Pre-Islamic & Early Islamic Periods

The Byzantine Empire stood at one end of the region. This was the first Christian Empire in the world and was founded by Constantine in 330 A.D. The city of Byzantium was on the European side of the Bosporus and was a worthy city that overlooked both Europe and Asia and thus was fitted to be a power in both. One of the most fertile periods in Byzantine history came during the reign of the Emperor Justinian, which was in the sixth century AD in the pre-Islamic era. Under his leadership, the city grew to greater splendor than had ever been seen there before. In the city of Ravenna the walls of the Church of San Vitale were raised, and buildings of all sort were erected in Constantinople. The city tripled in size. Justinian built many harbors, and masses of people were always coming by boat into Constantinople to petition the emperor to carry out legal business. Since many of the people were very poor, Justinian built a huge lodging-house where they could stay for nothing. He also built many aqueducts to provide water for the city, and to improve the system he built a huge reservoir underground which is still present in Constantinople today. He took pains to improve the grai

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Nestorian Christianity made inroads over this religion in some areas. There was also a well-established Jewish community in and around the city of Babylon (Kennedy 11-12). This was the situation in the pre-Islamic era, with these religions vying for converts against the pagan religions of many Arabian peoples. Lapidus emphasize that on the eve of the Islamic era, Arabia stood on the periphery of the Middle Eastern imperial societies "in a state of development equivalent to the ancient rather than the evolved condition of the rest of the region" (Lapidus 11). Arabia was pastoral rather than agricultural, with camps and oases rather than cities, with pagan religion rather than monotheistic religion, and politically fragmented rather than politically organized. Arabia was still in contact with the rest of the Middle East and was not separated from it in any way, so there was commerce, trade, and a movement of ideas among the other states and Arabia: Thus the civilization of the Middle Eastern empires was seeping into Arabia as happened everywhere where developed empires maintained frontiers with politically and culturally less organized societies (Lapidus 13). This would be important in a different direction later as Islam
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1357
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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