Although, the mystics also had a significant influence in parts of Eastern Africa, Ancient Anatolia ( Turkey), South Asia, East Asia and South-east Asia. The principal locations included: Persia, Ancient Mesopotamia, Central Asia and North Africa. Merchants used their wealth to invest in textiles and plantations.Īside from traders, Sufi missionaries also played a large role in the spread of Islam, by bringing their message to various regions around the world. Merchants brought goods and their faith to China, India, South-east Asia, and the kingdoms of Western Africa and returned with new inventions. As a result, Islamic civilization grew and expanded on the basis of its merchant economy, in contrast to their Christian, Indian and Chinese peers who built societies from an agricultural landholding nobility. The influence held by Muslim merchants over African-Arabian and Arabian-Asian trade routes was tremendous. The tradition of the pilgrimage to Mecca became a center for exchanging ideas and goods. Even prior to Islam's presence, the city of Mecca served as a center of trade in Arabia. Much of this learning and development can be linked to topography. From here paper-making spread west to Fez and then to al-Andalus and from there to Europe in the 13th century. By AD 900 there were hundreds of shops employing scribes and binders for books in Baghdad and even public libraries began to become established, including the first lending libraries. The Arabs improved upon the Chinese techniques of using mulberry bark by using starch to account for the Muslim preference for pens vs. The art of papermaking was obtained from prisoners taken at the Battle of Talas (751), spreading to the islamic cities of Samarkand and Baghdad. Withington in 1894, it "was this people who took from the hands of the unworthy successors of Galen and Hippocrates the flickering torch of Greek medicine" and "they handed it back after five centuries burning more brightly than before".Īccording to Bernard Lewis, the Caliphate was the first "truly universal civilization," which brought together for the first time "peoples as diverse as the Chinese, the Indians, the people of the Middle East and North Africa, black Africans, and white Europeans." Ī major innovation of this period was paper – originally a secret tightly guarded by the Chinese. Shanks in 1984: " The Byzantine Emperor was amazed to discover that the collecting and purchasing of Greek manuscripts were among the terms of peace dictated by the victorious Saracen leaders." According to historian E.T. Rival Muslim dynasties such as the Fatimids of Egypt and the Umayyads of al-Andalus were also major intellectual centres with cities such as Cairo and Córdoba rivaling Baghdad. During this period the Muslim world was a cauldron of cultures which collected, synthesized and significantly advanced the knowledge gained from the ancient Mesopotamian, Roman, Chinese, Indian, Persian, Egyptian, North African, Greek and Byzantine civilizations. Many classic works of antiquity that would otherwise have been forgotten were translated into Arabic and later in turn translated into Turkish, Sindhi, Persian, Hebrew and Latin. They established the " House of Wisdom" (Arabic:بيت الحكمة) in Baghdad, where scholars, both Muslim and non-Muslim, sought to gather and translate all the world's knowledge into Arabic in the Translation Movement. During this period the Muslim world became the unrivaled intellectual centre for science, philosophy, medicine and education as the Abbasids championed the cause of knowledge. The Abbassids were influenced by the Qur'anic injunctions and hadith such as "The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of martyrs" stressing the value of knowledge. The Islamic Golden Age was soon inaugurated by the middle of the 8th century by the ascension of the Abbasid Caliphate and the transfer of the capital from Damascus to the newly founded city Baghdad. 6.1 Mongol invasion and Turkic settlementįoundations See also: Early reforms under Islam and Muslim conquestsĭuring the Muslim conquests of the 7th and early 9th centuries, Rashidun armies established the Caliphate, or Islamic Empire, one of the largest empires in history.
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