hey guys coach pop here thanks for joining me for this week's video lecture today we're looking at strayer's chapter 9 the worlds of Islam afro-eurasian connections 600 to 1500 in the opening section of this week's chapter he begins by looking at Islam in the 21st century obviously is a topic that is very talked about very very hot very common and he points out several key statistics first in the United States at the turn of the century so just to be about - year 2000 there were about 8 million Muslims living in the United States but globally about 1.2 billion people are Muslims and to put that in perspective that's about 22 percent of the world's population almost 1/4 of all the people on the planet aslam didn't happen in a vacuum its origins of course go back to the post classical era and there are several key reasons why it's important to put it in its proper historical context the first is that Islamic civilization is something kind of new in creating this concept of dar al-islam a that is not tied to a particular political or cultural entity another reason is because it's just so large it unites many aspects of afro-eurasia from West Africa East Africa across the Mediterranean into the Arabian Peninsula Persia India and even Southeast Asia and finally because it's so influential it obviously it has a big impact on the people that convert to Islam as it spreads but also because of its impact on the cultures that it comes into contact with particularly in Europe so he begins with the brightly with the birth of this new religion starting in Arabia the homeland of Islam prior to the Islamic revelations the Arab world was characterized by tribal organization of bedouin groups they fought a series of bitter feuds amongst themselves clashing over access to trade centers and Oasis as the peninsula was home to some of trade routes between the Mediterranean Sea in the Indian Ocean the region saw economic growth thanks to the increase in long-distance trade one of the cities that was most important was Mecca while somewhat removed from the trade routes that served as an important pilgrimage site as the Kaaba shrine housed idols of hundreds of tribal gods from the region the Quraish tribe dominated the city and grew wealthy from taxing the pilgrims that came to worship at the Kaaba as the peninsula was adjacent to powerful enemies there was knowledge of the wider world a variety of people from the Christian and Persian worlds lived in the cities of the peninsula while the Arab tribes were polytheistic contact with Jews Christians and even zoroastrians living among them spread the idea of monotheism thus some Arabs came to view Allah their God as a preeminent god of the pantheon while others linked Allah to the Jewish Way exploring the idea that all I was one of was the one true God while the rest were merely idols these Arabs came to see themselves as like Jews descendants of Abraham thus in 600 it seemed as if the Arabs were moving towards Judaism or Christianity this leads us to the situation in Arabia before Muhammad you can see the areas the key cities the Byzantine Empire up here the asana persians towards the end of the Persian dynasties over here note the two different main tribes the largest tribes in the Arabian Peninsula at the time the Quraish obviously is the one that Muhammad belongs to so let's look at this Muhammad and his message he is a historical figure who was orphaned as a child and raised by an uncle he was a shepherd as a boy and later became a merchant as a young man he would marry a widow also a wealthy merchant and have six children with her deeply spiritual and greatly troubled by the social and justices in Mecca he frequently retreated to the hills mekka to meditate starting in 610 of the Common Era he had a series of revelations for over two decades he reluctantly accepted that he was a Messenger of God he recited these revelations and they were later recorded as the Quran Islam sacred texts they are believed to be the direct Word of God and are extremely beautiful verses in the original Arabic language in one sense the revelations of Muhammad were a revolution against the polytheism and idol worship of the Arabian Peninsula in another sense though the revelations were actually called to return to the pure faith of Abraham they were a call to purge the faith of corruption and errors in this context Jews were seen as wrong in believing they were the chosen people Christians were seen as wrong in turning their prophet into a god and the Arabs in general were wrong for Evan falling into idol worship and polytheism thus the message was a universal call to engage in a pure faith of Abraham this LOM sees Muhammad as the final prophet in a series of judeo-christian prophets as his message is the final and most complete revelation according to the faithful he is called the seal of the line of prophecy this is important because it stresses the lineage of prophets the errors of previous revelations and the finality of Muhammad's message the message was not only spiritual Muhammad deeply troubled by the social and Justices violence and feuds of tribal Arabia wanted to create a new community of the faithful where the poor and vulnerable would be protect protected this new community of the faithful and the just would be done as the Ummah the revelations required five actions from pious Muslims acceptance of Allah as the one true God and Muhammad is His Prophet daily prayer five times a day giving the charity fasting during the month of Ramadan and a pilgrimage to Mecca these requirements show the linkage of the spiritual and the social Muhammad spoke of the need to struggle the greater struggle as he called it of jihad is within oneself overcoming greed or sinful desires the lesser struggle as he called it is the struggle of the sword in the fight to protect the community from external threats over time then arabia is transformed by this new message and while a community of believers formed around muhammad the prophets revelation angered the status quo in mecca and he was accused of betraying his tribe he was soon forced out of mecca and emigrated to nearby Yathrib a city which would later become known as medina which means city of the Prophet this departure from Mecca and the founding of the Ummah in Medina is known as the hijra and marks the starting year of the Islamic calendar in the new city Muhammad revealed new laws to create a more just and peaceful society importantly membership was not based on family lineage but upon acceptance of his faith in Medina the Muslims began to pray towards Mecca the umma found itself in a series of conflicts with its neighbors when one a Jewish group allied against the umma Muhammad made a clear break between Islam and Judaism importantly this was a conflict with one specific tribe in the context of a war and he did not condemn all Jews as a matter of fact Muhammad won a series of wars and encouraged marriage alliances in 630 he triumphantly entered Mecca and purged the Kaaba of the tribal idols by the time of his death Muhammad had United much of the once chaotic Peninsula under his leadership unlike other world religions the Prophet fused spiritual and political authority in the form of what will become known as a Caliphate there was no church outside the state and thus no church state conflict as would end up dividing eastern and western Europe later on the law system called Sharia that developed saw no distinction between religious and civil law this is another thing that's kind of unique they were one in the same in the context of the Ummah so after Islam itself is established and Muhammad has conquered a great deal of the Arabian Peninsula how then do we get from that to a Arab Empire well the first way is through war conquest and tolerance Muslim armies spread rapidly out of the Arabian Peninsula conquering Spade and in Spain and invading France in the West and reaching the Indus River in the East Arabs invaded and conquered wealthy Egypt the Persian sassanid empire fell quickly and the Arabs picked off much of Byzantine territory in 751 the Islamic forces defeated the Chinese in Central Asia at the Battle of Tullus this allowed the Turkic people to become a widespread Islamic culture and check the westward spread of China thus marking a line whereby the DAR al-islam will be in control to the east and shine I'm sorry to the West and China to the east of this particular line while the Muslims were eager to spread their faith they were also very worldly economic interests in building the empire which trade routes and productive farmlands increased the wealth of the new and expanding Empire if conversion was encouraged the Empire respected Jews Christians and even Zoroastrians as fellow people of the book or dim ease these groups were granted the special status of dhimmi and were required to pay attacks called the Jie Jie in lieu of military service although many Demi's did serve in the military this tolerance allowed these faiths to continue to be practiced another aspect of the making of the Arab Empire is in conversion while there were obviously many people drawn to Islam for spiritual or psychological reasons there were also large numbers that went through a social conversion meaning that they shifted from one community to another where they hoped they might be treated more fairly many early converts came for the ranks of prisoners of war or slaves who may not or may have been coerced there were also economic reasons for converting such as avoiding the Jie Jie or the connections merchants might have with a larger Islamic community and the prosperity of making more money while on North Africa and much' Mesopotamia people converted and adopted the Arabic language and culture areas east of the Tigris Euphrates did not the Persians Turks and people of the Indus Valley held on to their traditional languages even though they were Aslam asides so they were Aslam asides meaning converted to Islam but not a Ravis eyes meaning adopting Arab language and culture Persia has a centuries-old Empire and civilization not only held on to its traditions but many of them spread into the wider Muslim world Persian architecture administration and art includes the culture of the eastern reaches of Islam in this map you see the spread of Islam through the Abbasid Caliphate the dark areas here being the areas conquered by Muhammad the first four caliphs after him spreading it the Umayyads spreading even further and then a little bit of shrinkage later on as the Ambassador some of the tarry territory on the outside of the former Empire in terms of the divisions and controversies within these new Arab empires though there were some some issues after the death of the Prophet disputes arose over who should lead the community the first leaders were all companions of the Prophet the first caliph had to put down social revolts and prophets after him were assassinated I'm sorry and the caliphs after him were assassinated thus within decades of Muhammad's death civil war threatened to destroy the unity that he built up among the Ummah initially a political dispute over who should rule the Ummah the sunni-shia controversy still divides the Islamic world Shia argue that the leader should come from a direct descendent of Muhammad while the Sunnis hold that a learned member of the community should lead as there was much persecution of the Shia and several of their leaders were killed they developed the ideologies of an oppressed minority and came to old mystical ideas such as the belief that a particular assassinated leader had gone into hiding instead of being killed and would return someday to save the community such messianic beliefs and other rituals developed into a distinct Shia culture different from the rest of the world of Islam the Umayyads had their capital not in Medina but in the old Roman and Byzantine city of Damascus in modern-day Syria this provided unity but soon faced a series of revolts the abasa dare capital in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Baghdad overthrew the Umayyads they soon faced many revolts internally but they were able to hang on much longer than humans until eventually fall into the Mongols in 1258 a number of smaller states run by Sultan's broke away from Baghdad central authority after the midnight century setting up sultan it's in areas that had been controlled at one point by the Umayyads and briefly by the basses they were still part of dar al-islam but they set up completely different political and state systems in deciding how muslims should live there was a movement to use Sharia law to structure all aspects of society this was not universally accepted and so a number of schools developed to interpret and administer the law Sufi mystics did not believe that it was necessary to follow the letter of the law rather through meditation or ritual one could have a close spiritual contact with the divine Sufis often discredit described their relationship with the divine is a form of intoxication or overwhelming love in terms of gender in the society of the early era of Empires this is obviously an issue that many people are keenly aware of now but during the time of the revelations Muhammad created rules that protected women and gave them some control over their poverty and right to divorce so this he's creating an attempt to create more security for women in the context of the Arab society that existed before him a famous passage that allowed men to have up to four wives also states they must all be cared for equally and none can be shown any favoritism spiritually women who were devout and had good morals would receive Allah's blessing just as men would the revelation also contained some restrictions in terms of restrictions though when the Arab empires were established after the prophets death they were increasingly putting more restrictions especially undelete women and we've seen this before in classical civilizations in the Classical era of the second wave of civilizations in the Classical era as the civilization and the Empire starts to gain strength more restrictions are placed on women particularly elite women many of these restrictions such as veiling and sequestering were in keeping with earlier pre-islamic practices in this part of the world and most were difficult and impracticable practical to apply to lower class women so after an Arab Empire is established first you Mayans then the abasa dand we get several sultan it's sort of spinning off from there islam continues to grow though and it's put in contact with several different pre-existing cultures and societies and the first case is the case of india where after the conversion of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia the Turks became the third group to spread Islam after the Arabs and then the Persians a series of invasions in northern India led to the creation of small Sultanate with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate in 1206 their rule was more systematic but compared to the authority of the caliphs in the umayyad and abbasid era not quite as strong many converts in India came from Buddhists who had left their faith lower caste Hindus and Untouchables there were also those who converted simply to avoid paying the jizya tax as South Asia had a long tradition of mysticism Sufi ISM had a great appeal to the common people Sufi veneration of saints and various festivals gave Islamic population ISM was very similar to Hindu traditions this lom's base was in the northwest and east of India about 20-25 percent of the population converted but the central and southern reaches of India saw little if any conversion there was a very sharp cultural divide between Hindu and Muslim communities monotheistic Islam forbade images of the divine and preach against overt sexuality while Hindu art was full of representations of thousands and thousands of gods and sometimes depicted very sensual and even erotic scenes Muslims generally live separately from the larger population as a distinct minority largely by their own choice founded by guru nanak a new faith called Sikhism blended Islam and Hinduism into a monotheistic faith the recognized reincarnation and karma so just as in the Classical period Buddhism and Hinduism sort of mixed together to create a new religion so it happens again in the post classical era this is a map showing the Sultan of Delhi Sultanate of Delhi that you can see is sort of concentrated in the northern part of India as most of the empires throughout India's history have been there's a small Empire down here in the south at the same time that we'll get into more later on but notice as well there's a concentration of the Muslims in the east and the West and it's interesting to note that later on those are the areas that will break off from India when India gets its independence from Great Britain to form Pakistan and Bangladesh so a second encounter happens with the case of Anatolia the Anatolian Peninsula was invaded by brutal brutal Turkish invaders who destroyed Greek Christian rule and subjected many communities to massacres when the existing state system and social order were shattered large numbers of turks emigrated into the area and an increasing number of christians converted on the spot as both were monotheistic faiths though this made conversion much easier easier than it happened in polytheistic India by 1500 the region of Anatolia had a distinctly distinctly Turkish Muslim character in terms of language and culture indeed by 1500 90 percent of the people of Anatolia were ethnic Turks who spoke Turkish by 1500 then the Ottoman Empire which we'll get more into at the end of the unit becomes a dominant not just Islamic state but a global state as well eventually superseding the Byzantine Empire itself this is a map of the modern Ottoman Empire and you can see initially it's sort of centered here in Anatolia but it will eventually grow not just to include all of Anatolia but eventually we'll take Constantinople and then big chunks of the Byzantine Empire itself so a third case of cultural encounter with Islam is in the case of West Africa Islam came to West Africa by peaceful means Muslim merchants traveled south across the Sahara and spread the faith to the urban training centers of West Africa rulers found Muslim scholars to be useful administrators Islam had an appeal as a connection to a wider and richer world Islam was really an urban phenomenon in West Africa until the 19th century while rulers sponsored the building at building of mosques libraries in schools there was little effort converting the larger rural world nonetheless the communities in the city saw themselves as a part a larger world dar al-islam remaining the culture of an urban elite though the villages of West Africa continue to practice their traditions and rituals sometimes elements of this long work combined with existing face of practices in another word syncretism but there was no large-scale Aslam as asian of the region similarly there were no large-scale Arab migrations to West Africa as had happened in other areas that were converted to Islam this is a map of course of West Africa you can see the centrality of the trans-saharan trade routes here remember too that we have this area that had a series of states I'm sorry cities that weren't necessarily States and in the previous era Ghana Mali and Songhai are the three big empires in West Africa the Songhai towards the very end of the period the final encounter that that Strayer talks about in any detail is the case of Spain where in 711 Muslim Arab and Berber forces invaded and they called Spain al-andalus which the name means the land of the Vandals the Vandals were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in the area now known as Spain after the fall of Rome they quickly conquered the peninsula and established a Caliphate Islam spread widely in the southern part of Spain at its height Muslim Spain was prosperous culturally dynamic and cosmopolitan it was also a time of tolerance with special taxes for Jews and Christians but general acceptance of them in society the city of Cordoba was the center of this Golden Age and this time al-andalus was a major center of learning number of Greek and Arabic books were collected and translated in the libraries at Cordoba in the late 900s as Christian kingdoms in the north began a series of wars particularly Frankish Kings the Muslim rulers became increasingly intolerant of Christians and social conflicts developed within the communities where peace and tolerance had existed before his series of wars the Christians gradually conquered all of the peninsula with Granada falling in 1492 the new Spanish monarchy forced many Muslims and some 200,000 Jews to emigrate converts while initially tolerated were later forced out of Spain several other comparisons that Strayer does not go into but just as a reminder you are responsible for knowing for the open note quest the first of these is in East Africa the Swahili coast the mixture of Arab and Bantu culture in a series of city-states that are linked to the trade routes in the Indian Ocean in North Africa we have the mom Luke's who were the once slave enslaved warriors who were Turkish who end up taking over and forming a dynasty in Egypt and the Berbers the indigenous people of the western part of North Africa and finally in Southeast Asia in what's now Indonesia and Malaysia we eventually get the Malacca Sultanate that that plate replaces srimad ayah the Buddhist kingdom in that key trading area that connects the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean in this map then you can see dar al-islam at its height so that it doesn't really matter what the individual states or empires or societies are anywhere on here that is shaded at all purple if you are a Muslim you are welcome there and if you have made the Hajj and you're considered a you have a special status that it doesn't even matter if you don't speak their language if you are a you are honored and treated as a as a special guest anywhere in here so this idea of dar al-islam as a kind of civilization that is sort of independent or or maybe that supersedes any individual state is what we see and of course even Battuta is the main sort of exemplar of the ability to travel around within dar al-islam so dar Adal islam itself then creates a new kind of civilization something that the world hasn't quite seen how does it do this well one is through a network of faith while Islam had no priesthood as such as no mortal can stand between an individual God and the teachings of Mohammed a class of learning scholars and experts did develop known as the ulama don't confuse Ummah and llama the llama made up an international elite of scholars students judges and administrators all the way from West Africa to Southeast Asia Islamic schools known as madrasahs spread throughout the Islamic world these schools were generally conservative and focused on the memorization and recitation of the Quran so madrasahs were relatively standard and they were established all throughout dar al-islam thus ensuring that more or less whoever was educated in one would have the same sort of educational background as some other person who had studied at a similar one even if it's halfway around the world sufi ism was responsible for much of the spreading of islam into new areas areas as Sufi mystics were willing to engage with local spiritual traditions and rituals thus forming a bridge between pre-islamic and Islam ideas and practices often Sufis were willing to recognize local saints and other figures winning over the community Sufi sheiks were teachers who attracted local students that followed their specific devotional practices and teachings Sufi poets such as Rumi produced works of literature that had an appeal within and that's how outside of the Islamic world and finally the annual pilgrimage to Mecca did much to forge an international community of Muslims and a wider sense of the Ummah as people wherever they lived were encouraged to make this journey in many cases halfway across the world and in so doing came into contact with Muslims from all over the world a second way they did this though was through networks of exchange the Islamic world tied together afro-eurasian by linking the Mediterranean the trans-saharan the Silk Roads and the Indian Ocean trade routes as well as Chinese ports Arab and merchants Arab Swahili and Persian merchants played the leading role in this vital trading system as the Prophet Muhammad was himself a merchant and as the elites of the Islamic world were very urban the greater Islamic world brought together culture friendly to commerce with cities eager to consume plus the greater Islamic economy benefited from the linkage of long-range trade and dynamic cities the trade routes also served to transport technological innovations ideas and crops new weapons such as rockets and useful administrative tools such as paper spread west from China texts from Greece the Hellenistic world in India were translated into Arabic and inspired Muslim scholars to build upon these earlier works crops especially citrus cotton and sugarcane moved through the Islamic world as did new irrigation techniques like the cannot leading to a dramatic increase in food production and population growth using a numeric system from India Muslim scholars made important advances in mathematics and astronomy using Greek and Indian medical knowledge they developed early hospitals diagnose diseases and develop chemical based treatments they perform operations for things such as cataracts and hernia this medical knowledge entered Europe via Spain was the state-of-the-art for medical knowledge for many centuries okay so in the reflection era then straight years going to end by looking at how we choose what to focus on in the past through a lens of the present and he warns of something he calls present mindedness the dangerous practice of using history for our present purpose yet we need to use history to understand the world in which live so there's a conflict there because in order to understand the present we have to understand the past but we need to try to separate ourselves from the lens of the present when we view the past this long has a glorious history of achievement from 600 to 1600 and this is a source of pride for many Muslims however there was also a period afterwards of humiliating Western encroachment and intrusion and that tension is something that has to be acknowledged faced with recent history of Western imperialism some Muslims want to use examples of the glorious Islamic path to overcome the legacy of humiliation those people we frequently called fundamentalists often look to the period of the life of Muhammad in the first four caliphs as a source for their agenda so they're looking back on the past through a lens of the present as well in order to create some sort of throwback to an era where they feel like there's not an intrusion from their perspective of the West however from our perspective we must remember the tremendous cultural historical and linguistic ethnic and gender diversity in the Islamic world dar al-islam is a very large and varied thing and we really need to be careful to avoid generalizations about it Islam as a single unit again from our perspective as world historians looking back on the past however we must recognize that there have been periods of both tolerance and cooperation as well as mistrust and violent conflict between the Islamic world and the West thank you for joining me for this week's lecture I know it was kind of a long one I hope you got everything you need and we'll see you in class