Islamic History & Geography اسلامی تاریخ و جغرافیہ

Before Islam, Arabia was a land of nomadic and settled tribes with no central state, wedged between the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. Makkah grew as a trading town around the Kaaba, which Muslims believe was built by Ibrahim (Abraham) and Ismail but had by then been filled with idols. Muslims call this period the Jahiliyyah, the 'age of ignorance', marked by tribal feuds, poetry, pilgrimage fairs and the practice of female infanticide. In about 570 CE the Abyssinian governor Abraha marched on Makkah with an elephant army and was turned back; the Quran recalls this in Surah al-Fil, and the Prophet ﷺ was born in that 'Year of the Elephant'.

In 610 CE Muhammad ﷺ, then forty years old, received the first verses of the Quran in the Cave of Hira. For thirteen years he preached monotheism in Makkah under growing persecution, before migrating with his followers to Yathrib, renamed Madinah, in 622 CE, the event from which the Islamic calendar is counted. In Madinah the first Muslim community took shape, defended itself at Badr, Uhud and the Trench, and concluded the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. Makkah was taken peacefully in 630 CE and the Kaaba cleared of idols. The Prophet ﷺ performed his Farewell Hajj in 632 CE and passed away in Madinah later that year, by which time nearly all of Arabia had accepted Islam.

After the Prophet's ﷺ passing, the community was led in turn by four of his closest companions: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali (may Allah be pleased with them), known to Sunni Muslims as the Rightly Guided Caliphs. Abu Bakr held Arabia together during the Ridda wars and ordered the Quran to be collected in one volume. Under Umar, Muslim armies took Syria, Jerusalem, Egypt and Persia from the Byzantine and Sasanian empires and founded the garrison cities of Kufa, Basra and Fustat. Uthman had standard copies of the Quran sent to the provinces. The caliphate of Ali was marked by civil war (the first fitna), ending with his assassination in 661 CE; Shia Muslims regard Ali as the first Imam.

Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan founded the Umayyad dynasty and moved the capital to Damascus, making the caliphate hereditary. The Umayyads expanded Muslim rule to its greatest territorial extent: across North Africa to Spain (711 CE), east to Transoxiana and Sindh, and to the gates of Constantinople. They built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Great Mosque of Damascus, made Arabic the language of administration and minted the first Islamic coins. The period also saw the tragedy of Karbala (680 CE), the revolt of Ibn al-Zubayr and growing discontent among non-Arab Muslims, which the Abbasid revolution harnessed to overthrow the dynasty in 750 CE.

The Abbasids, descended from the Prophet's ﷺ uncle al-Abbas, founded Baghdad in 762 CE and presided over what is often called the Islamic Golden Age. Under caliphs such as Harun al-Rashid and al-Mamun, the House of Wisdom translated Greek, Persian and Indian works, and scholars like al-Khwarizmi, al-Kindi, al-Razi, Ibn Sina and al-Biruni advanced mathematics, medicine, astronomy and philosophy. The great collections of hadith and the four Sunni schools of law matured in this era. From the tenth century real power passed to regional dynasties (Buyids, Seljuks, Ghaznavids) while the caliph remained a symbolic head, until the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258 CE.

Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed from North Africa in 711 CE and within a few years most of the Iberian Peninsula was under Muslim rule. In 756 CE the Umayyad prince Abd al-Rahman I, fleeing the Abbasids, founded an independent emirate at Cordoba, which his descendant Abd al-Rahman III raised to a caliphate in 929 CE. Tenth-century Cordoba, with its Great Mosque, libraries and scholars, was among the largest and most cultured cities in Europe, and Muslims, Christians and Jews contributed to its learning. After the caliphate fragmented into taifa kingdoms, the Almoravids and Almohads ruled from Marrakesh, while Christian kingdoms advanced from the north. The Nasrid kingdom of Granada, builder of the Alhambra, was the last Muslim state, surrendering in 1492 CE.

The Fatimids, an Ismaili Shia dynasty claiming descent from Fatimah (may Allah be pleased with her), rose in North Africa in 909 CE, conquered Egypt in 969 CE and founded Cairo and the mosque of al-Azhar. In 1099 CE the First Crusade captured Jerusalem. Nur al-Din Zangi and then his lieutenant Salahuddin (Saladin) united Egypt and Syria; Salahuddin ended the Fatimid caliphate in 1171 CE, defeated the Crusaders at Hattin and recovered Jerusalem in 1187 CE, treating its inhabitants with a clemency noted by chroniclers on both sides. The Ayyubid dynasty he founded ruled Egypt and Syria until their Mamluk slave-soldiers took power in 1250 CE.

In 1258 CE the Mongol prince Hulagu sacked Baghdad and killed the last Abbasid caliph, a catastrophe long remembered in Muslim memory. Two years later the Mamluks of Egypt under Qutuz and Baybars defeated the Mongols at Ain Jalut in Palestine, the first decisive check on their advance. The Mamluks expelled the last Crusaders from the Levant in 1291 CE, hosted a shadow Abbasid caliphate in Cairo and built magnificent mosques, madrasas and hospitals. Meanwhile the Mongol successor states themselves embraced Islam: the Ilkhanate under Ghazan Khan (1295 CE) and the Golden Horde under Berke and Uzbeg Khan. Timur (Tamerlane) built a new empire from Samarkand, and scholars such as Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Battuta and Ibn Hajar flourished.

Founded by Osman I in Anatolia around 1299 CE, the Ottoman state grew into one of history's longest-lived empires. Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in 1453 CE, fulfilling a long-held Muslim aspiration, and made it the capital, Istanbul. Selim I defeated the Mamluks in 1517 CE and brought Egypt, Syria and the Hijaz under Ottoman protection, after which the sultans styled themselves caliphs and Custodians of the Two Holy Mosques. Under Suleiman the Magnificent the empire reached from Hungary to Yemen and Algiers, and the architect Sinan built the Suleymaniye and Selimiye mosques. Centuries of gradual decline, reform (Tanzimat) and the Hejaz Railway followed; defeat in the First World War led to the abolition of the sultanate in 1922 CE and of the caliphate in 1924 CE.

Islam had reached the Indian subcontinent in 711 CE through Sindh and spread further under the Ghaznavids, the Delhi Sultanate and the teaching of Sufi saints such as Muinuddin Chishti of Ajmer. In 1526 CE Babur, a descendant of Timur, defeated the Delhi Sultan at Panipat and founded the Mughal Empire, which Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb expanded over most of India; Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal at Agra and the Badshahi Mosque was raised in Lahore. In Persia, Shah Ismail I founded the Safavid dynasty in 1501 CE and made Twelver Shia Islam the state religion, with Isfahan becoming a jewel of Islamic architecture under Shah Abbas. The Mughal state declined after Aurangzeb's death in 1707 CE and was formally ended by the British in 1857 CE.

From the eighteenth century European powers gradually brought most Muslim lands under colonial rule: the British in India, Egypt and the Gulf; the French in Algeria, Morocco, Syria and West Africa; the Dutch in the East Indies; and the Russians in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Muslims responded with resistance movements, such as those of Abd al-Qadir in Algeria and Imam Shamil in the Caucasus, and with reform and revival movements, including the Wahhabi, Deobandi, Aligarh and Salafi currents and the thought of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Muhammad Iqbal. The first printed Qurans were widely circulated and modern schools and newspapers appeared. The Ottoman caliphate was abolished in 1924 CE, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was proclaimed in 1932 CE.

After the Second World War most Muslim-majority countries gained independence: Pakistan in 1947, Indonesia in 1949, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Malaysia and Algeria in the following years, and the Central Asian republics in 1991. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation was founded in 1969 after an arson attack on Masjid al-Aqsa, and today has 57 member states. The Two Holy Mosques have been expanded many times to receive millions of pilgrims, and Muslim communities have grown in Europe, the Americas and Australia. The era has also seen conflicts, including those over Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Syria, alongside remarkable growth in Islamic education, finance, media and digital access to the Quran and hadith. Muslims today number about a quarter of humanity.