The Sasanid Empire that held sway in Iran and Iraq from the third to the seventh century strongly resembled the contemporary realm of the eastern Roman emperors ruling from Constantinople. Both states forged strong relations between the ruler and the dominant religion, Zoroastrianism in the former empire, Christianity in the latter. Priestly hierarchies paralleled state administrative structures, and the citizenry came to think of themselves more as members of a faith community than as subjects of a ruler.
This gave rise to conflict among religious sects and also raised the possibility of the founder of a new religion commanding both political and religious loyalty on an unprecedented scale. This possibility was realized in the career of the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.
Islam culminated the trend toward identity based on religion. The concept of the umma united all Muslims in a universal community embracing enormous diversity of language, appearance, and social custom. Though Muslim communities adapted to local “small traditions,” by the twelfth century a religious scholar could travel anywhere in the Islamic world and blend easily into the local Muslim community.
By the ninth century, the forces of conversion and urbanization fostered social and religious experimentation in urban settings. From the eleventh century onward, political disruption and the spread of pastoral nomadism slowed this early economic and technological dynamism. Muslim communities then turned to new religious institutions, such as the madrasas and Sufi brotherhoods, to create the flexible and durable community structures that carried Islam into new regions and protected ordinary believers from capricious political rule.
3 Online Study Center Wage the Test
How did the traditions and religious views of pre-IsLamic peoples become integrated into the culture shaped by Islam?
How did the Muslim community of the time of Muhammad differ from the society that developed after the Arab conquests?
Was the Baghdad caliphate really the high point of Muslim civilization?
How did regional diversity affect the development of Islamic civilization?
The creation of an enormous empire ruled by caliphs dramatically changed world history. However, it is often forgotten that for two hundred years or more after Muhammad’s death Muslims remained a minority in the lands they ruled. Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, and polytheists continued to live according to their own beliefs and traditions. When adherents to these faiths converted to Islam, they brought with them many of their cultural characteristics, and Islam was adaptable enough to incorporate some of them into Muslim ways of life that therefore developed somewhat differently from region to region.
The role of the Arabs changed as this process of adaptation proceeded. During Muhammad’s lifetime, virtually all Muslims were Arabs from central or southern Arabia. Their cultural traditions underlie many verses of the Quran. But Arab life changed once the warriors who carried out the conquests moved with their families into camps or cities in the conquered lands. Non-Arabs who converted to Islam became adoptive members of Arab kin groups, and many Arab men married non-Arab women. Over time, most non-Arab Muslims living west of Iran adopted the Arabic language. Thus, despite the dominance of their religion, language, and writing system, the Arabs of the time of the Prophet differed greatly from the people who thought of themselves as Arabs three centuries later.
A division of the caliphate into smaller political units accompanied this change in identity. The glittering cosmopolitan Baghdad of the early Abbasid Caliphate lost its luster as the conversion of non-Arabs to Islam increased and other cities from Spain to Pakistan evolved into regional Muslim centers. Despite Baghdad’s reputation, these later centers, looked at collectively, contributed more to the distinctiveness of medieval Islamic culture than did Baghdad.
Spain, Egypt, and Iran were three regions that flourished as Baghdad declined. Each developed a particular intellectual, religious, and artistic character within the overall unity of Islam. Politically as well, regional variation was important. The coming of the Turks and Mongols left North Africa and Spain mostly untouched, the Crusades were of negligible importance for Iran, and the confrontation of the Muslims of Spain with the Christians to their north meant little to the Egyptians. Yet all of these events contributed to the shaping of medieval Islamic civilization as a whole.
World History
