ChAPTER 11 The First Global Civilization: The Rise

• A striking example of the sophistication and beauty of the arts and architecture produced by the fusion of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian cultural traditions is the arches of the Great Mosque in southern Spain.

• The Straits of Gibraltar separated north Africa from the Iberian peninsula in 755.
• The Syrians who had joined in earlier Arab-Berber campaigns to conquer the peninsula had been the mainstay of the Umayyad dynasty.

• Despite continued resistance by rivals and rebels, 'Abd al-Rahman consolidated his control over Iberia.

• After being the capital of a flourishing Muslim kingdom, Cordoba became one of the most cosmopolitan and celebrated cities in the Mediterranean world.
• One of the world's finest universities, well-paved and well-lit streets, houses with running water, and a library with over 400,000 volumes were some of the highlights of Cordoba.
• The great mosque was the crowning glory.
• The way in which the mosque encapsulated the exceptional synergy generated by cooperation among and the blend of the diverse peoples and cultures that came together in Islamic Spain was even more remarkable.

• The construction of the great mosque of Cordoba owes a lot to earlier and even contemporary rival civilizations.
• It was built on the ruins of a Christian church, and many of the pillars that supported the signature horseshoe arches were taken from Roman ruins.
• Although the influence of Syrian-style Islamic architecture is apparent, the mosque's bell tower and thick walls decorated with geometric stone carvings shared key features with the Romanesque churches then found throughout Latin Christendom.

• Much of the mosque's stonework was created by Christian Orthodox artisans from Constantinople, and its architects, laborers, and overseers were drawn from Arab and Berber Muslim migrants as well as the majority Christian population of Iberia.

• The importance of cross-cultural influences and interethnic and religious cooperation in the construction of the grand mosque of Cordoba was one of the main features of Muslim Iberian society as a whole.
• Paper and refined steel were brought to al-Andalus by Arab and Berber migrants, and their descendants brought leather working skills back to the Muslim world.
• A wide variety of staple foods and plants, including oranges, sugar cane, and cotton, were introduced by Muslim migrants to Iberia.

• Jews and Christians were allowed in Iberia to worship openly, to regulate their everyday lives according to their own laws, and to collaborate with Muslims in trade, scholarship, and the arts.
• Arab and Jewish scholars in urban centers throughout the Mediterranean were renowned for their translations of classic Greek texts.

• The tradition of wandering northwards or troubadours, who carried music, fables, and the idea of romantic love into Christian Europe was a key source of Muslim Spain.
• It was a land where Muslim, Christian, and Jewish women flourished as poets, musicians, and university students.

• In the chapter that follows, we will see that Muslim Iberia was an example of much of the Islamic world in its early centuries.
• Islam was a religion of the towns and trade from the beginning.
• The founder of one of the great world religions, Muhammad, was a successful caravan leader before he received the divine revelations that changed him into a saint.
• The early years of Islam's spread from Arabia were peaceful and voluntary, but the faithful were reluctant to recruit new believers.
• Even after the new faith came to undergird vast and expansive empires, such as those fashioned by the Umayyads and Abbasids, adherents of other religions practiced their rituals openly.
• Many of the most brilliant contributions of early Islamic civilization came from the openness of Arabs to borrowing from the ancient civilizations that surrounded the Arab heartlands.
• The rise of the first genuinely global civilization in human history could not have been achieved without the absorption and innovations of the Arabs.

• The environment of Arabia was a wasteland before the rise of Islam.

• The Arabian Peninsula was the birthplace of the first global civilization.
• The area is covered by some of the most inhospitable desert in the world.

• The map shows that Arabia remained in contact with the west and south through camel caravans, even though it was separated from the classical civilizations.

• A bare and black shining beach of heated volcanic stones is all about us.

• In the coastal regions of the far south, there was an extensive culture based on camel and goat agriculture.

• With their supply of water, shade, and date palms, oases like this one in Egypt have long been key centers of permanent settlement and trade in the desert.
• Major towns grew around the underground springs and wells that fed the oases.
• Travelers and traders stopped at the oases to rest and eat after their long treks through the desert.
• As points of concentration of wealth, food, and precious water, oases were tempting targets for raids by bedouin bands.

• Although the urban roots of Islam have been stressed by writers, the bedouin world in which the religion arose shaped the career of its prophet, his teachings, and the spread of the new beliefs.
• Mecca and Medina were extensions of the tribal culture of the camel nomads.
• Their populations were related by kinship.
• Mecca was founded by bedouins and at the time of Muhammad, it was ruled by former bedouin clans.
• The nomadic tribes that lived along the vulnerable caravan routes to the north and south were in charge of the safety of the trade routes.
• The social organization of the town dwellers was similar to that of the nomads.

• The harsh desert and scrub environment of Arabia gave rise to forms of social organization and a lifestyle that were similar to those of other nomadic peoples.
• Bedouin herders lived in tent camps.
• The Postclassical Period, 600-1450: New Faith and New Commerce, but these were rarely congregated together and only in times of war or severe crisis.
• A strong dependence on and loyalty to one's family and clan was a result of the struggle for food in the Arabian environment.
• It depended on cooperation and support from family.
• Most of the time it was fatal to be cut off from them.
• The use of water ing places and grazing lands was regulated by clan council.
• There could be differences of wealth and status between clans of the same tribe.
• Band of free warriors whose families made up a majority of a given clan group were the ones who enforced the shaykhs' dictates.
• The remnants of rival clans defeated in war, who served the shaykhs or the wives, and many children, were slaves beneath the warriors.

• Fierce inter-clan rivalries and struggles to control vital watering places reinforced Clan Cohesion.
• The warriors from one clan were likely to kill those from the other clan if they found them drawing water from one of their wells.
• Wars broke out as a result of one clan encroaching on another's pasture areas.
• In a culture where honor depended on respect for one's clan, the flimsiest pretexts could lead to violence.
• An insult to a warrior in a market town, the theft of a prize stallion, or one clan's defeat in a horse race could end in battles between clan groups.
• All the men of a given clan joined in these fights, which were usually won by the side that could field several champion archers who were famed for their strength and skill.

• The battles were fought according to a code of chivalry.

• Although battles were usually small in number, they were often bloody and hard-fought.
• For hundreds of years, clan feuds were initiated or perpetuated by the battles.
• Revenge was to be taken on the clan that killed the warriors.
• Their deaths led to reprisals.
• The bedouins were weakened by this constant infighting and allowed to be manipulated and set against each other.

• Although most of Arabia was occupied by herders, farmers and town peninsula were founded by Umayyad dwellers in the western and southern parts of the peninsula.
• The original home of Muhammad was destroyed by foreign invasions and bedouin peoples.
• The transcontinental trading system that stretched from the Mediterranean to the east point in Islam led to the location of the chief religious pilgrimage north.

• Mecca's wealth and status were enhanced by the fact that the city was the ruler of Islam from 661 to 750.

• In the 7th century, there were fears of an assault by a rival.

• Medina was an important shrine established in an Oasis like most of the other towns in the peninsula.
• S sedentary agriculture was possible because of springs and wells.
• There is wheat in Islam.

• They traded to the bedouins.
• In the long-distance caravan trade that passed through Arabia, Medina was also engaged, although on a much smaller scale town located northeast of Mecca.
• The control of Medina was divided between two bedouin and three Jewish clans.
• After flight from to the survival of the prophet Muhammad and the Islamic faith, the city became a poor second to Mecca as a center of trade.

• Milking camels and weaving cloth were some of the key economic roles played by women.
• Many tribes traced their descent through the mother rather than the father, because the men of the clan were often on the move.
• Men and women were allowed multiple marriage partners in some tribes.
• To seal a marriage contract, the man was required to pay a bride price to the woman's family, not the father's gift.

• In pre Islamic Arabia, women were not secluded and did not wear veils.
• In the pre-Islamic era, they composed poems that were the focus of bedouin cultural life, and their advice was highly regarded by clan and tribal councils.

• Women were not considered equal to men despite these career outlets.
• They were little more than laborers and could not gain glory as warriors, the most prized occupation of the bedouins.
• Their status was dependent on the custom of individual clans and tribes.
• It ranged from one clan to the next.
• Property control, inheritance, and divorce were favored by men.
• In the urban environment of trading centers such as Mecca, the rise of a mercantile elite and social stratification appear to have set back the position of women on the whole.
• The more stable family life of the towns led to the practice of tracing descent through the male line, and while men continued to practice polygamy, women were expected to be monogamous.

• Arab material culture was not developed because of the isolation of Arabia in the pre-Islamic age and the poverty of the natural environment.
• There wasn't much art or architecture in the far south.
• Mecca made little impression on the cosmopolitan merchants who traveled through the city in caravans from the ancient cities of the north.

• There was no written language in the pre-Islamic era and poetry was the main focus of cultural creativity.
• Clan and tribal bards narrated poems about their kinsmen's heroics in war and the clan's great deed.
• Some poets were said to have supernatural powers.
• Poems give a vision of life and society in pre-Islamic Arabia.
• They tell of lovers who were unfaithful, war and vendettas, loyalty and generosity.

• Most Bedouin clans had a blend of animism and polytheism to worship gods and goddesses.
• The followers of the Muham moon god, Hubal, were associated with night because of the cool weather.

• The worship of nature spirits focused on sacred caves, springs, and groves of trees where the bedouins could take shelter from the heat and wind.
• Religion seems to have had little to do with ethics.

• Standards of morality and proper behavior were based on tribal customs.

• It is a matter of some doubt as to how seriously the bedouins took their gods.
• The famous tale of a bedouin warrior who had set out to avenge his father's death at the hands of a rival clan illustrates their slow adherence.
• He stopped at an oracle along the way to seek advice, drawing arrows that indicated various courses of action he might take.
• He was advised to abandon his quest for revenge three times.

Which parts of Muhammad's religious message do you think accounted for the strength of Islam in the Arabian peninsula?

• Camels were the dominant animal in Arabia by the 6th century.
• The civilized practices, Islam contained a centers to the south that were in ruins, and trading centers such as Mecca and Medina depended on alliances with neighboring bedouin tribes to keep the caravan routes open.
• Despite the lure of the religions, clan and kin, nomadic camp, blood feud, and local gods persisted despite the constriction of the world.

• Pressures for change were increasing.
• The dynasty wanted to control the nomadic tribes of the peninsula.
• In addition, Arab peoples migrated that ruled Persia into Mesopotamia and other areas to the north, where they came under foreign influence in the centuries before the rise of ence.
• The influence of established monotheistic religions, especially Judaism Muhammad and the early decades of Christianity, entered Arabia from these regions.
• The new currents gave rise to a number of Arab prophets.

• The Prophet of Islam responded to the influences flowing into Arabia and the related social dislocations that were created by the Banu hashim clan.

• The Quraysh tribe in Mecca were raised by the hardship of Muhammad's early life.
• He was born in the mid-sixties.
• His father died before he did.

• Muhammad's mother died shortly after he moved to live with her.
• Muhammad had good fortune to be born into a respected clan and powerful tribe.
• His paternal uncle, Abu Talib, was fond of the boy and supported him through much of his early life.
• The young man was educated in the ways of the merchant by his grandfather, who was engaged in commerce.
• When Muhammad traveled to Syria with Abu Talib, he met people from the Christian and Jewish faiths, whose beliefs and practices had a great impact on his teachings.

• Muhammad lived in Mecca in his adolescence.

• He would have become more concerned about the new forces.
• Some clan families were enriched by the growth of the towns and others were left behind.
• Some clans, such as the Umayyads, grew rich on the profits from commerce, while others kept their herding lifestyle.

• The new reli gious currents that were sweeping Arabia and surrounding areas in the early 7th century would almost certainly have been aware of Muhammad as a trader and traveler.
• The spread of monotheistic ideas and a growing dissatisfaction with the old gods that had been venerated by the bedouin peoples were notable.
• Several prophets had arisen in Muhammad's time, proclaiming a new faith for the Arabs.

• Although socially prominent, economically well off, and widely admired for his trading skills and trustworthiness, Muhammad grew increasingly distracted and dissatisfied with a life focused on material gain.
• He spent a lot of time in the wilderness around Mecca.
• His followers believe that he received the first revelation in 610 or earlier.
• The new religion that Muhammad began to preach to his clan and the people of Mecca was formed by the teachings and injunctions of the Qur'an.

• Muhammad had a small following, consisting of his wife, several members of his clan, and some servants and slaves.
• The Umayyad notables who dominated Meccan life saw him as a threat to their own wealth and power as the circle of faithful grew.
• The gods of the Ka'ba had done a lot to establish the city as a center of commerce and bedouin interchange.

• The Umayyads plotted with other clans to murder Muhammad, despite the fact that he was protected by his own clan.
• Muhammad had a reputation for being a skillful and fair negotiator before he fled Umayyad persecution.
• The oasis community was on the verge of civil war because of the fights between the clans in Medina.
• The leaders of the bedouin clans sent a delegation to invite Muhammad, who was related to them on his mother's side, to mediation to end the conflicts that had plagued the town.

• He was given a hero's welcome in Medina.
• He settled the bedouin clans of the town's quarrels with a warm reception.
• His wisdom and skill as a political leader won him new followers, who joined those who had accompanied him from Mecca as the core believers of the new faith.

• The Umayyad notables saw Muhammad as a greater threat because of his successes.
• Mecca's competitor, Medina, was strengthened by his leadership as he preached a faith that rivaled their own.
• Meccan caravans were the subject of Muslim raids.

• The Quraysh launched a series of attacks on Muhammad and his followers in order to end the threats.
• Several battles were led by these attacks.
• Muhammad was a leader and a fighter.

• The Muslims were granted permission to visit the shrine at Ka'ba in Mecca during the season of truce thanks to a treaty with the Quraysh.
• More than 10,000 converts accompanied Muhammad on his triumphant return to his hometown in 622.
• Muhammad gradually won over the Umayyads and most of the other inhabitants of Mecca to the new faith after prov ing the power of Al ah.

• Although Islam was soon to become one of the great world religions, the beliefs and practices of the prophet Muhammad were only adopted by the Arab town dwellers and bedouins who had grown up with him.
• Early Christianity focused on Jewish converts.
• The new religion preached by Muhammad had a lot to offer the people of Arabia.
• It gave them a form of monotheism that did not belong to any single tribe.
• The equal of the monotheistic faiths held by the Christians and Jews, who lived in the midst of the bedouin tribes, was provided by it.
• The monotheism preached by Muhammad was even more uncompromising than the one preached by the Christians because it allowed no interaction between the individual and God.
• There were no saints or angels, but God was one.
• There were no priests in the Christian or Jewish sense of the term.

• The new religion created a single source of authority and discipline.

• The conquerors and rulers of the Middle Eastern world were transformed from vassals, borderland warriors, or contemptible "savages" of the desert waste.

• The Postclassical Period, 600-1450: New Faith and New Commerce and generous to their dependents, including slaves.
• He did not allow the rich to exploit the poor through high rents or interest rates.

• The revelations of the Qur'an and the teachings of the prophet were incorporated into an exten sive body of law that regulated all aspects of the lives of the Muslim faithful.
• They lived in a way that would prepare them for the Last Judgment, which in Islam, as in Christianity, would determine their fate in eternity.
• A strict but socially minded body of law and a compassionate God set impressive standards for the social interaction between followers of a new faith.

• The same attributes that won the people of Arabia's support for Islam were present in some of these beliefs.
• Islam's potential as a world religion was enhanced by the fact that most of the attributes of Islam were to some degree antici pated by the other Semitic religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity, which Muhammad had contact with for much of his life.
• He accepted the validity of the earlier divine revelations that gave rise to the Jewish and Christian faiths.
• He said that the revelations he had received were refinements of earlier ones and that they were the final instructions for human behavior and worship.

• Muslims from all over the world make the pilgrimage to the holy sites of Arabia every year.
• Pilgrims at Mecca and Medina perform important religious rituals for all who can afford them.

• There was no injunction at the Ka'ba.

• After Muhammad's death, many of the bedouin tribes that had converted to Islam stopped following the new faith.
• The community was able to find new leaders who directed the Muslim faithful and began a series of campaigns to force those who had abandoned Islam to return to the fold.
• Muslim military commanders began to mount serious north Africa after they united most sequence of stunning conquests throughout the Middle East and of Arabia under the Islamic banner.

• The conquests of Mesopotamia, north Africa, and Persia were the result of the courage, military prowess, and religious zeal of the warriors of Islam.
• The empire built from these conquests was Arab.
• The Umayyads and other prominent clans ruled most of it.
• The groups did not want to convert the subject populations to the new religion.

• The leadership crisis brought on by Muhammad's death was compounded by the fact that he had not appointed a successor or established a procedure by which a new leader would be chosen.
• The Muslim community was divided on who should succeed him.

• There was a need for a strong leader who could hold the Islamic community together.

• A deadlock between the clans was likely to be fatal to the community because of enemies on all sides.

• The decision from "The Founding later proved to be a major source of division in the Islamic community.
• In addition to his courage, caliph or leader of the Muslim faithful warmth, and wisdom, Abu Bakr was well versed in the genealogy of the bedouin tribes, elected after Muhammad's death, which meant that he knew which tribes could be turned against each other.
• Renown for his knowledge.
• His mandate was very limited.
• He did not receive financial support from nomadic tribes.
• He had to keep working as a merchant on the Islamic community.

• These commanders were able to do it.
• The Islamic faithful routed the bedouin tribes after turning back the attacks on Mecca.
• Emboldened by the proven skil s of his generals and the swel ing ranks of the and some of larger clans, Abu Bakr oversaw raids to the north of Arabia into the sedentary zones in present unity of Islam.

• The unified bedouin forces were supposed to retreat back into the desert.
• The Byzantine and Persian empires were found to be vulnerable to the Muslim warriors.
• The growing support of the Arab bedouin peoples who had migrated into the Fertile Crescent for centuries encouraged the invaders.
• These peoples were the frontier guard ians of the Byzantine and Persian empires.
• They joined their brethren in attacking both of them.

• Many forces drove the Arab warriors.
• The Islamic faith gave them a sense of common cause and strength.
• They were able to stand up to the non-Arab rulers who had been playing them against each other and hated them.
• The bedouin warriors were drawn to the campaigns of expansion by the promise of a share in the booty to be won in the rich farmlands raided and the tribute that could be exacted from towns that came under Arab rule.

• The Arab conquests were not driven by a desire to win converts to their new religion, but by the chance to honor their new religion.
• Other than fellow bedouin tribes of Arab descent, the invaders had good reason to avoid mass conversions.

• The Sasanian Empire of Persia was the more vulnerable of the two great empires that fought for dominance in the Fertile Crescent transit zone.
• The power of the emperor was concentrated in the Sasanian domain.
• The emperor was manipulated by a class that exploited the farmers who made up most of the empire.
• Zoroastrianism, the religion of the emperor, lacked popular roots.
• The religion of a vision ary reformer named Mazdak, which had won considerable support among the peas ants, had been brutally suppressed by the Sasanian rulers in the period before the rise of Islam.

• The commanders of the Sasanians had contempt for the Arab invaders and set out against them with poorly prepared forces.

• The camp, armored warriors, tories, and siege in progress help us to imagine the Muslim forces that built the first great Arab empire in the 7th century.

• The Muslim warriors had entered the heartland.
• The collapse of the empire was brought about by Muslim victories.
• In the face of the Muslim advance, the rulers and their forces retreated eastward.
• The capital was taken, armies were destroyed, and generals were killed.

• The destruction of the empire was ensured when the last of the Sasanian rulers was assassinated.

• The Byzantines proved to be a stronger adversary than the Muslims despite their impressive string of victories.
• Their ability to resist the Muslim onslaught was hampered by the defection of their own frontier Arabs and the support the Muslim invaders received from the Christians of Syria and Egypt.
• The area in preference to the Muslims would not only tolerate the Christians but tax them less heavily than the Byzantines did.

• Weakened from within and exhausted by the long wars fought with Persia in the decades before in Asia, the Byzantines supported Islamic the Arab explosion.

• Europe of the richest provinces of the empire was cut off by Byzantine rule.
• The ancient center of learning was invaded by Muslims.

• From the point of view of the Byzantines, the desert bedouins were putting together war fleets that challenged the long-standing mastery of the Mediterranean.
• The loss of Byzantium's rich provinces in Syria and Egypt was due to the rise of Muslim naval supremacy in the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
• The way to further Muslim conquests in north Africa, the Mediterranean islands, and even southern Italy was opened by it.
• The Byzantines were able to rally their forces and prevent further inroads into their Balkans and Asia Minor heartlands.

• Islamic civilization expanded by both conquest and trade, while the Muslim faith was spread peacefully along ancient trading routes.

• The strength of the Byzantine Empire was greatly reduced by the New Faith and New Commerce of the Arab invaders.
• It was a kingdom that was under siege.

• The problem of succession and the Sunni-Shi'a split was overshadowed by the rise of an Arab empire.
• Although these divisions were often generations old and the result of personal animosities, resentments had begun to build over how the booty from the conquests should be divided among the tribal groups that made up the Islamic community.
• After two decades after the death of the prophet, tensions broke into open violence.
• The third caliph and member of the mutinous warriors returned from Egypt.
• His death was a signal to the supporters of Ali that he was the Caliph.
• Uthman's unpopularity among many of the tribes, particularly those from mutinous warriors returning from Medina and the prophet's earliest followers, was due to the fact that he was the first caliph to Egypt.
• When Uthman's assassins were not punished, followers of Ali and the Umayyads swore revenge.

• There was warfare between the two groups.

• Ali was a renowned warrior and experienced commander, and his deeply committed support ers soon gained the upper hand.
• After his victory at the Battle of the Camel, most of the Arab garrisons moved to his side against the Umayyads, whose supporters were concentrated in the province of Syria and the holy city of Mecca.
• His cause was killed in mediation.
• His supporters had to be suppressed violently because they had to give up his leadership.
• While representatives of both parties tried unsuccessfully to work out a compromise, the Umayyads regrouped their forces and added Egypt to the provinces backing Ali's party.

• The leader of the Umayyad clan was pressured by the Umayyads into renouncing his claims to the caliphate after Ali was assassinated a year later.

• In the decades after the prophet's death, there were deep divisions in the war with Ali.

• Ali's supporters are the most fundamental in the Islamic world.
• Hostility between the two branches of the Islamic faithful was heightened after Ali's death.

• Differences in belief have compounded factional disputes about who had the right to succeed Muhammad with the son of Ali.
• There is a caliphate in these divisions.

• The sequence of Arab conquest was renewed in the last half of the 7th century after a pause to settle internal disputes.
• There is a rivalry between Buddhism and Muslims in the region that continues to this day.
• The southern part of the advance reached northwest India by the early 8th century.
• The Arab armies crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to conquer Spain and threaten France.
• Although the Muslim advance into western Europe was blocked by the hard fought victory of Charles Martel and the Franks at Poitiers in 732, the Arabs did not fully retreat into Spain until decades later.
• The conquest of key islands such as Crete, Sicily, and Sardinia in the 9th century solidified the position of Muslim warriors and sailors, who dominated much of the Mediterranean.
• The Umayyads ruled an empire that stretched from Spain in the west to central Asia in the east.
• Not since the Romans had an empire of this size been built so quickly.

• A succession of Umayyad caliphs tried to build a bureaucracy that would bind together the vast domains they claimed to rule.
• The empire was an Arab conquest state.
• In the Arabian peninsula and parts of the Fertile Crescent, a small Arab and Muslim aristocracy ruled over peoples who were neither Arab nor Muslim.
• Muslims were the first class citizens of this empire.
• The core of the army and imperial administration was made up of them.
• They could only be taxed for charity.
• The Umayyads wanted to separate the Muslim warrior elite from the local population.
• Intermarriage meant conversion and the loss of taxable subjects, so it was hoped that isolation would keep them from assimilating to the subjugated cultures.

• Muslim subjects were not likely to succeed.

• It was difficult to get important positions in the army or bureaucracy after they received no share of the booty.
• They weren't considered full members of Zoroastrians and hindus.

• The Umayyad era had a low number of conversions.
• It was applied to Christians and Jews who shared the Bible with Muslims.
• Although they had to pay taxes, their communities and legal systems were still intact and they were allowed to worship as they pleased.
• This approach made it easier for these peoples to accept Arab rule because they had been mistreated by their pre- Muslim overlords.

• Significant shifts in the position of women within the family and in society at large were brought about by the changes within the Umayyad Age Broader social changes within the Arab and widening Islamic community.
• In the first centuries of Arab expansion, the position of women under Islam was greatly strengthened and they were able to live in a more secluded lifestyle.
• The Jews are in a synagogue.
• Jews were allowed to worship ethical dimensions of marriage and build impressive synagogues.
• Jewish merchant families amassed great prophet displayed for his own wives and daughters did much to wealth, often in partnership with Muslims, and Jewish scholars were revered strengthen the bonds between husband and wife and the nuclear from Spain to Baghdad for their many contributions to learning.

• The casual and often commercial sexual liaisons that had been widespread in pre-Islamic Arabia were replaced by marriage.
• He forbade female infanticide, which had been practiced in Arabia in pre-Islamic times, and he denounced adultery on the part of both husbands and wives.
• Men could marry up to four wives.
• If the husband could not support more than one wife or treat all of his wives equally, the Qur'an forbade multiple marriages.
• Women couldn't take more than one husband.
• The legal rights of women in inheritance and divorce were greatly strengthened when Muhammad gave his own daughters a say.
• He wanted the bride-price paid by the husband's family to be given to his future wife.

• The equality of men and women was preached by the prophet.
• Some of Muhammad's earliest and bravest followers were women.
• In the battle with the Meccans, a woman was the first martyr for the new faith.

• Women were not allowed to lead prayers, but they played an active role in politics.
• Muhammad's widow promoted the claims of the Umayyad party against Ali, while Ali's daughter battled Husayn.
• During the Umayyad period, little is heard of veiled Arab women, and women seem to have pursued a wide range of occupations, including scholarship, law, and commerce.
• In the early Islamic era, one of Zainab's nieces epitomizes the independence of Muslim women.
• She replied that Al ah had chosen to give her a beautiful face and that she intended to make sure that it was seen in public so that everyone would appreciate his grace.

• The Umayyad caliphs' growing addiction to luxury and soft living was one of the reasons for the ever-increasing size of the royal harem.
• Since their seizure of the caliph, various Muslim groups have disagreed about their legitimacy.
• In the early 8th century, the Umayyads retreated from the dirty business of war into their pleasure gardens and marble palaces, further alienating the Muslim faithful.
• Their abandon ment of the frugal, simple lifestyle followed by Muhammad and the earliest caliphs-- including Abu Bakr, who made a trip to the market the day after he was selected to be the prophet.
• The uprising that proved fatal to the short-lived dynasty began among the fron tier warriors who had fought and settled in distant Iran.

• More than 50,000 warriors settled near the town of Merv in the eastern Iranian border lands of the empire by the mid-8th century.
• Many of them had married local women, and over time they came to identify with the region and resent the dictates of gover nors sent from distant Damascus.
• Muslims are required to pray five times a day, facing the holy city of Mecca, whether in a nearby mosque or in their homes and shops.
• The rior settlers were angered by the fact that they were rarely given the share of the by a highly ornamented wall that indicated the direction of the holy city.
• Women pray in the account books of the royal treasury or on the sides of the mosque, while men congregate in the open areas in the center and outside.

• The strong position shows that women were able to remarry and to own and inherit as a result of the teachings and example of property.
• Even after their hus the prophet had begun to erode, they could still pursue careers.
• We don't understand what happened to all bands.
• Muhammad was employed by Khadijah.
• There are forces that account for the decline.
• She asked him to marry and other early sources, which apparently neither surprised nor scandalized her fam prophet, because of the ambiguities in the Qur'an.
• Meccan society is indicated by these sources.
• Muhammad was 25 at the time of their about good treatment for women and defined certain rights for betrothal, while Khadijah was 15 at the time.

• Differential punishments for adultery are examples of the impact of the bedouin pattern of gender roles on men in key legal rights.
• Islamic thought said that women were more likely to be equal status of women because Islam legalized the strong.
• It gave more uni than men to be sinners.

• The influences of long-civilized peoples into which the Arabs influenced the Arab peoples of Islam began.
• The taste began to take hold.
• The practices of veiling and for city life and the superior material and artistic culture of the female seclusion that were long followed by the non-Arab dwell peoples they ruled.
• The position of women in Syria and Persia was weakened by the adoption of these roles.
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• The erosion of the position of women was especially pronounced in China, given the earlier status of women in countries such as India, Greece, and the Middle East.
• The social systems of upper-class women felt very different.
• The rise of restrictions on their movement and activities is what happened in each case.
• The women's quarters were the most lucrative occupations in the Middle East because of the strong paternal control within residences that sprang up in the wealthy administrative centers the family, inheritance through the male line, and male domina and trading towns of the Middle East.

• Women in these societies were more and more exposed to gardens.
• Women's legal rights were often reduced.
• The concubines lived in seclusion.
• They were constantly guarded by many civilizations and various ways were devised to keep women away from the sharp swords of the eunuchs.

• The bedouin tribes of pre-Islamic Arabia had veiled roles for upper-class women when they went into the city.
• They were free from the scrutiny of the townsmen in terms of sexual and marriage partners, occupational choices and travelers when they were carried in covered sedan chairs towns such as Mecca.
• In their homes, upper-class women were spared the drudgery of domestic chores by large numbers of female slaves.
• There are opportunities to influence clan decisions.

• Women from poorer families had to work hard to achieve status in societies like vive.
• They had to leave "veiled but often unchaperoned" to those in early Arabia or the south market to work as domestic servants.
• Lower-class women in east Asia suggest that factors that may help explain the greater bal also worked hard at home, not just at housekeeping but at weav ance in gender roles and power in less centralized societies.
• The ing, rug-making, and other crafts gave the family an immediate connection to agriculture income.
• In rural areas and in distant towns from the main urban and stock-raising, veiling and confinement were not strictly observed.
• For ant women planted their often prominent roles in fertility rituals and religious cults due to the greater respect accorded them by the Peas.

• Because of Islamic religion and law, the position of women in the Middle East has always been lower than in civilized societies.

• Islamic law preserved for women property, inher Chinese, Greek, and Roman societies with regard to their ability to itance, divorce, and remarriage rights that were often denied in hold property, opportunity to pursue careers outside the home, other civilized societies.
• The strong position women had allowed them to have rights in marriage and divorce.

• The Umayyads and the Damascus elite were contemptuous of each other.
• An attempt by Umayyad palace officials to get new troops into the Merv area touched off a revolt that spread over the eastern portion of the empire.

• The leader of the Umayyads, Abu al-Abbas, the great-great-grandson of the prophet's uncle, led his forces from victory after forging alliances with dissident groups.

• The Shi'a had rejected Umayyad authority from the time of Ali.
• Non-Arab converts to Islam were critical.
• Under Umayyad rule, the mawali felt that they had never been recognized as fully Muslim.
• The mawali hoped to get full acceptance in the community of believers by supporting the Abbasids.

• The Muslim rebels made short work of the Umayyad imperium.
• Iraq fell to the rebels.
• The victory opened the way for the conquest of Syria and the capture of the Umayyad capital.

• Wanting to eliminate the Umayyad family altogether to prevent recurring challenges to his rule, in conquest of Syria and capture of Abu al-Abbas invited many members of the clan to what was styled as a reconciliation banquet.

• An effort was made to kill all of the remaining members of the family.
• The grandson of a former Caliph fled to Spain and founded the Umayyad caliphate of Cordoba, which lived on for centuries after the rest of the Umayyads' empire had disappeared.

• The military force that overthrew the Umayyads was built by Frontier warriors from Khorasan.

• Their Shi'a and mawali allies have been warned.
• The support of Islamic groups allowed the Abbasids to level all other centers of political rivalry.

• Abbasid's empire began to fragment into regional defense of Sunni Islam and less tolerant of what they called the heretical views of the power centers.

• With the Umayyads all but eliminated, the way was clear for the Abbasids to build a centralized imperial order.

• The capital of Abbasid was a sign of things to come.
• The Abbasid caliphs looked down on the Persian capital of Ctesiphon as they were perched on a dynasty located in Iraq near ancient jewel-encrusted thrones.

• The caliphs' palaces and harems expanded to keep pace with their claims to absolute power over the Islamic faithful as well as the non- Muslim subjects of their vast empire.

• The bureaucrats, servants, and slaves who worked to translate Abbasid political claims into reality lived and worked within the walls of the new capital at Baghdad.

• The Postclassical Period, 600-1450: New Faith and New Commerce the Abbasids to project their demands for tribute to the most distant provinces of the empire.
• The bigger the town or village was from the capital, the less effective the royal commands would be.
• For more than a century, the Abbasid regime was able to collect revenue and maintain law and order in the empire.

• In the last decades of the Umayyad period, there was a growing acceptance of non-Arab Muslims as equals.
• Efforts were made to convert new converts to the faith among Arab peoples outside the Arabian peninsula.
• Mass conversions to Islam were encouraged for all of the empire's peoples, from the Berbers of north Africa to the Persians andTurkic peoples of central Asia.
• The first generations of believers were admitted on an equal footing with the earlier converts, and over time the distinction between mawali and the earlier converts all but disappeared.

• The great appeal of Islamic beliefs and the triangular or lateen sails gave converts an advantage over non-Muslims in the empire.
• The converts were exempt from European influenced ship design.

• Wonders dominated the upper levels of imperial administration.
• Powerful Persian families close to the throne became the real power in the imperial system as the Abbasid rulers became less interested in affairs of state.

• The rise of the mawali was paralleled by the growth in wealth and social status of the merchant and landlord classes of the empire.
• The fall of the Han dynasty in China in the early 3rd century C.E.
• led to a decline in the Afro-Eurasian trading network, which led to a great urban expansion in the Abbasid age.
• The revived commercial system pivoted on the great Tang and Song empire in the east.

• Muslim merchants formed partnerships with Christians and Jews.
• The firm was able to do business all week because each merchant had a different Sabbath.
• Merchants supplied the cities of the empire with provisions.
• The long-distance trade specialized in luxury products for the elite classes.
• The baths shown in the Persian painting were frequented by some wealth.

• The caliph, haroun al-Rashid, received a haircut while his servants built and ran mosques and religious schools.
• The Abbasid elite could rest at the baths.
• Large donations were exchanged and enjoyed expert massages.

• Muslim towns and cities can be identified by the domes and minarets of the mosques where the faithful are called to prayer five times a day.
• The mosque and its architec ture were the crowning glory of Islamic material culture during the early centuries of Muslim expansion.
• The functions of the mosque and the evolving style of mosque architecture can tell us about Muslim beliefs and values, as well as the impact of earlier religions, such as Judaism and Christianity, on Islam.

• It is not surprising that the earliest prayer houses were simple to build because of the low level of material culture in pre-Islamic Arabia.
• Muhammad's own house suggested the lines for the first mosques.
• They had a shaded porch on one side, a columned shelter on the other, and an open courtyard in between.
• The outer perimeter of the earliest mosques was made of reed mats, but soon more permanent stone walls surrounded the courtyard and prayer areas.
• After Mecca was taken and the Ka'ba became the central shrine of the new faith, each mosque was oriented to the Mecca wall, which was always faced in the direction of the holy city.

• The chair that the prophet used in the last years of his life was located so that the faithful could see and hear him.
• During the time of the first caliphs, the raised area became the place from which the Friday sermons are delivered throughout the Muslim world.

• The practice of building a special and often elaborately decorated niche had been going on for a while.

• Mosques became more elaborate over time.
• The remains of Greek or Roman temples or abandoned Christian churches can be found in the core of major mosques.
• In the larger cities, the courtyards of the great mosques were surrounded by columns and arches, and eventually they were enclosed by Domes and minarets.

• The mosque design was drawn.

• The first minarets, or towers from which the faithful were called to prayer, were added in the early 8th century and became a key feature of the mosque complex.
• Geometric designs, passages from the Qur'an in swirling Arabic, and flower and plant motifs were favored because human and animal images were forbidden.
• The mosques of Persia had the most splendid decorations.
• In the early centuries of Islam, the great houses of worship became the focal points of Islamic cities, key places of community worship and socialization, and the schools that were often attached, vital intel and educational centers of the Islamic world.

• Discuss the influences of Christianity and Judaism in the design of the mosque.

• There is a decorated section facing Mecca.

• The increase in handicraft production fed the growth of Abbasid cities.
• Both government-run and privately owned workshops produced a wide range of products, from necessities such as furniture and carpets to luxury items such as glassware, jewelry, and tapestries.

• From the glare and heat of the southern Mediterranean climate, a woman from the gurgling fountains and elaborate gardens is described in great detail.

• There was an honorable woman standing before him.
• There was a huge artificial tree made entirely of gold and silver and rich cloth with a raised design in the Hall of the Tree.
• Her walk was filled with gold mechanical birds that chirped to keep her shoes on, and her hair floated in good cheer.

• She wore a face veil.

• Some of the jetty lashes were soft and dull, and the perfect beauty was bland.

• The luxuries, frivolities, and vices of the Abbasid age were very accessible to the rich and powerful.
• Each is selected to show a different aspect of high society in the Abbasid era.
• She stopped at the fruiter's shop and bought from him the first book, which describes the sumptuous interior of a mansion in Baghdad, indi apples and Osmani quinces and Omani peaches.

• I am a king, son of a king, and was brought up like a prince.

• The New Faith and New Commerce workshops were not slaves.
• They were highly valued for their skills and owned their own tools.
• The most accomplished artisans formed guildlike organizations, which supported their members in times of financial difficulty or personal crisis, and negotiated wages and working conditions with merchants.

• It was possible for slaves to rise to positions of great power, and many were granted their freedom or were able to buy it.
• Slaves were forced into lives of hard labor on rural estates and government projects, such as those devoted to draining marshlands, or into a lifetime of labor in the nightmare conditions of the great salt mines in southern Iraq.
• Non-Muslims were captured on slaving raids in east Africa.

• Many of the landlords were established.
• Arab soldiers who invested their share of the land in land or merchants and administrators decades of Abbasid rule were some of the new elite that emerged in the early comers.

• Most peasants didn't own the land they worked on.
• They were tenants, sharecroppers, or migrant laborers who were required to give more of their harvests to the estate owners.

• In the first phase of Abbasid rule, the Islamic contribution to artistic expression focused on mosques and palaces.
• Learning in the Muslim domain focuses on the sciences and mathematics.
• Recovering and preserving the learning of the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean and Middle East were the main tasks in the early Abbasid period.

• Much of Greek learning was lost to the peoples of western Europe.
• The priceless writings of the Greeks on key subjects such as medicine, algebra, geometry, astronomy, and ethics were saved thanks to Muslim and Jewish scholars.
• Greek writings found their way into Christendom from Spain.
• The authors who were rescued in this way were Aristotle, Hippocrates, Ptolemy, and others.

• The rise of Arab traders and merchants as the carriers of goods and inventions was paralleled by the ideas transmitted by scholars working in Arabic.
• The Indian system of numbers was learned by Muslim invaders.
• They were carried from India to the Middle Eastern centers of Islamic civilization.
• The Indian numerical system was sent across the Mediterranean to Italy.
• Indian numbers were important to the early modern Scientific Revolution in western Europe.

• The rise of Islamic civilization from the 7th to 9th centuries was preserved.

• There was no precedent in human history.

• The largely nomadic peoples from an Arabian back contributed to learning, invention, and artistic creativity.
• The water built one of the greatest empires of the preindustrial world, which was carried by their armies and religious teachers to other civiliza, which laid the basis for the first truly global civilization.

• The patchwork of linguistic groups, religions, cially Christianity and Judaism, Arab culture had nurtured Islam, and ethnic types.
• One of the great universal religions of humankind has never before been done by a single civilization.
• The influence of this new creed in that surrounded the pools of sedentary agriculture and urban life has been felt by many nomadic cultures of Islamic law.

• The region's roles in those reversals were far off in the future.
• In the short run, Islamic merce, in and between the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, ushered in an age of unparalleled nomadic expanded greatly.

• There are many accounts of Muhammad's life and the rise of Islam in the surveys of Ira M. Lapidus.

What are the most important social bonds?

What were the main reasons for converting to Islam?