Islam developed into a major force in the Middle East and the Mediterranean region from the seventh to the twelfth centuries. It became so again under the direction of the Ottoman Turks from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The first period was the Golden Age of Islam, an age which ended as the Islamic world passed into an extended period of decline. But this decline did not mean the extinction of the core beliefs of Islam. A resurgence would come about after several centuries of retreat and seeming dormancy in the Islamic world. A number of reasons can be offered for the retreat of Islam during this interim period; among them are the military defeat in Spain, the invasion by the Mongols and the Tartars, the burning of the library in Baghdad, and the rise of the Ottomans as a military and political force. Further than these reasons, however, is the shift that took place in the Islamic world as a result of these forces. It experienced a shift from an outward orientation to an inward orientation. In other words, it went from a stance that was open to the world, a stance by which Islam flourished, to a period of being closed to the world, a period in which Islam did not flourish. Another way of viewing the change was that there was a turning away from true Islam to hybrid and opposing religious and cultural forces within the Islamic world itself.
The history of Islam can be divided into distinct phases--the period of emergence extended from 610 to 661; the period of classical elaboration, or the Golden Age, from 661 to 1258; and the era of repetition and scholastic fragmentation from 1258 to 1800, followed by a time of reactivation and political militancy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Islam began with Muhammad and the revelations he made to his followers and others. The first Muslim was Khadija, the Prophet's wife, and the second was either his freed slave or his teenage cousin. In a short time, he...