essay about islamic civilization

History of the Islamic Civilization Essay

During the 10 th through the 14 th centuries, various professionals from the then Islamic world contributed immensely to the growth and development of Europe. Through preserving earlier traditions and making inventions of their own, the Muslim artistes, scientists, thinkers, princes, and laborers, brought various changes in astronomy, math, philosophy, agriculture, and sanitation.

Consequently, they made remarkable contributions to the European Renaissance in which many new inventions and beliefs were instituted. The age of Islamic civilization started when Muslim conquests led to the establishment of the Caliphate, or Islamic Empire, during the 8 th to 10 th century.

Consequently, the Muslim world was recognized as the epicenter of all knowledge. In astronomy, Islamic civilization in Spain made important discoveries. Since they had to know the direction of Makka, they invented valuable astronomical instruments to assist them in this (Mottaleb, para. 7). Due to this, the Muslim astronomers discovered several new things, such as the invention that the celestial spheres are not solid, the idea that the heavens are less dense than air and the possibility of the earth rotating on its own axis.

In math, the Islamic thinkers made significant contributions by developing algebra, algorithms, as well as several other advances in arithmetic, calculus, trigonometry, geometry, and calculus, which did not exist among the Greek (Hughes, Part I). In addition, they are also responsible for the addition of decimal point notation to numbers.

Muslim philosophers of Spain played a major role towards preserving the ideologies of Aristotle, whose opinions were widely embraced by those who did not embrace Christianity and the Islamic faith.

The Arab philosophers also welcomed other ideas from other places such as China and India, which increased their knowledge from their own studies. Their philosophies were highly influential among the Muslims and Christians of the region.

In Spain, the ideas of the influential Muslim philosophers were translated to other languages such as Hebrew and Latin, which enhanced their spread. It is said that the translation assisted in the development of the modern European philosophy. The Islamic civilization witnessed many advances in agriculture. Muslim traders introduced different crops from other parts of the world that could not grow in the Islamic lands. Crops such as sorghum, rice, cotton, citrus fruits, and sugar cane were introduced in the lands.

Improved farming techniques, such as cash cropping, crop rotation, and irrigation were also introduced. Lastly, the rise of Islam brought fundamental changes in sanitation both in Spain and in Europe. The Muslim scientists discovered the cause of various maladies and taught the people to maintain high standards of hygiene in order to avoid falling sick. In addition, waste management was being undertaken in the various major Islamic towns.

During the Spanish Inquisition, Muslims were ordered to convert to the Catholic faith or risk being persecuted because of their faith. This had devastating effects on them. During the early years of the Inquisition, several Muslims were executed. Consequently, because of the resultant panic, many Spanish Muslims left the nation (“Spanish Inquisition,” para. 3). Most of them were traders, physicians, and academics.

This migration enabled them to take their knowledge in other parts of Europe. More so, because of the Inquisitions, many of the Muslims lost their lives, which drastically reduced their influence in the region. The censorship of Islamic material and the limitation of the entrance of students studying overseas, to prevent them from bringing Islamic ideas into the nation, and the general atmosphere of fear limited the growth of Islam in Spain during the Inquisition.

Works Cited

Hughes, Bettany. “The Islamic roots of Modern civilization and the construction of European identity.” Spiritualchange.blogsome.com . Spiritual Change, n.d. Web.

Mottaleb, Abdul. “The Influence of Civilization on European Civilization during the Renaissance Period in the Field of Medicine or its Allied Subject. “ Islamset, n.d. Web.

“ Spanish Inquisition .”. Spanish Fiestas, n.d. Web.

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Bibliography

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Islamic Civilization: Timeline and Definition

The Birth and Growth of the Great Islamic Empire

• Ancient Civilizations
• Excavations
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• M.A., Anthropology, University of Iowa
• B.Ed., Illinois State University

The Islamic Civilization is today and was in the past an amalgam of a wide variety of cultures, made up of polities and countries from North Africa to the western periphery of the Pacific Ocean, and from Central Asia to sub-Saharan Africa.

The vast and sweeping Islamic Empire was created during the 7th and 8th centuries CE, reaching a unity through a series of conquests with its neighbors. That initial unity disintegrated during the 9th and 10th centuries, but was reborn and revitalized again and again for more than a thousand years.

Throughout the period, Islamic states rose and fell in constant transformation, absorbing and embracing other cultures and peoples, building great cities and establishing and maintaining a vast trade network. At the same time, the empire ushered in great advances in philosophy, science, law, medicine, art , architecture, engineering, and technology.

A central element of the Islamic empire is the Islamic religion. Varying widely in practice and politics, each of branches and sects of the Islamic religion today espouses monotheism. In some respects, the Islamic religion could be viewed as a reform movement arising from monotheistic Judaism and Christianity. The Islamic empire reflects that rich amalgamation.

In 622 CE, the Byzantine Empire was expanding out of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), led by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (d. 641). Heraclius launched several campaigns against the Sasanians, who had been occupying much of the Middle East, including Damascus and Jerusalem, for nearly a decade. Heraclius' war was nothing less than a crusade, intended to drive out the Sasanians and restore Christian rule to the Holy Land .

As Heraclius was taking power in Constantinople, a man named Muhammad bin 'Abd Allah (c. 570–632) was beginning to preach an alternative, more radical monotheism in west Arabia: Islam, which literally translates to "submission to the will of God." The founder of the Islamic Empire was a philosopher/prophet, but what we know of Muhammad comes mostly from accounts at least two or three generations after his death.

The following timeline tracks the movements of the major power center of the Islamic empire in Arabia and the Middle East. There were and are caliphates in Africa, Europe, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia that have their own separate but aligned histories that are not addressed here.

Muhammad The Prophet (570–632 CE)

Tradition says that in 610 CE, Muhammad received the first verses of the Quran from Allah from the angel Gabriel. By 615, a community of his followers was established in his hometown of Mecca in present-day Saudi Arabia.

Muhammad was a member of a middle clan of the high-prestige Western Arabic tribe of the Quraysh, However, his family was among his strongest opponents and detractors, considering him no more than a magician or soothsayer.

In 622, Muhammad was forced out of Mecca and began his hegira, moving his community of followers to Medina (also in Saudi Arabia.) There he was welcomed by the local followers, purchased a plot of land and built a modest mosque with adjoining apartments for him to live in.

The mosque became the original seat of the Islamic government, as Muhammad assumed greater political and religious authority, drawing up a constitution and establishing trade networks apart and in competition with his Quraysh cousins.

In 632, Muhammad died and was buried in his mosque at Medina, today still an important shrine in Islam.

The Four Rightly Guided Caliphs (632–661)

After Muhammad's death, the growing Islamic community was led by the al-Khulafa' al-Rashidun, the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs, who were all followers and friends of Muhammad. The four were Abu Bakr (632–634), 'Umar (634–644), 'Uthman (644–656), and 'Ali (656–661). To them, "caliph" meant successor or deputy of Muhammad.

The first caliph was Abu Bakr ibn Abi Quhafa. He was selected after some contentious debate within the community. Each of the subsequent rulers was also chosen according to merit and after strenuous debate; that selection took place after the first and subsequent caliphs were murdered.

Umayyad Dynasty (661–750 CE)

In 661, after the murder of 'Ali, the Umayyads gained control of Islam for the next several hundred years. The first of the line was Mu'awiya. He and his descendants ruled for 90 years. One of several striking differences from the Rashidun, the leaders saw themselves as the absolute leaders of Islam, subject only to God. They called themselves God's Caliph and Amir al-Mu'minin (Commander of the Faithful.)

The Umayyads ruled when the Arab Muslim conquest of former Byzantine and Sasanid territories were taking effect, and Islam emerged as the major religion and culture of the region. The new society, with its capital moved from Mecca to Damascus in Syria, had included both Islamic and Arabic identities. That dual identity developed in spite of the Umayyads, who wanted to segregate out the Arabs as the elite ruling class.

Under Umayyad control, the civilization expanded from a group of loosely and weakly-held societies in Libya and parts of eastern Iran to a centrally-controlled caliphate stretching from central Asia to the Atlantic Ocean.

'Abbasid Revolt (750–945)

In 750, the 'Abbasids seized power from the Umayyads in what they referred to as a revolution ( dawla ). The 'Abbasids saw the Umayyads as an elitist Arab dynasty and wanted to return the Islamic community back to the Rashidun period, seeking to govern in a universal fashion as symbols of a unified Sunni community.

To do that, they emphasized their family lineage down from Muhammad, rather than his Quraysh ancestors, and transferred the caliphate center to Mesopotamia, with the caliph 'Abbasid Al-Mansur (r. 754–775) founding Baghdad as the new capital.

The 'Abbasids began the tradition of the use of honorifics (al-) attached to their names, to denote their links to Allah. They continued the use as well, using God's Caliph and Commander of the Faithful as titles for their leaders, but also adopted the title al-Imam.

The Persian culture (political, literary, and personnel) became fully integrated into 'Abbasid society. They successfully consolidated and strengthened their control over their lands. Baghdad became the economic, cultural, and intellectual capital of the Muslim world.

Under the first two centuries of 'Abbasid rule, the Islamic empire officially became a new multicultural society, composed of Aramaic speakers, Christians and Jews, Persian-speakers, and Arabs concentrated in the cities.

Abbasid Decline and Mongol Invasion (945–1258)

By the early 10th century, however, the 'Abbasids were already in trouble and the empire was falling apart, a result of dwindling resources and inside pressure from newly independent dynasties in formerly 'Abbasid territories. These dynasties included the Samanids (819–1005) in eastern Iran, the Fatimids (909–1171) and Ayyubids (1169–1280) in Egypt and the Buyids (945–1055) in Iraq and Iran.

In 945, the 'Abbasid caliph al-Mustakfi was deposed by a Buyid caliph, and the Seljuks , a dynasty of Turkish Sunni Muslims, ruled the empire from 1055–1194, after which the empire returned to 'Abbasid control. In 1258, Mongols sacked Baghdad, putting an end to the 'Abbasid presence in the empire.

Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517)

Next were the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria. This family had its roots in the Ayyubid confederation founded by Saladin in 1169. The Mamluk Sultan Qutuz defeated the Mongols in 1260 and was himself assassinated by Baybars (1260–1277), the first Mamluk leader of the Islamic empire.

Baybars established himself as Sultan and ruled over the eastern Mediterranean part of the Islamic empire. Protracted struggles against the Mongols continued through the mid-14th century, but under the Mamluks, the leading cities of Damascus and Cairo became centers of learning and hubs of commerce in international trade. The Mamluks, in turn, were conquered by the Ottomans in 1517.

Ottoman Empire (1517–1923)

The Ottoman Empire emerged about 1300 CE as a small principality on former Byzantine territory. Named after the ruling dynasty, the Osman, the first ruler (1300–1324), the Ottoman empire grew throughout the next two centuries. In 1516–1517, the Ottoman emperor Selim I defeated the Mamluks, essentially doubling his empire's size and adding in Mecca and Medina. The Ottoman Empire began to lose power as the world modernized and grew closer. It officially came to an end with the close of World War I.

• Anscombe, Frederick F. " Islam and the Age of Ottoman Reform ." Past & Present, Volume 208, Issue 1, August 2010, Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K.
• Carvajal, José C. " Islamicization or Islamicizations? Expansion of Islam and Social Practice in the Vega of Granada (South-East Spain). " World Archaeology, Volume 45, Issue 1, April 2013, Routledge, Abingdon, U.K.
• Casana, Jesse. "Structural Transformations in Settlement Systems of the Northern Levant." American Journal of Archaeology, Volume 111, Issue 2, 2007, Boston.
• Insoll, Timothy "Islamic Archaeology and the Sahara." The Libyan Desert: Natural Resources and Cultural Heritage. Eds. Mattingly, David, et al. Volume 6: The Society For Libyan Studies, 2006, London.
• Larsen, Kjersti, ed. Knowledge, Renewal and Religion: Repositioning and Changing Ideological and Material Circumstances among the Swahili on the East African Coast . Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitututet, 2009, Uppsala, Sweden.
• Meri, Josef Waleed, ed. Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia . New York: Routledge, 2006, Abingdon, U.K.
• Moaddel, Mansoor. " The Study of Islamic Culture and Politics: An Overview and Assessment ." Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 28, Issue1, August 2002, Palo Alto, Calif.
• Robinson, Chase E. Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives: The First 1,000 Years. University of California Press, 2016, Oakland, Calif.
• Soares, Benjamin. "The Historiography of Islam in West Africa: An Anthropologist's View." The Journal of African History, Volume 55, Issue1, 2014, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
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World history

Course: world history   >   unit 3.

• The spread of Islam

The rise of Islamic empires and states

• Spread of Islamic Culture
• The development and spread of Islamic cultures
• Key concepts: the spread of Islam
• Focus on continuity and change: the spread of Islam
• Islam spread through military conquest, trade, pilgrimage, and missionaries.
• Arab Muslim forces conquered vast territories and built imperial structures over time.
• Most 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.
• The caliphate —a new Islamic political structure—evolved and became more sophisticated during the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates.

Different trajectories

The first arab muslim empire, a new political structure.

• While the Rashidun caliphs were all related to Muhammad by marriage, they were not a hereditary dynasty in the sense of having a predetermined line of succession from one caliph to the next, as the Umayyads had.

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Foundations

The “golden age” of islam.

• Introduction
• Overview of the Golden Age of Islamic Civilization

Areas of Islamic Civilization

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Book-Culture

Folio from De Materia Medica , 1229 CE

At the end of the tenth century, a Baghdadi bibliophile-bookseller called Ibn al-Nadim wrote an annotated and analytical bibliography he named al-Fihrist , in which he recorded the title the thousands of books in ten broad areas produced by the Muslims in four centuries of seemingly incessant activity in compiling books, especially when paper became widely available to them in the eighth century, replacing the more cumbersome and expensive papyrus, parchment, and leather. They include the study of: (1) the Qur’an: its language, readings, exegesis, and “sciences”; (2) Arabic language and grammar, with their various schools; (3) history and its attendant disciplines: genealogy, biography, official state literature; (4) Arabic poetry, pre-Islamic and “modern”; (5) theology, sectarianism, and pious, including Sufi (mystical), literature; (6) Islamic law and its sources, particularly the traditions ( Hadith ) of the Prophet Muhammad; (7) Philosophy and the ancient sciences: their legacy in classical antiquity, translations into Arabic, and commentaries in its various branches, including the natural sciences, logic, metaphysics, geometry, mathematics, music, astronomy, mechanics, and medicine; (8) popular culture, including storytelling, fables, magic, juggling; (9) the non-Islamic religions of the Near East, like those of the Sabaeans Chaldaeans, and Manichaeans, as well as of farther places: India and China; (10) alchemy and its arts, past and present.

Material Culture

The areas of Islamic civilization left out by Ibn al-Nadim, not unexpectedly, belong to material culture. Not unrelated to book-culture is the area of Arabic calligraphy, manuscript illustration, illumination, miniature painting, and bookbinding; various decorative arts, both religious and secular, on glass, metal, especially silver, brass, and ivory objects; cloth embroidery, especially royal robes; and, above all, architecture. This is the area that reflected the religious and (Arabic) linguistic roots of Islamic civilization, the development of its institutions, and the creativity of its arts when navigating the anti-pictorial sentiment, leading to such arts as the arabesque and geometrical forms. One sees that in royal castles in the Syrian desert in early Islam, in the nucleii of newly-founded cities, in the complex houses with gardens and fountains, in the monumental colleges ( madrasas ) when higher education became widespread, in the khanqahs , or retreats, of the sufi mystics, in the mausoleums of great men of faith, piety, and politics, and in the monuments that are loud and clear political statements, like the famous Dome of the Rock. Of all architectural objects, the greatest, the most extraordinarily varied, and frequently the most monumental was the mosque ( masjid ), the prayer place, the representative Islam’s very identity and society’s locus of activities, its minaret for the call to prayer five times a day, its basin and fountain for ablutions in preparation for prayer, and its niche (mihrab ) built to identify the direction of Mecca, to which all the Muslims turn their faces in prayer, and where all things Islamic started, including Islamic civilization in the Golden Age of Islam.

Avalon Foundation Distinguished Service Professor of Islamic Studies, Emerita, Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago

Guiding Questions

1. What is the connection between Islam and other monotheistic religions? List similarities and differences.

2. Describe and define Islamic culture during the Golden Age of Islam, and is it relevant today?

3. What were the defining characteristics and achievements of the Golden Age of Islam? List four major achievements.

Foundations  »  The “Golden Age” of Islam  » Essay

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Turban and Crown: An Essay in Islamic Civilization

In this essay I draw together material from textual and visual sources bearing on the significance of headgear — the turban in particular — from early Islamic times up to and including the Ottoman period, with one or two sallies into the present. First, I survey the significance of crown and turban in early Islam, drawing mainly on textual materials and bringing in visual materials as these become abundant in the thirteenth and following centuries. Second, I develop the idea that, since the presence of headgear — predominantly the turban as the token of male dignity — is the norm in Islamic painting, its absence always cries out for an explanation. The survey of bareheadedness resolves itself into twenty-two categories, which are illustrated here. Third, I focus on the Ottomans, where a wealth of iconographic materials is juxtaposed to rich textual sources. With regard to headgear, as in many other respects, the Ottomans may be considered the culmination of trends that can be traced back to the beginnings of Islamic civilization.

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The Center for Islamic Civilization Studies

The Center for Islamic Civilization Studies is one of the research centers affiliated to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) and aspires to achieve the BA goals, including promoting the universality of Islam, its message of tolerance, and the Islamic civilization that has been a cornerstone in human history. The Center’s goals contribute to the dissemination of certain ideals, such as acceptance, fraternity and accepting the other, while rejecting bigotry. The Islamic Civilization, which spread from China in the east to Andalusia in the west, left behind a path of enlightenment and numerous achievements in the fields of science, art, and philosophy that collectively and harmoniously benefitted humanity in many ways. Spaces of freedom were created when translation and openness on different cultures flourished during the Islamic ages and led to diversity and creativity. The Islamic Civilization has had its unique characteristics and momentous achievements throughout history which have remained relevant and significant in our modern day and age.

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Islamic Civilisation and the Modern World: Thematic Essays

OSMAN BAKAR is currently Chair Professor and Director of Sultan Omar ‘Ali Saifuddien Centre of Islamic Studies (SOASCIS), Universiti Brunei Darussalam.

UBD Press (Reprint, 2018) 356 pages including Bibliography and Index

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Islamic Civilisation and the Modern World: Thematic Essays is another masterpiece of the renowned author who has made a thematic presentation of Islamic civilization. This book consists of fourteen chapters which each chapter deals at least with a major theme of Islamic civilization. This book explores many interesting ideas such as the three types of a civilization’s global presence, the Qur’anic theory of the identity of the Muslim ummah and the identity of Islamic civilization, tawhidic epistemology, the core content of knowledge culture, the wisdom of medical pluralism, the theory of Islam and the three waves of globalization, the marriage between ethnicity and religiosity to produce a certain type of civilizations, and civilizational renewal in relation to Maqasid al-shari’ah.

In the first chapter, Islamic civilization and its global presence has been discussed as the most important theme with a special focus on the domain of knowledge culture. The various types of a civilization’s global presence have been explained. The theme of the identity of the Muslim ummah and, by extension, the identity of Islamic civilization itself is the primary concern in the second chapter while the central theme of the third chapter is the destined role of Islam and its civilization as the bridge between the East and West. In the fourth chapter, the classification of knowledge and of the sciences have been discussed as the central theme with reference to two of the most eminent Muslim thinkers in history, namely Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (1236-1311 C.E.) and Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 C.E.). The spiritual and ethical foundations of science and technology in Islamic civilization have been presented as the theme of the fifth chapter. The author considers this theme as a subtheme of knowledge culture or may be referred to as Islam’s scientific and technological culture.

Islam’s medical and public health systems were so comprehensive that they left a tremendous impact on the modern West. The history of that systems has been revisited in chapter six, while chapter seven discusses the role of cosmology in the cultivation of the arts which is inseparable from knowledge culture as understood and practiced in Islam. Chapter eight deals with environmental health care and welfare which is an extremely important aspect of Islamic civilization. The theme of Islamic science and technology has been duly placed in chapters nine and ten which is related to the central theme of chapter five. These three chapters show the importance of the pursuit of science and technology in the age of classical Islamic civilization.

However, these three chapters differ in emphasis. Islam and globalization in world history is the main theme of discussion in chapter eleven. A theory called “Islam and three waves of globalization” has been developed which claims the first waves “the Muslim dominated globalization” with a time-span of about 600 years (1000-1600 C.E.); the second wave as “Western-dominated globalization” with a time-span of about 450 years (1600 -1950 C.E.); and the third wave as “contemporary or American dominated globalization”. The focus of discussion has shifted from the international arena to a particular region, Southeast Asia, in the twelfth chapter. As a major issue, the identity of Malay Islamic civilization has been addressed specifically. This chapter discusses the application of the theory of ummatic and civilizational identity formulated in chapter two to Malay ethnicity that resulted in the formation of Malay-Islamic identity.

In the thirteenth chapter, the author portrays the identity crisis of contemporary Muslim ummah and its civilization and identifies the eclipse of tawhidic epistemology as the root cause of this identity crisis. In the last chapter, he discusses the place and role of Maqasid al-shari’ah in the civilizational renewal of the Muslim ummah of the twenty-first century and how the restoration of tawhidic epistemology discussed in chapter thirteen can be presented as the key element in the envisaged civilizational renewal ( al-tajdid al-hadari ). In the concluding chapter, the author argues that the task of civilizational renewal is vast in scope and formidable to be undertaken in practice and it requires the cooperation of many individuals, groups, and institutions.

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