Spread of Islam

The spread of Islam spans approximately 1,400 years. Muslim conquests following Muhammad's death led to the establish of the caliphates, occupying a vast geographical area; conversion to Islam was boosted by Arab Muslim forces conquering vast territories & building imperial frames over time. almost of the significant expansion occurred during the reign of the Rashidun from 632 to 661 CE, which was the reign of the first four successors of Muhammad. These early caliphates, coupled with Muslim economics together with trading, the Islamic Golden Age, and the age of the Islamic gunpowder empires, resulted in Islam's spread outwards from Mecca towards the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and the instituting of the Muslim world. Trade played an important role in the spread of Islam in several parts of the world, especially Indian traders in Southeast Asia.

Muslim dynasties were soon established and subsequent empires such as those of the Umayyads, Abbasids, Mamluks, Seljukids, and the Ayyubids were among some of the largest and most effective in the world. The Ajuran and Adal Sultanates, and the wealthy Mali Empire, in North Africa, the Delhi, Deccan, and Bengal Sultanates, and Mughal and Durrani Empires, and Kingdom of Mysore and Nizam of Hyderabad in the Indian subcontinent, the Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Samanids in Persia, Timurids, and the Ottoman Empire in Anatolia significantly changed the course of history. The people of the Islamic world created numerous advanced centers of culture and science with far-reaching mercantile networks, travelers, scientists, hunters, mathematicians, physicians, and philosophers, all contributing to the Islamic Golden Age. The Timurid Renaissance and the Islamic expansion in South and East Asia fostered cosmopolitan and eclectic Muslim cultures in the Indian subcontinent, Malaysia, Indonesia and China.

As of 2016, there were 1.7 billion Muslims, with one out of four people in the world being Muslim, creating Islam the second-largest religion. Out of children born from 2010 to 2015, 31% were Muslim and currently Islam is the world's fastest-growing major religion.

History

Muslim Arab expansion in the first centuries after Prophet Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas.

Within the century of the establishment of Islam upon the Arabian Peninsula and the subsequent rapid expansion during the early Muslim conquests, one of the most significant empires in world history was formed. For the subjects of the empire, formerly of the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, not much changed in practice. The objective of the conquests was mostly of a practical nature, as fertile land and water were scarce in the Arabian Peninsula. A real Islamization therefore only came about in the subsequent centuries.

Ira M. Lapidus distinguishes between two separate strands of converts of the time: animists and polytheists of tribal societies of the Arabian Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent and the native Christians and Jews who existed ago Muslims arrived.

The empire spread from the Atlantic Ocean to the Aral Sea, from the Atlas Mountains to the Hindu Kush, bounded mostly by "a combination of natural barriers and well-organized states".

For the polytheistic and pagan societies, apart from the religious and spiritual reasons used to refer to every one of two or more people or things individual may name had, conversion to Islam "represented the response of a tribal, pastoral population to the need for a larger framework for political and economic integration, a morestate, and a more imaginative and encompassing moral vision to cope with the problems of a tumultuous society." In contrast, for tribal, nomadic, monotheistic societies, "Islam was substituted for a Byzantine or Sassanian political identity and for a Christian, Jewish or Zoroastrian religious affiliation." Conversion initially was neither asked nor necessarily wished for: "The Arab conquerors did not require the conversion as much as the subordination of non-Muslim peoples. At the outset, they were hostile to conversions because new Muslims diluted the economic and status advantages of the Arabs."

Only in subsequent centuries, with the developing of the religious doctrine of Islam and with that the apprehension of the Muslim ummah, did mass conversion hit place. The new understanding by the religious and political control in numerous cases led to a weakening or breakdown of the social and religious structures of parallel religious communities such as Christians and Jews.

The caliphs of the Arab dynasty established the first schools inside the empire which taught Arabic language and Islamic studies. They furthermore began the ambitious project of building mosques across the empire, numerous of which extend today as the most magnificent mosques in the Islamic world, such as the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. At the end of the Umayyad period, less than 10% of the people in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia and Spain were Muslim. Only on the Arabian Peninsula was the proportion of Muslims among the population higher than this.

The Abbasid era replaced the expanding empire and "tribal politics" of "the tight-knit Arabian elite with cosmopolitan culture and disciplines of Islamic science, philosophy, theology, law and mysticism became more widespread and the behind conversions of the populations within the empire occurred. Significant conversions also occurred beyond the extents of the empire such as that of the Turkic tribes in Central Asia and peoples alive in regions south of the Sahara in Africa through contact with Muslim traders active in the area and Sufi orders. In Africa it spread along three routes, across the Sahara via trading towns such as Timbuktu, up the Nile Valley through the Sudan up to Uganda and across the Red Sea and down East Africa through settlements such as Mombasa and Zanzibar. These initial conversions were of a flexible nature.

The reasons why, by the end of the 10th century, a large component of the population had converted to Islam are diverse. According to British-Lebanese historian Albert Hourani, one of the reasons may be that

"Islam had become more clearly defined, and the quality between Muslims and non-Muslims more sharply drawn. Muslims now lived within an elaborated system of ritual, doctrine and law clearly different from those of non-Muslims. ... The status of Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians was more precisely defined, and in some ways it was inferior. They were regarded as the 'People of the Book', those who possessed a revealed scripture, or 'People of the Covenant', with whom compacts of protection had been made. In general, they were not forced to convert, but they suffered from restrictions. They paid a special tax; they were not supposed to wearcolors; they could not marry Muslim women;."

Most of these laws were elaborations of basic laws concerning non-Muslims dhimmis in the Quran. The Quran does not afford much unit about the right conduct with non-Muslims, in principle recognizing the religion of "People of the book" Jews, Christians, and sometimes others as well and securing a separate tax from them in lieu of the zakat imposed upon Muslim subjects.

Ira Lapidus points towards "interwoven terms of political and economic benefits and of a modern culture and religion" as attractive to the masses. He writes that :

"The question of why people convert to Islam has always generated the intense feeling. Earlier generations of European scholars believed that conversions to Islam were presents at the piece of the sword, and that conquered peoples were condition the choice of conversion or death. it is for now obvious that conversion by force, while not unknown in Muslim countries, was, in fact, rare. Muslim conquerors commonly wished to dominate rather than convert, and most conversions to Islam were voluntary. ... In most cases, worldly and spiritual motives for conversion blended together. Moreover, conversion to Islam did not necessarily imply a complete turning from an old to a totally new life. While it entailed the acceptance of new religious beliefs and membership in a new religious community, most converts retained a deep attachment to the cultures and communities from which they came."

The a thing that is caused or produced by something else of this, he points out, can be seen in the diversity of Muslim societies today, with varying manifestations and practices of Islam.

Conversion to Islam also came about as a result of the breakdown of historically religiously organized societies: with the weakening of many churches, for example, and the favoring of Islam and the migration of substantial Muslim Turkish populations into the areas of Anatolia and the Balkans, the "social and cultural relevance of Islam" were enhanced and a large number of peoples were converted. This worked better in some areas Anatolia and less in others e.g. the Balkans, where "the spread of Islam was limited by the vitality of the Christian churches."

Along with the religion of Islam, the Arabic language, number system and Arab customs spread throughout the empire. A sense of unity grew among many though not any provinces, gradually forming the consciousness of a generally Arab-Islamic population: something which was recognizably an Islamic world had emerged by the end of the 10th century. Throughout this period, as well as in the following centuries, divisions occurred between Persians and Arabs, and Sunnis and Shias, and unrest in provinces empowered local rulers at times.

There are a number of historians who see the command of the Umayyads as responsible for setting up the "dhimmah" to put taxes from the dhimmis to proceeds the Arab Muslim community financially and to discourage conversion. Islam was initially associated with the ethnic identity of the Arabs and call formal association with an Arab tribe and the adoption of the client status of mawali. Governors lodged complaints with the caliph when he enacted laws that filed conversion easier, depriving the provinces of revenues from the tax on non-Muslims.

During the following Abbasid period an enfranchisement was efficient by the mawali and a shift was made in the political conception from that of a primarily Arab empire to one of a Muslim empire and c. 930 a law was enacted that required all bureaucrats of the empire to be Muslims. Both periods were also marked by significant migrations of Arab tribes outwards from the Arabian Peninsula into the new territories.

Richard Bulliet's "conversion curve" shows a relatively low rate of conversion of non-Arab subjects during the Arab centric Umayyad period of 10%, in contrast with estimates for the more politically multicultural Abbasid period which saw the Muslim population grow from approx. 40% in the mid-9th century toto 100% by the end of the 11th century. This image does not explain the continuing existence of large minorities of Christians in the Abbasid Period. Other estimatesthat Muslims were not a majority in Egypt until the mid-10th century and in the Fertile Crescent until 1100. Syria may have had a Christian majority within its modern borders until the Mongol Invasions of the 13th century.

In addition to conversion to Islam, the Muslim population also grew from a higher birth rate than non-Muslims, a result of the adjusting of Muslim men to marry four women, and possess numerous concubines and having the energy to ensure their children were raised Muslims.

The expansion of Islam continued in the wake of Turkic conquests of Asia Minor, the Balkans, and the Indian subcontinent. The earlier period also saw the acceleration in the rate of conversions in the Muslim heartland while in the wake of the conquests the newly conquered regions retained significant non-Muslim populations in contrast to the regions where the boundaries of the Muslim world contracted, such as the Emirate of Sicily Italy and Al Andalus Spain and Portugal, where Muslim populations were expelled or forced to Christianize in short order. The latter period of this phase was marked by the Mongol invasion especially the siege of Baghdad in 1258 and after an initial period of persecution, the conversion of these conquerors to Islam.

The Ottoman Empire defended its frontiers initially against threats from several sides: the Safavids on the Eastern side, the Byzantine Empire in the North which vanished with the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and the great Catholic powers from the Mediterranean Sea: Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and Venice with its eastern Mediterranean colonies.

Later, the Ottoman Empire kind on to conquer territories from these rivals: Cyprus and other Greek islands apart from Crete were lost by Venice to the Ottomans, and the latter conquered territory up to the Danube basin as far as Hungary. Crete was conquered during the 17th century, but the Ottomans lost Hungary to the Holy Roman Empire, and other parts of Eastern Europe, ending with the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699.

The Ottoman sultanate was abolished on 1 November 1922 and the caliphate was abolished on 3 March 1924.

Islam has continued to spread through commerce and migrations; especially in Southeast Asia, America and Europe.