Two new empires rose in the Mediterranean and middle east; The Byzantine Empire & the Islamic Caliphates, the Byzantine Empire was run on Christianity while the Caliphates was run by the teachings of Muhammad and the holy book the Quran. While both the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Caliphates had major divides in their religion and also state, and they both recognized their head of state (Ceaser or Caliph respectively) also as a head religious leader, they based their political rulings from different sources, Byzantines’ from its Roman predecessor and the Islamic Caliphate from the Quran and Muhammad’s life and teachings.
In both Empires, religion and politics worked had in hand, as the political leaders were also established as the head religious leaders. As their respective states both believed that religion, it gave the leaders lots of justification for different rulings and movements, such as expansion. This was shown in how Islam started in Mecca before gaining support and spreading to other regions such as Medina to expand Islam and also political governance. Another example of this is how rulers after the death of Muhammad spread their faith by using war and making the fighting “okay” by claiming that it’s a “holy war”. In the same fashion however, the Byzantine empire under the rule of Emperor Justinian used Christianity as a
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This is a major factor because the two powers choose their leaders differently. Sunni Muslims chose religious leaders from a larger community, particularly from their religious scholars known as Ulama. Shia Muslims however invested in their religious leaders known as, Imams, with a religious authority that the caliphs lacked allowing them to infallibly interpret divine revelation and