone accepted God's message transmitted through Muhammad. Have a blessed Ramadan! Non-Muslims are often struck by the range of styles found in the Quran. After its development in Turkey, it spread to the Arab countries and is in use today for formal documents and also as architectural decoration. It is the final revelation, as Muhammad is regarded as the final prophet - 'the Seal of the Prophets.". Extending from Central Asia to the Byzantine marches in Asia Minor, the Seljuk state under its first three sultans- Tughril Beg, Alp-Arslan, and Malikshah- established a highly cohesive, well-administered Sunni state under the nominal authority of the 'Abbasid caliphs at Baghdad. The religion of Islam began in the Middle East during the early 600s CE. It was by no means theoretical speculation; many of the dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts constructed at this time throughout the Islamic world still survive. The Venetians and Genoese established trading colonies in Egypt, and luxury goods of the East found their way to European markets. The most important of the Baghdad hospitals was that established in 982 (372 H) by the ruler `Adud al-Dawlah. At Damascus, for example, the Muslim leader Khalid ibn al-Walid signed a treaty which read as follows: This is what Khalid ibn al-Walid would grant to the inhabitants of Damascus if he enters therein: he promises to give them security for their lives, property and churches. The death of Muhammad was a profound loss. if ( blp_cancelWowEffect || blp_isSafari ) { // blp_isSafari vars comes from the global js variable defined at blp-js-library.js Militarily formidable, they were also the first power to defeat the Mongols in open combat when, in 1260, the Mongols moved against Palestine and Egypt. Of the three great civilizations of western Eurasia and North Africa, that of Christian Europe began as the least developed in virtually all aspects of material and intellectual culture, well behind the Islamic states and Byzantium. The greatest scientist of the medieval world was a 10th century Arab by the name of Ibn al-Haytham. The path of those whom Thou hast favored; not the path of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray. By the tenth century, Cordoba could boast of a population of some 500,000, compared to about 38,000 in Paris. Cordoba also had some 900 public baths, Europe's first street lights and, five miles outside the city, the caliphal residence, Madinat al-Zahra. The first four caliphs had been without exception Companions of the Prophet - pious, sincere men who had lived no differently from their neighbors and who preserved the simple habits of their ancestors despite the massive influx of wealth from the conquered territories. Muslims believe that theirs is the only true faith. The scholars at Bayt al-Hikmah also contributed to geometry, a study recommended by Ibn Khaldun, the great North African historian, because "it enlightens the intelligence of the man who cultivates it and gives him the habit of thinking exactly." Because there was considerable interest in new varieties - for nutritive and medicinal purposes - many new plants were introduced: sorghum, for example, which had recently been discovered in Africa. They were repulsed, but by 1444 they had advanced into Greece and Albania, leaving Constantinople isolated though unconquered. This is a great article i ever seen Ma.Shaa.Allah. This is not to say that the Muslims were not brave and that the conviction that they were doing Allah's will was not significant: it clearly was. Naskhi, the rounded script, remained in use and from it most of the many later styles of Arabic calligraphy have been developed. Tamerlane died on his way to conquer China, and his empire melted away. In fact, it's hard to . In fact, the crusades shocked the Muslim world. Advertisement. With the shift to Damascus much was changed. Photo: A mosque in Washington, D.C., a landmark for millions of Muslims in North America. More than 60 percent of the Muslim population lives not in the Middle East, but in Asia. But he also introduced much needed reforms. Islam has helped to shape the culture from the language, to customs, to business, to . On the side of Medina from which attack was expected they dug a trench too deep for the Meccan cavalry to clear without exposing itself to the archers posted behind earthworks on the Medina side. Yet these advances were, in fact, of enduring significance to mankind as a whole. 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. Alerted by a chain of signal fires stretching from Iraq to Egypt, the Mamluks were able to marshal their forces in time to meet, and crush, the Mongols at 'Ayn Jalut near Nazareth in Palestine. Muhammad was also the exemplar of the teachings he had brought them from God: the teachings of the Quran, which, for centuries, have guided the thought and action, the faith and conduct, of innumerable men and women, and which ushered in a distinctive era in the history of mankind. Another and perhaps more important reason was a religious one. Only one man of importance escaped the disaster - 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiyah al-Dakhil, a young prince who with a loyal servant fled to Spain and in 756 set up an Umayyad Dynasty there. Photo: Facing al-Gharbiyah, the western minaret, a muezzin at the Umayyad Mosque calls believers to prayer. Photo: Symbol of the oneness and centrality of God, the Ka'bah stands in the courtyard of Mecca's Sacred Mosque where at the season of the hajj the faithful gather for rituals that precede and end their pilgrimage. Even the various reform movements were balked, and with the invasion of Egypt in 1798 by France it became obvious that the once powerful empire was weakening. Written in noble language, this Holy Text has done more than move multitudes to tears and ecstasy; it has also, for almost fourteen hundred years, illuminated the lives of Muslims with its eloquent message of uncompromising monotheism, human dignity, righteous living, individual responsibility, and social justice. But, bit by bit, they had to retreat, first from northern Spain, then from central Spain. The impact of World War I is still evident today. After an inconclusive siege, the Meccans were forced to retire. Everything under IslamiCity is categorized under the major hubs you see in this panel. This consists of two simple white seamless garments symbolizing a state of purity; in donning it pilgrims make a declaration of pilgrimage and pronounce a devotional utterance called the talbiyah: "Here I am, O God, at Thy Service" - in Arabic the joyous cry "Labbayk!" Muslims regard the Quran as untranslatable; the language in which it was revealed - Arabic - is inseparable from its message and Muslims everywhere, no matter what their native tongue, must learn Arabic to read the Sacred Book and to perform their worship. The orphan was consigned to the care of his grandfather, the head of the clan of Hashim. This is not really a type of script in itself but consists of a text in one of the standard scripts such as naskhi worked into a pattern in which one half is a mirror image of the other. As the Prophet said, "The best of prayers is the prayer of the Day of 'Arafat.". To Arab historians, the Crusaders were a minor irritant, their invasion one more barbarian incursion, not nearly as serious a threat as the Mongols were to prove in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Jonathan P. Berkey, The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800, 2003. The Muslims also traded medicines, an offshoot of 'Abbasid advances in medical science, as well as paper and sugar. Tahir asserted his independence of the central government by omitting mention of the caliph's name in the mosque on Friday and by striking his own coins - acts which became the standard ways of expressing political independence. 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. 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. Photo: In the muthanna or "doubled" style of calligraphy shown on the left each half of the design is a mirror image of the other. The other, called naskhi, was more rounded and cursive and was used for letters, business documents, and wherever speed rather than elaborate formalism was needed. Nevertheless, the decline continued. The traditional cloths were wool and linen - the latter an Egyptian specialty since ancient times - but cotton, which was introduced into upper Iraq about the time of the Prophet, later spread with Islam around the Mediterranean, to Syria, North Africa, Spain, Sicily, Cyprus, and Crete. The scholars at the House of Wisdom, unlike their modern counterparts, did not "specialize." Islam numbers many millions of adherents outside the Middle Eastern countries: Photo: Sunset silhouettes a minaret in Sarajevo, a city of some eighty mosques that bear witness to the long Islamic heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina. His innovations left all enduring imprint on social welfare, taxation, and the financial and administrative fabric of the growing empire. Photo: Miniature from the Shah-Nameh (Book of Kings), illustrating the epic of Persian poet Firdausi. Civilization both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. To obtain food, for example, Baghdad had to import wheat from Syria and Egypt, rice from the Fayyum in Egypt, southern Morocco, and Spain, and olive oil from Tunisia. The Merciful, the Compassionate; Abu Bakr recognized the danger and entrusted the task of gathering the revelations to Zayd ibn Thabit, who as the chief scribe of the Prophet was the person to whom Muhammad frequently dictated the revelations in his lifetime. But sharp ideological and ethnic differences within the region create conflict today. The hajj proper must be made between the eighth and thirteenth days of the 12th month - Dhu al-Hijjah - of the Muslim year, but in one sense it begins when a Muslim approaches Mecca, bathes, trims his nails and hair, discards jewelry and headgear, and puts on the ihram dress. Ethnic Arabs comprise only about 15-18 percent of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. To his followers this simple man from Mecca was far more than a beloved friend, far more than a gifted administrator, far more than the revered leader who had forged a new state from clusters of warring tribes. Although the Suez Canal, for example, has been of immense value to Egypt, the profits for nearly a century went to European shareholders in the company that managed the canal. and A.D. 70. In the wake of the Ridda wars, and of the Arabs' sudden conquest of most of the Near East, the new religion became identified more sharply as a monotheism for the Arab people. Considered dispassionately, the venture was impossible. Read more. Within a century, Muslims had conquered most of the Middle East and parts of Spain, and had created a unified economic sphere. Arabic became and has remained the national language - the mother tongue - of North Africa and all the Arab countries of the Middle East. These traditions not only provided the historical context for many of the surahs - thus contributing to their more exact explication - but also contained a wide variety of subsidiary information on the practice, life, and legal rulings of the Prophet and his companions. Muslims believe that their sacred text, the Quran, is the absolute word of God as it was revealed to the prophet Muhammad. The caliphate, they say, must remain within the family of the Prophet - with 'Ali the first valid caliph. 'Umar, who served as caliph for ten years, ended his rule with a significant victory over the Persian Empire. Most Arab countries, for example, have embraced the concept of the sovereign nation-state and Western patterns of political administration: parliaments, political parties, and constitutions. Photo: The Crusader castle at Sidon in Lebanon was abandoned after the final defeat of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the Arabic language Muslim means, "one who submits to God (or faith)". The Middle East is a large and diverse geographical area located in southwest Asia and northeast Africa. The men who accompanied Muhammad on the Hijrah were called the Muhajirun - "those that made the Hijrah" or the "Emigrants" - while those in Medina who became Muslims were called the Ansar or "Helpers.". Photo: The basmalah ("In the name of God the Merciful the Compassionate" - the opening words of the Quran) is here done in an elaborate thuluth script with the letters joined so that the entire phrase is written without lifting the pen from the paper. Islamic Expansion in the Time of Muhammad and the First Four Caliphs. But they were not always at the forefront and from the time of Mu'awiyah the caliph's role as "Defender of the Faith" increasingly required him to devote attention to the purely secular concerns which dominate so much of every nation's history. The Muslim community spread through the Middle East through conquest, and the resulting growth of the Muslim state provided the ground in which the recently revealed faith could take root and flourish. It is useful to realize that the power of Islam was separate from much and more permanent than that of the armies with which it rode. The new mathematical principle on which the Arabic numerals were based greatly simplified arithmetic. One of its most famous scholars was Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Ishaq's father - known to the West as Joanitius - who eventually translated the entire canon of Greek medical works into Arabic, including the Hippocratic oath. Thereafter Medina was entirely in the hands of the Muslims. In short, he demonstrated the viability of the Muslim state. By skillful preparation, this organization rallied to its cause many mutually hostile groups in Khorasan and Iraq and proclaimed Abu al-'Abbas caliph. To keep the Arab Muslims from quarreling, the next caliph, Omar, launched the Muslim conquests: Syria was conquered around 636, Egypt 641, Mesopotamia and the Persian Empire, 650. Their conversion was especially noteworthy because these men had been among Muhammad's bitterest opponents only a short time before. The Turks were part of a powerful military empire that unified the region under a Middle Eastern religion called Islam, . Geographical unity, however, was but one factor. As the exact pronunciation was important - and learning it took years - special schools were founded to be sure that no error would creep in as the traditional chanting methods were handed down. Another was the development of Arabic, by the ninth century, into the language of international scholarship as well as the language of the Divine Truth. Still other intellectuals, such as the Egyptian Muhammad 'Abduh and his Syrian disciple Rashid Rida, undertook to reform the Muslim educational system and to restate Islamic values in terms of modern concepts - needs deeply felt by most Muslim thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After Muhammad had preached publicly for more than a decade, the opposition to him reached such a high pitch that, fearful for their safety, he sent some of his adherents to Ethiopia, where the Christian ruler extended protection to them, the memory of which has been cherished by Muslims ever since. Abu Bakr was known as the first caliph (from khalifa, the Arabic for successor). The Arab scholars perceived that a sign representing "nothing" or "nought" was required because the place of a sign gave as much information as its unitary value did. The Islamic empire began to expand beyond the Arabian Peninsula after the death of the prophet and founder of Islam, Mohammed, in 632 CE. To a degree almost incomprehensible in the West it shapes and colors broadly, specifically, and totally the thoughts, emotions, and values of the devout Muslim's life from birth to death. His caliphate was a high point in early Islamic history. The Christians permitted Muslims to work, serve in the army, own land, and even practice their religion - all concessions to the importance of Muslims in Spain's still prosperous economy. From ta'liq, in turn, another script called nasta'liq was derived which combines the Arabic naskhi and the Persian tailiq into a beautifully light and legible script. When it was founded it had 25 doctors, including oculists, surgeons, and bonesetters. The Umayyads, furthermore, encouraged such writers as 'Abd Allah ibn al-Muqaffa' and 'Abd al-Hamid ibn Yahya al-Katib, whose clear, expository Arabic prose has rarely been surpassed. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwaraznli seems to have been the first to explore their use systematically, and wrote the famous Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabalah, the first book on algebra, a name derived from the second word in his title. Photo: Pilgrims at the climax of their hajj, "standing" before God at 'Arafat near the spot where Muhammad delivered his farewell sermon. His son Hasan was proclaimed caliph at Kufa but soon afterward deferred to Muiawiyah, who had already been proclaimed caliph in Jerusalem in the previous year and who now was recognized and accepted as caliph in all the Muslim territories - thus inaugurating the Umayyad dynasty which would rule for the next ninety years. The major exception to this arrangement is the opening surah, "al-Fatihah," which contains seven verses and which serves as an introduction to the entire revelation: In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. By the end of the 13th century it had begun to pull even, and by the end of the 15th century it had surpassed both. Islam spread so quickly because of the message the message it was so strong to spread so quickly ( Document B). Gibbs. Another factor was that the Janissaries became too strong for the sultans to control The sultans were further weakened when it became customary to bring them up and educate them in isolation and without the skills necessary to rule effectively.

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