As a result the city was dominated by powerful merchant families among whom the men of Quraysh were preeminent. Tensions between Sunnis and Shias, exploited by regional rivals . To make things more difficult, the Prophet had not left clear instructions as to who should lead the community after his death. Islamic architecture encompasses a wide range of both secular and religious styles from the early history of Islam to the present day. Just a short time before, Muhammad had to leave the city of his birth in fear of his life. 1. It is the essence of Islam. Hoping to cut Britain's lines to India and cripple its maritime and economic power, Napoleon crushed the Mamluks (who governed Egypt under Ottoman suzerainty) and briefly occupied the country. Muslims, consider the Quran (sometimes spelled "Koran") to be the Word of God as transmitted by the Angel Gabriel, in the Arabic language, through the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims believe that Muhammad is the last in a line of prophets that includes Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and that the Quran is the . After sunset the pilgrims move to a place called Muzdalifah, where they gather stones for the "throwing of the pebbles" or "stoning of the pillars," and then pray and sleep. It was from these six, and from kufic, that later calligraphers, not only in the Arab world but in Iran, Turkey, and elsewhere as well, developed and elaborated other scripts. Enraged, the Meccans set a price on Muhammad's head and set off in pursuit. 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. The introduction of paper, replacing parchment and papyrus, was a pivotal advance which had effects on education and scholarship as far reaching as the invention of printing in the fifteenth century. However, there is one prominent difference, which is essentially political rather than religious, and concerns the choice of the caliph or successor of Muhammad. Another turning point was the invasion of Egypt in 1798 by Napoleon Bonaparte. Welcome to the world's oldest and most recognized Islamic Web site. Conflict among Greek Orthodox, Syrian Monophysites, Copts, and Nestorian Christians contributed to the failure of the Byzantines - always regarded as intruders - to develop popular support, while the tolerance which Muslims showed toward Christians and Jews removed the primary cause for opposing them. In addition, the early Muslims tended to oppose figural art (and in some cases all art) as distracting the community from the worship of God and hostile to the strictly unitarian religion preached by Muhammad, and all four of the schools of Islamic law banned the use of images and, declared that the painter of animate figures would be damned on the Day of Judgment. From the earliest days it has always been recited aloud or, more accurately, chanted. 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). Western penetration also drew the Middle East into the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire sided with (Germany, and Great Britain, in response, encouraged and supported the Arab Revolt against the Turks. The process of European penetration was gradual and complex; but there were, nevertheless, clearly identifiable turning points. The Qur'an has a number of passages that support military action against non-Muslims, for example: But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war) Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book Other passages confirmed the rightness of the ancient military tradition of looting from the defeated, and specified how the booty should be divided. Orientalist knowledge production is complicit with the workings of Western power as can be observed in the naming of the 'Middle East' itself; it is "middle" and . As societies become larger and more complex, its people become more likely to join monotheistic religions. Followers of Islam joined together against European invaders to defend their way life. Islam, founded in seventh-century Arabia by the prophet Muhammad, altered the Middle East economically. According to one account, he entered the city alone and clad in a simple cloak, astounding a populace accustomed to the sumptuous garb and court ceremonials of the Byzantines and Persians. After an initial success the Muslims were driven back and the Prophet himself was wounded. Another unusual variation of calligraphy, not often used nowadays, is the style called muthanna (Arabic for "doubled"). As the Prophet said, "The best of prayers is the prayer of the Day of 'Arafat.". President Carter of the United States brought the leaders of Egypt and Israel together in the United States and himself traveled to the Middle East in an attempt to persuade at least these two countries to conclude a peace treaty, and in March 1979 Egypt and Israel signed a treaty to which the United States was also a signatory. 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. At issue, essentially, was the legitimacy of 'Ali's caliphate. Like all Islamic ceremonies, prayer is simple and personal, yet also communal, and the wording of the prayers, the ablutions which are required before prayers, the number of bows, and other parts of the ritual are set out in detail. . ", Over the years, what started as a fortress slowly evolved under Ibn al-Ahmar's successors into a remarkable series of delicately lovely buildings, quiet courtyards, limpid pools, and hidden gardens. After the fall of Constantinople, and during the sixteenth century, the Ottoman system evolved the centralized administrative framework by which the sultans maintained effective control over the extraordinarily diverse peoples in the vast empire. The Golden Age was a period of unrivaled intellectual activity in all fields: science, technology, and (as a result of intensive study of the Islamic faith) literature - particularly biography, history, and linguistics. For those who retire and rest after the day's fast there are, in some areas, men called musahhirs who, in the silent, predawn darkness beat muted drums and call the faithful to awake and eat before the long day's fast begins again. Instead, there is the ummah - the community of the believers - whose cohesion is guaranteed by the sacred law. Under the 'Abbasids too a whole literature was created for the use and training of the clerical classes that had come into being. This established a precedent for the treatment of subject peoples during the later conquests. Jonathan P. Berkey, The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800, 2003. Another was the development of the Umayyad postal system into an efficient intelligence service; postmasters in outlying provinces were the eyes and ears of the government and regular reports were filed with the central government on everything from the state of the harvest to the doings of dissident sects. Although the Crusades achieved no lasting results in terms of military conquest, they were important in the development of trade, and their long-range effects on Western society - on everything from feudalism to fashion - are inestimable. Others prominent in Islamic medicine were Yuhanna ibn Masawayh, a specialist in gynecology and the famous Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi - known to the West as Rhazes. Photo: Sixteenth century Sultan Selim Mosque at Edirne is the apogee of Ottoman Turkish architecture, soaring space enclosed with a massive dome. "Both their identities were challenged: their American identity and their Muslim identity," said Asani, who teaches Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures . In Mecca the plotters arrived at Muhammad's home to find that his cousin, 'Ali, had taken his place in bed. This was a milestone in the history of the Muslims. This is not to say that the Roman alphabet (and others such as the Chinese and Japanese, for instance) are not just as decorative and have not been used just as imaginatively. For the West, however, the Crusaders' greatest achievement was the opening of the eastern Mediterranean to European shipping. By the eleventh century, however, a small pocket of Christian resistance had begun to grow, and under Alfonso VI Christian forces retook Toledo. Jews, for example, were part of the community; they were dhimmis, that is, protected people, as long as they conformed to its laws. Great information for Muslims I really enjoyed reading your blog because I want to get knowledge about Islam. Algeria, ten years later, won its independence from France after six years of bitter warfare. They were able to draw on and fuse together the mathematical developments of both Greece and India. In 1220 they took Samarkand and Bukhara. The sunnah - which supplements and complements the Quran, the Word of God, and is next to it in importance - embodies the meticulously documented acts and sayings of the Prophet recorded in a body of writings called the hadith. The Ottomans were not content merely to improve and develop the types of script that they inherited from the Arabs and Persians but also added a number of new styles to the calligrapher's repertoire. This led to such memorable works as Sirat Rasul Allah, the "Life of the Messenger of God," by Ibn Ishaq, later revised by Ibn Hisham; one of the earliest Arabic historical works, it was a key source of information about the Prophet's life and also a model for other important works of history such as al-Tabari's Annals of the Apostles and the Kings and his massive commentary on the Quran. As Islam spread across the Arabian Peninsula and later across North Africa and the Middle East, it had an aggregating effect. By defeating Egypt, then still part of the Ottoman Empire, Napoleon exposed the inner weaknesses, both military and administrative, of the sultans, shattered the myth of Ottoman power, and inaugurated more than 150 years of direct political intervention by the West. Photo: One of the largest mosques of the Far East is in Bandar Seri Bagawan, capital of the Sultanate of Brunei in Southeast Asia. Photo: Medieval Muslims regarded the Great Mosque built by the Umayyads in Damascus as one of the wonders of the world. Slumber seizes Him not, neither sleep; As he could no longer rely on the loyalty of his army, al-Mu'tasim recruited an army of Turks from Transoxania and Turkestan. And if it was a new and upstart faith, its administration by simple and honest men was preferable to the corruption and persecution that were the norm in more civilized empires George F. Nafziger, Mark W. Walton, Islam at War: A History, 2003. The Abbasid Dynasty from 750 to 1258intensified and solidified these cultural changes. They were polytheistic and reaped all the political problems associated with polytheism. The Living. They affirm the Last Judgment, when God, the Judge, will weigh in the balance the faith and works of each man, rewarding the faithful and punishing the transgressor. Islam has had a profound global impact since it was founded in the seventh century. In Muslim regions, in modern times, the faithful - at the sound of the sunset cannon or the call of the muezzin - break their fast, perform voluntary nocturnal worship (tarawih), and throng the streets in moods that are at once festive and, in the spirit of Ramadan, communal. The first known medical work to include anatomical drawings, the book was translated into Latin and for centuries was the authoritative treatment of the subject in both Western and Eastern universities. Photo: The Mamluks, originally a class of soldier slaves, seized power in Egypt in the thirteenth century and stood fast against the Mongols. The declaration was interpreted by key Zionist leaders as support for a sovereign Jewish state, but this interpretation has been disputed. Abu Bakr took swift military action against the communities that wanted to break away. He astounded them still further when he set their fears at rest by negotiating a generous treaty in which he told them: In the name of God you have complete security for your churches which shall not be occupied by the Muslims or destroyed. It is a rigorous fast, but its object is not mere abstinence and deprivation; it is, rather, the subjection of the passions and the purification of one's being so that the soul is brought nearer to God. These struggles were later romanticized and distorted in a wave of books and films on, for example, Gordon of Khartoum and the French Foreign Legion. Western and Western stimulated efforts to modernize parts of the Middle East, moreover, often led Middle Eastern rulers to incur debts which led to European financial control and then to European political domination. Their conversion was especially noteworthy because these men had been among Muhammad's bitterest opponents only a short time before. An elite corps of slave soldiers conscripted from the subject population of the empire, they were carefully selected on the basis of physique and intelligence, educated, trained, introduced to Islam, and formed into one of the most formidable military corps ever known. The Ridda Wars ended around 634. Thank you so much for sharing great info :). We feature each theme with a beautiful image. It is difficult to determine where Islamic practice . Photo: The minaret of the Great Mosque at Kairouan in Tunisia became the prototype for the majority of North African minarets. Their adoption in Europe began in the tenth century after an Arabic mathematical treatise was translated by a scholar in Spain and spread throughout the West. With the shift to Damascus much was changed. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Among these cultures, the Islamic world stands out for having made particularly important contributions, in part because of the location of Islamic . A prophet arises from the depths of a desert world to humiliate an empire and launch a holy war - a jihad. The mandates were inconsistent with British promises to the Arabs and, furthermore, contrary to the recommendations of President Wilson's King-Crane Commission, a group sent to the Middle East in 1919 specifically to ascertain the wishes of the Arab peoples. The IslamiCity site may occasionally contain copyrighted material the use of which may not always have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Non-Muslims are often struck by the range of styles found in the Quran. Henceforth, the organizational principle of the community was not to be mere blood kinship, but the greater brotherhood of all Muslims. As the Muslims were not completely defeated, the Meccans, with an army of ten thousand, attacked Medina again two years later but with quite different results. Throughout its history, Islam has been in constant . The Merciful, the Compassionate; How did your family react when you left Islam? And in Egypt, which 'Amr ibn al-'As took from the Byzantines after a daring march across the Sinai Peninsula, the Coptic Christians not only welcomed the Arabs, but enthusiastically assisted them. Under the Samanids, the Persian language, written in the Arabic alphabet, first reached the level of a literary language and poets like Rudaki, Daqiqi, and Firdausi flourished. Styles from the early history of the location of Islamic copyrighted material the use of which may always... 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