Medieval Islamic World
From the rise of Islam in seventh-century Arabia, the Islamic world expanded into a vast and sophisticated civilization spanning three continents, with major centers of power, faith, and learning from al-Andalus to Central Asia.
Definition
The medieval Islamic world denotes the civilization that emerged from the rise of Islam in the seventh century — its states, religion, society, and culture — across the Near East, North Africa, Iberia, and beyond, through roughly the fifteenth century.
Scope
This area covers the Islamic world during the medieval period: the rise of Islam and the early conquests; the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates; the flowering of science, philosophy, and culture often called the Islamic Golden Age; and the western Islamic lands of al-Andalus and the Maghreb, together with their interactions with Byzantium and Latin Christendom.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- How and why did early Islam and the conquests succeed so rapidly?
- How did the caliphate develop as a political and religious institution?
- What were the achievements and conditions of the Islamic Golden Age?
- How did the Islamic world interact with Byzantium and the Latin West?
Key theories
- Islamicate civilization
- Marshall Hodgson's framework distinguishing 'Islamic' (religious) from 'Islamicate' (the broader social and cultural complex), and analyzing medieval Islam as a world civilization integrating diverse peoples and traditions.
History
After the career of Muhammad (d. 632), Arab-Muslim armies conquered the Sasanian Empire and much of Byzantine territory. The Umayyad (661–750) and Abbasid (750–1258) caliphates built a far-flung civilization centered first on Damascus, then Baghdad. Regional powers such as Umayyad and later Iberian and North African dynasties, the Fatimids, Seljuks, and others reshaped the political map across the medieval centuries.
Debates
- Formation of Islam
- Scholars debate how quickly and through what processes Islamic religion, law, and identity took definite shape, with revisionist and traditional accounts differing over the early sources and the pace of development.
Key figures
- Marshall G. S. Hodgson
- Hugh Kennedy
- Jonathan P. Berkey
- Ira M. Lapidus
Related topics
Seminal works
- hodgson1974
- kennedy2004
- lapidus2014
Frequently asked questions
- How far did the early Islamic conquests reach?
- Within roughly a century of Muhammad's death, Muslim rule extended from the Iberian Peninsula across North Africa and the Near East to Central Asia and the borders of India.
- What is meant by the 'Islamic Golden Age'?
- A period, especially under the early Abbasids, of exceptional achievement in science, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and the arts across the Islamic world.