Rise And Spread Of Islam

The Rise and Spread of Islam

Have you ever thought that an introduction of a new religion would fully change a society's political, socio-economic, religious, and cultural values and institutions? Islam is one to do so in the “Arab world.” Muhammad's people said to the King of Ethiopia, “Previously we were a barbarous people who worshipped idols, ate carrion and committed shameful deeds… Thus, we were until God sent us an apostle whose glorious lineage, truth, trustworthiness, and clemency is well known to us.”(The Message) This quote exemplifies how the “Arab world” changed significantly when Islam was first introduced. In 610 CE, Prophet Muhammad was sent from god to “bring mankind out of darkness into the light by permission of their Lord.”

(Cleveland & Bunton 8). Religious and socioeconomic factors, along with a period of rivalry and tension between the Byzantine and Sasanians helped Prophet Muhammad propagate Islam and shape a new Arab identity.

Religion played a major role in the spread of Islam in the Arabs and the surrounding empires. At the beginning of Islam, the civilized areas of the Middle East were ruled by one of the two competing empires, the western Roman-Byzantine Empire, or the eastern Sasanian Empire of Iran (Cleveland & Bunton 5). Both empires had a great impact on the rise of Islam from the development of Islamic governing practices to the creation of a religious doctrine. The growth of Islam was influenced by the bureaucratic tradition of the Sasanians, the legacy of the Byzantine, and by the concepts of the emperor that had developed in the courts of Ctesiphon and Constantinople (Cleveland & Bunton 6). One of the key points of the expansion of Islam is the imperial rivalry between the Sasanian and Byzantines that broke out into open warfare from 540 until 1629. This opened up the road for Islam to spread and provide a better alternative for the people of Arabian Peninsula and the surrounding people under the rule of these two empires. Under the