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Prehistory (c. 3000 bce–500 ce)
The rise of agrarian-based citied societies
Cultural core areas of the settled world
The Nile-to-Oxus region
The Arabian Peninsula
Formation and orientation (c. 500–634)
The city of Mecca: centre of trade and religion
Mecca under the Quraysh clans
New social patterns among the Meccans and their neighbours
The Prophet Muhammad
Muhammad's years in Mecca
Public recitations
Efforts to reform Meccan society
Muhammad's emigration to Yathrib (Medina)
The forging of Muhammad's community
The ummah's allies and enemies
Muhammad's later recitations
Islam at Muhammad's death
Abū Bakr's succession
Conversion and crystallization (634–870)
Social and cultural transformations
ʿUmar I's succession
The spirit of conquest under ʿUmar I
Forging the link of activism with faithfulness
ʿUthmān's succession and policies
Discontent in ʿUthmān's reign
Intra-Muslim conflicts
The four fitnahs
The first fitnah
The second fitnah
The emergent Islamic civilization
The third fitnah
Sunnis and Shīʿites
The ʿAbbāsids
Sharīʿah
The fourth fitnah
Fragmentation and florescence (870–1041)
The rise of competitive regions
Andalusia, the Maghrib, and sub-Saharan Africa
Egypt, Syria, and the holy cities
Cultural flowering in Iraq
The Būyid dynasty
Iran, Afghanistan, and India
The Sāmānids
The Ghaznavids
The decline of the caliphate and rise of emirates
Migration and renewal (1041–1405)
Seljuq Turks
Policies of Niẓām al-Mulk
Ṭarīqah fellowships
The call for the Crusades
Effect of the Crusades in Syria
First Mongol incursions
Conversion of Mongols to Islam
Ascent of the Ottoman Turks
Timur's efforts to restore Mongol power
Imazighen
The Ṣanhājah confederation
The Almoravid dynasty
The Almohad dynasty
Continued spread of Islamic influence
Consolidation and expansion (1405–1683)
Continuation of Ottoman rule
Reign of Süleyman I
The extent of Ottoman administration
Ṣafavids
Expansion in Iran and beyond
Shah ʿAbbās I
Decline of central authority
Indo-Timurids (Mughals)
Foundation by Bābur
Reign of Akbar
Continuation of the empire
Trans-Saharan Islam
Indian Ocean Islam
Islamic history from 1683 to the present: reform, dependency, and recovery
Precolonial reform and experimentation from 1683 to 1818
The rise of British colonialism to the end of the Ottoman Empire
The early 20th century to the present
Reform and revival in the colonial period
Postcolonial states and Islam
Islamist movements from the 1960s
The mainstreaming of Islamist movements
Dimensions of the Islamic revival
Islam and globalization: the age of mobility
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Freer | Sackler - The Smithsonian's Museums of Asian Art - Islamic World
Marilyn R. Waldman See All Contributors
Professor of History and Comparative Studies, Ohio State University, Columbus. Author of Toward a Theory of Historical Narrative: A Case Study in Perso-Islamicate Historiography.
See Article History
Alternative Title: Muslim world
Islamic world, also called Islamdom, the complex of societies and cultures in which Muslims and their faith have been prevalent and socially dominant.
world distribution of Islam Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Adherence to Islam is a global phenomenon: Muslims predominate in some 30 to 40 countries, from the Atlantic eastward to the Pacific and along a belt that stretches across northern Africa into Central Asia and south to the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent. Arabs account for fewer than one-fifth of all Muslims, more than half of whom live east of Karachi, Pakistan. Despite the absence of large-scale Islamic political entities, the Islamic faith continues to expand, by some estimates faster than any other major religion.
The Muslim religion and the life of the Prophet Muhammad are treated specifically in the article Islam. The literature, music, dance, and visual arts of Muslim peoples are treated in the article Islamic arts. Islam is also discussed in articles on individual countries or on regions in which the religion is a factor, such as Egypt, Iran, Arabia, and North Africa. See articles on individual branches or sects and concepts—for example, Islam, Nation of; Sunni; Shiʿi; Hadith.
A very broad perspective is required to explain the history of today's Islamic world. This approach must enlarge upon conventional political or dynastic divisions to draw a comprehensive picture of the stages by which successive Muslim communities, throughout Islam's 14 centuries, encountered and incorporated new peoples so as to produce an international religion and civilization.
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In general, events referred to in this article are dated according to the Gregorian calendar, and eras are designated bce (before the Common Era or Christian Era) and ce (Common Era or Christian Era), terms which are equivalent to bc (before Christ) and ad (Latin: anno Domini). In some cases the Muslim reckoning of the Islamic era is used, indicated by ah (Latin: anno Hegirae). The Islamic era begins with the date of Muhammad's migration (Hijrah) to Medina, which corresponds to July 16, 622 ce, in the Gregorian calendar.
In what follows, the terms Islamic world and Islamdom are used interchangeably. The term Islamic describes aspects pertaining to Islam as a religion, while Muslim as an adjective describes aspects pertaining to Islam's adherents. The term Islamicate refers to the social and cultural complex that is historically associated with Islam and the Muslims, including the function and participation of non-Islamic and non-Muslim individuals and groups within that complex.
The prehistory of Islamdom is the history of central Afro-Eurasia from Hammurabi of Babylon to the Achaemenid Cyrus II in Persia to Alexander the Great to the Sāsānian emperor Anūshirvan to Muhammad in Arabia; or, in a Muslim view, from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to Jesus to Muhammad. The potential for Muslim empire building was established with the rise of the earliest civilizations in western Asia. It was refined with the emergence and spread of what have been called the region's Axial Age religions—Abrahamic, centred on the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, and Mazdean, focused on the Iranian deity Ahura Mazdā—and their later relative, Christianity. It was facilitated by the expansion of trade from eastern Asia to the Mediterranean and by the political changes thus effected. The Muslims were heirs to the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Hebrews, even the Greeks and Indians; the societies they created bridged time and space, from ancient to modern and from east to west.
In the 7th century ce a coalition of Arab groups, some sedentary and some migratory, inside and outside the Arabian Peninsula, seized political and fiscal control in western Asia, specifically of the lands between the Nile and Oxus (Amu Darya) rivers—territory formerly controlled by the Byzantines in the west and the Sāsānians in the east. The factors that surrounded and directed their accomplishment had begun to coalesce long before, with the emergence of agrarian-based citied societies in western Asia in the 4th millennium bce. The rise of complex agrarian-based societies, such as Sumer, out of a subsistence agricultural and pastoralist environment, involved the founding of cities, the extension of citied power over surrounding villages, and the interaction of both with pastoralists.
This type of social organization offered new possibilities. Agricultural production and intercity trading, particularly in luxury goods, increased. Some individuals were able to take advantage of the manual labour of others to amass enough wealth to patronize a wide range of arts and crafts; of these, a few were able to establish territorial monarchies and foster religious institutions with wider appeal. Gradually the familiar troika of court, temple, and market emerged. The new ruling groups cultivated skills for administering and integrating non-kin-related groups. They benefited from the increased use of writing and, in many cases, from the adoption of a single writing system, such as the cuneiform, for administrative use. New institutions, such as coinage, territorial deities, royal priesthoods, and standing armies, further enhanced their power.
In such town-and-country complexes the pace of change quickened enough so that a well-placed individual might see the effects of his actions in his own lifetime and be stimulated to self-criticism and moral reflection of an unprecedented sort. The religion of these new social entities reflected and supported the new social environments. Unlike the religions of small groups, the religions of complex societies focused on deities, such as Marduk, Isis, or Mithra, whose appeal was not limited to one small area or group and whose powers were much less fragmented. The relationship of earthly existence to the afterlife became more problematic, as evidenced by the elaborate death rites of pharaonic Egypt. Individual religious action began to compete with communal worship and ritual; sometimes it promised spiritual transformation and transcendence of a new sort, as illustrated in the pan-Mediterranean mystery religions. Yet large-scale organization had introduced social and economic injustices that rulers and religions could address but not resolve. To many, an absolute ruler uniting a plurality of ethnic, religious, and interest groups offered the best hope of justice.
Shūrā
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