Jihad of the Islamic Religion
This is an excerpt from the paper...
Beginning almost immediately after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 A.D., within the lifespan of a single generation the Islamic religion began a "jihad" (holy war) of expansion that was to embrace the whole of the Middle East outside of the core Byzantine Empire. Within two centuries that expansion would extend west to the Iberian Peninsula, deep north into Central Asia, and east into the borderlands of the Indian subcontinent. It was an expansion driven, at first, by the Arab tribes allied directly to Muhammad. Very shortly, however, as those desert nomads absorbed centuries-old cultures into their new Muslim faith, a synthesis of dynamics developed to create the "Golden Age" of Islam. That synthesis was to become dominated by Persian culture (Saunders 187-198). Reaching their height of home-grown achievement with the pre-Hellenic Persian Empire, the ancient civilizations of the Middle East had constructed a strong cultural foundation for the new-arriving Arabian-inspired Islam to build upon. The Islamic civilization that emerged was to surpass its humble desert origins with a glory of achievement - scientific, mercantile and cultural - that put its feudal counterparts in Western Europe to shame. It was a Golden Age that would continue into the 1200s - when Mongol invaders first conquered, then were absorbed into, the Islamic cultures of Central Asia and the Middle East. The Golden Age of Islam in the Middle East is often referred to as the "renaissance" pe
. . .
abandoned in favor of a Mesopotamian capital, in Baghdad. Symbolically, this marked an important change for the Islamic Empire, from that of a Byzantine succession state to a Middle Eastern empire of the traditional pattern, in which older oriental influences, particularly that of Persia, were to play an increasing part (Lewis 88).
From the beginning, though, the Islamic Empire encouraged a "renaissance" in Persia. The simple substitution of a single, protective, relatively benevolent, conquering entity over the region immediately allowed mercantile activity to flourish. Moreover, as their first conquests were so quick and extensive, the Arab rulers had no administrative traditions of their own to impose, nor time to develop them: the indigenous structure and Pahlavi language of the transitional Sassanians continued to be used in Mesopotamia and Persia (Nawwab 56).
The 'Abbasid dynasty, while long-lived, was not politically strong. Founded on rebellion (a 747 A.D. uprising in Persia's Khorasan was the catalyst for change), the 'Abbasid had mobilized a multi-national alliance against their Arabian cousins. Ethnic resentment was one of the cards they played: the Umayyad caliphs had attempted to impose Arabian language and
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Central Asian, Golden Age, Islamic Empire, Middle East, Muhammad Koran, Sunni Shi'ite, Islamic Persia, Khalifah Caliphs, Roman Empire, Central Asia, golden age, middle east, central asia, ed york, islamic culture, persian culture, islamic empire, 6th ed york, influence persian, islamic persia, central asian, golden age islam,
Approximate Word count = 1589
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
