#rashidun caliphate

[racefortheironthrone]

How did all the heresies and theological arguments of the Late Roman Empire lead to "the Arab caliphates getting a decent navy and winning the Battle of the Masts"?

This is actually a fascinating story about the nature of the religious world and religious politics in the Late Roman and Byzantine Empires and the Rashidun Caliphate.

Because heresies and theological arguments tended to start at the level of bishops and patriarchs fighting with the bishops and patriarchs of other metropoles (and that filters out to which missionaries were sent where), there were strong regional variations as to which position was in the local majority.

Skipping over the Arian controversy because it's not relevant to the Battle of the Masts, Cyril of Alexandria was the leader of the Monophysite faction ("physis" meaning "nature," i.e Christ has one nature, which tracks with the Council of Nicaea's declaration that he had one "essence"), and his dyophysite (meaning two "natures") rivals were based out of Antioch - and Alexandria and thus Egypt became Monophysite. However, Constantinople and Anatolia were dyophysite and worked to make sure that the Second Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon declared monophysitism a heresy and dyophysitism as Orthodoxy, thus leading to the Chalcedonian Schism.

Following on from this, the emperors Justin II and Justinian I were Orthodox. Now, Justinian tried to end the Schism through the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, but this didn't really work and it remained state policy to persecute Monophysites. However, the empress Theodora was Monophysite and acted as patroness and political defender of Monophysites throughout the empire - which made her very popular in Egypt...and with the Greens in the Hippodrome, who were also Monophysites. Naturally, if the Greens were Monophysite, the Blues were Orthodox, because why not turn your sports rivalry into a religious rivalry and a pseudo-political party system? It's not called the Byzantine Empire because it's simple.

Even though Theodora was a Green, Justinian supported the Blues, which meant that no matter what your sports team or religious views or pseudo-partisanship you could support the imperial family. (Indeed, many historians think that the two at least somewhat arranged their religious and sports affiliations with this in mind.) This worked...up until the Nika riots ended up with Belisarius turning the Imperial army on the sports fans turned revolutionary rioters in the Hippodrome, leading to the deaths of as many as 30,000 people.

And so it went, with Alexandria tending to be the losers in the monoergism vs. dyoergism (does Christ have one "energy" or two?) debate, and the monolethitism vs. dyolethetism (does Christ have one "will" or two?) debate. Notably, these debates saw the Emperors of the time trying to get the Church to adopt a compromise (both monoergism and monothelitism were essentially an attempt by the Emperor Heraclius and his Patriarch to find a new theological formulation that the Alexandrians could live with while pointing urgently in the direction of first the Persians and then the Arabs) and failing due to religious partisans digging in their heels, or Emperors siding violently with one side or the other, ironically in the name of Imperial unity.

And this brings us to the Arab Conquest that gave birth to the Rashidun Caliphate. Now, the Christian population of Alexandria was not exactly thrilled about suddenly being ruled over by Muslim Arabs in 642...but in a genius stroke of enlightened self-interest, the Rashidun Caliphate adopted a policy whereby non-Muslim subjects (dhimmis) would be left alone in terms of religious matters as long as they paid their jizya taxes on non-Muslims (with the idea being to create a financial incentive to convert). While this wasn't the most popular, the Alexandrians realized that having to pay religious taxes and then getting left alone in peace and quiet to be Monophysite was a much better deal than having to pay Byzantine imperial taxes and getting religiously persecuted all the damn time.

This mattered geostrategically, because the Port of Alexandria was one of the largest ports in the Mediterranean, and thus had one of the largest shipyards and a lot of shipbuilders, and a hell of a lot of trained ex-Roman sailors and marines who were heavily Monophysite. These recently-unemployed sailors and marines were very happy to work for the Rashidun Caliphate, especially when the Caliphs started to shift resources into the navy to combat Byzantine dominance on the seas. Thus, only a few years after the Rashidun conquest of Egypt in 642, the Arab navy was suddenly able to fight on equal terms with the Byzantine navy - and then started kicking their ass.

This at last brings us to the Battle of the Masts in 655, where an Arab fleet (crewed mostly by Monophysite Egyptians) of 200 ships under the command of admiral Abu al-A'war came into contact with a Byzantine fleet of 500 ships led by the Emperor Constans II off the coast of Lycia...and smashed it to pieces. According to the historian al-Tabari, it was called the Battle of the Masts because there were rough seas and both fleets lashed themselves together to allow for marine boarding operations, so that soldiers were literally crossing from mast to mast. Constans II supposedly only managed to escape by changing uniforms with one of his subordinates as a disguise.

The defeat was so crippling that Constantinople was brought under siege for the first time by the Rashidun that same year, although that brief siege (the brevity of which is why historians refer to the siege of 674-678 as the "First Arab Siege of Constantinople") was unsuccessful due to a storm that sunk the Arab ships carrying the artillery and siege engines that the land army was counting on. Naturally, the Byzantines attributed this storm and the first Arab civil war that broke out in 655 (which bought the Byzantines some desperately-needed breathing room) to divine intervention.

Just to show how the past is always with us, I wanted to share a bit of a statement by the Coptic Orthodox Church of the Southern United States:

"The Coptic Orthodox Church was accused of being 'Monophysite' in the Council of Chalcedon. The term monophysite comes from two Greek words meaning "single nature". Monophysitism merged Christ's humanity into His divinity so that effectively it meant that in Christ there was only one single nature, a divine nature. This is NOT what the Coptic Orthodox believes. We believe that "Christ's divinity parted not from His humanity, not for a single moment nor a twinkling of an eye" and we recite this statement in every liturgy. As a result, we are Miaphysite and not Monophysite. Miaphysitism (one nature) means the Lord Jesus Christ is perfect human and perfect divine and these two natures are united together without mingling, nor confusion, nor alteration in one nature; the nature of God incarnate."

[lightdancer1]

Wrapped up the brief sojourn back into the dawn of the medieval era:

Next will be Napoleon's War with Alexander I in 1812.

This book raises a key point that most of the 'Rome never fell u guise, the rise of Merovingians, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and England instead of Britannia is just a hoax' special pleading ignores. Yes, the Germanic tribes had fluid senses of self, but it still counted as a very real sense of self. And if they did, so did the Roman elites that saw themselves as Romans even when the political and economic factors that held together the old Roman world collapsed completely in the West and held together in the East until the Caliphate finally toppled the old world there.

It also addresses the simple reality that to some people in the Muslim world would almost surely get this book burned that the very existence of the Riddah Wars and the older Arab states that were partially still extant and likely to play the vulture ripping into the corpses of partially and fully fallen empires means that the Islamic nature of the early movement is as much hindsight as reality. Because the reality is that only after the end of the Riddah Wars and the crushing of the two potential other prophets did the singular vision of the Ummah stick, and one of them came very close to displacing the Caliphate and the Ummah altogether.

Insights like this make this arguably the best book of its kind, as it has the best possible attitudes to sacred cows and the holy origins of the secular religion of nationalism. Turning the sacred cows into holy hamburger and taking people's nationalist self-conceptions and throwing them on the charcoal to cook the sacred cows.

9/10.

[sane-human]

I'll need to draw these two a lot with the Conquest of Egypt , the amount of details of Egypt's armor will make me die inside , but I have no regrets

[zainab123]

The era of Ali ibn Abi Talib’s caliphate is one of the most difficult times in the history of Islam. However, the events that took place during that time had their roots in previous caliphates.

[tabsq2025]

Abu Bakr is the first Rashidun Caliph. The duration of his caliphate was two years and four months. The time immediately after the demise of Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) was very challenging. However, Abu Bakr very wisely dealt with all those challenges. 

[jewish-sideblog]

Any time I see people call Israel a settler colonialist state I think about the history of the Mizrahi Jews who remained in Judea.

Mizrahi Jews in the seventh century, whose families had lived as native Israelites for 1,800 years, watching the Rashidun Caliphate move the first major wave of Arab Muslim migration into the imperial conquest they called "Military Palestine".

Mizrahi Jews who, over the course of the next 1,200 years, remained in the Levant. The ones who faced persecution, pogroms, and massacres under the Caliphates and Ottomans. The ones who stood strong and stayed put, as access to holy sites they had prayed at for three thousand years were taken from them. The ones who were faced with a choice between conversion and death, but chose neither.

Mizrahi Jews who watched as the modern State of Israel was established-- perhaps sighing in relief for just a moment. Maybe now, they would not be persecuted minorities in the land they had lived in for over three thousand years. Only to see other Mizrahim forced to flee their homes in Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran... Muslim-ruled countries that, through official law or social persecution, intentionally forced other Middle Eastern Jews to leave their homes and settle in Israel.

And the Mizrahi Jews today, who are the majority of the population of Israel. Most Israelis today are either Mizrahim who had lived in what is now Israeli territory for millennia, or Mizrahim who lived nearby and were forced by Muslim-majority nations to immigrate to Israel. Now, they get called "settler colonists", they get called "Europeans", they get called "fascists" and "Zionists". The world accuses them of occupying and stealing Palestinian land.

What were they supposed to have done differently?

Edit 12/27/23: Not so friendly reminder that if your "rebuttal" is to blame the actions of the Israeli government on Israeli civilians, I'm not even gonna bother to read the whole thing. I'll start believing that's a valid argument when average Americans get brought to the Hague for what the US government did in Cambodia.

[jewreallythinkthat]

I spent a large portion of today researching tekhelet for work as part of a piece on ancient dyes and I got so stupid emotional. Like it's just a dye, but it was such an important thing in ancient Judaism as the dye which would make tzitzit blue and the method of making it was lost around the time of the Arab conquest of Israel in the 7th century. (Also I note that lots of sources date the loss of the secret of the original manufacture but many just gloss over it mapping directly onto the colonisation of Judea/Israel by the Rashidun Caliphate - I know that the two events may not be connected but I have spent too long looking at history to be able to say that these were completely unrelated y'know... Lost knowledge is very, very rarely a coincidence)

They literally, to this day, still don't know how it was made.

There are multiple theories, most of which revolve around the murex snail (where we get Tyrian purple from) and the fact that if you expose the pigment it produces - di-bromo indigo - to light at the right point in the production process, it is reduced to regular indigo from which you can get your blue dye. But this has all been worked out using modern methods. The ancient production method of tekhelet is gone and I honestly find myself mourning yet another piece of lost knowledge form our history.

[curtwilde]

i have a genuine question, what is arab colonisation? Is it a real thing? The context where I have read about it was a bigoted islamophic hindutvabadi page so I don't know if it's true or just part of their larger lie. Do you have any readings, sources on it?

According to Marriam Abboud Hourani, Arabization is a sociological process of cultural change in which a non-Arab society becomes Arab, meaning it either directly adopts or becomes strongly influenced by the Arabic language and culture. After the rise of Islam in Hejaz, there were a series of conquests in the Middle East and North Africa, after which the Rashidun Caliphate, the first Muslim empire was established. Arab culture spread through the Middle East and North Africa along with the spread of Islam, and in some places pre-Islamic religions and cultures were violently suppressed. These days, most Islamic countries have reconciled elements of their older traditions with Islam. The older religions survive among minorities in some places - Christians, Kurds, Ezidis and Mizrahi Jews for example and are still oppressed under some Islamic fundamentalist countries, like Iran.

Often, the term Arabization or Arab colonialism is used interchangeably with Islamic fundamentalism. On paper they mean entirely different things. However, in reality Islamic fundamentalists revere Arabic culture because the Quran was written in Arabic and events of the Quran are set in Arabia. The difference between the two is a slippery slope and I will let you decide on that.

The term colonization is such a red herring these days and is used to fit a lot of problematic narratives. It is a favourite with zionists, which is probably where these hindutvadis picked it up. And if you come across it on the internet I'd advise you to re-examine the source as they may have an anti-Muslim bias. That said, Islamic fundamentalism is very much a real thing and I wholeheartedly believe that any form of religious fundamentalism, and especially those fundamentalists that try to gain administrative and jurisdictional power for themselves, are a problem. All government and administrative bodies, across the world, should be compulsorily secular.

Now, in the context of South Asia, Arabization in it's strict meaning of the word, has nothing to do with our geopolitical history. Our Muslim rulers were all of Turkish, Afghan, and Central Asian origins with no connection to Arabia. Even culturally, elements of Indian Muslim culture can be traced back to Persia rather than Arabia; and linguistically the Persian influence on Hindi/Urdu is obvious. The term Arab colonization is often used by hindutvadis to mean the spread Islam in the subcontinent but of course they see the Islamic world as a monolith and I doubt they have the reading comprehension to know the difference even if they bothered to look it up.

Books:

The History of the Middle East by Peter Mansfield is a great place to start.

Islam, a short history by Karen Armstrong - very quick read + unbiased take on the Arab conquests.

The Arabization of Islam by Al Mubarak Nadir Shabaz

History of North Africa by Charles Andre Julien

From the holy mountain: a journey among the Christians of the Middle East by William Dalrymple

The Kurds: a contemporary history by Patrick S. Clancy

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon for a general idea of colonization.

Mutuals if you have any other recommendations please feel free to add.

[whencyclopedia]

Rashidun Government

The Rashidun Caliphate (632-661 CE) was responsible for setting up the basis of the Islamic empire and expanding its borders beyond the Arabian soil. These leaders were selected by the consent of the people and based on their own merits. They ruled supreme on the lands of Islam as the viceroys of Prophet Muhammad (l. 570-632 CE) and their policies laid the foundation of the style of rule for many future rulers to come. Though the state of the empire was far from being perfect, it was merely the beginning of a long and prosperous period in the history of Eastern civilization. Innovations like centralized government, institutions for administration, public welfare projects, safeguarding the rights of citizens and a general willingness to help people made them quite popular in Arabian history. For their piety and administrative excellence, they are revered by the vast majority of Muslims, and their legacy survives even to this day, in the way Muslims believe that ideal leaders ought to be.

Historical Context

Arabia, at the close of the 6th century CE, was what we would call in modern terms a 'third world country' – if it were a country. But a drastic change was underway as Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam (l. 570-632 CE), took charge. In his 22-year-long mission, as a messenger of Allah (God), Muhammad united most of the fragmented Arabian tribes into one nation.

After the death of the Prophet, his close friend, and companion, Abu Bakr (r. 632-634 CE) established the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661 CE); he was the first of many series of rulers to claim supreme authority over the Islamic world – the caliphs. Abu Bakr was succeeded by Umar (r. 634-644 CE), and he, in turn, was succeeded by Uthman (r. 644-656 CE). Uthman was easily controlled by his tribesmen and this led to his fall from fame; he was murdered in his own house by rebel soldiers.

Ali ibn Abi Talib (r. 656-661 CE), a cousin, and son-in-law of the Prophet, then took the scepter. Ali has been venerated by a group of Muslims called the Shias, who differ from the mainstream Sunnis primarily in that they consider only Ali as the legitimate heir to Muhammad's realm and as the first in a long series of their spiritual leaders or imams.

By the end of the Rashidun Caliphate, the Islamic realm spread far and wide from Egypt and some eastern parts of the North African strip in the west to the whole of the former Sassanian Empire in the east. This was the beginning of a new era – the dawn of the Islamic Caliphates.

Continue reading...

[racefortheironthrone]

I have a question about immigration/settlement dichotomy. Obviously settler colonization is dodgy and problematic and triggers a progressive nativist response, but aren't the same ideas used to justify anti-immigrant sentiment? That seems to be my limited reading. But where does one draw the line? Like in ASOIAF, the Targaryens are Valyrian refugees who became a ruling family, and so are foreign conqueors, but if they didn't rule and stayed immigrants, they'd be persecuted outsiders, right?

This is something of a hot take, so I might delete this later if it this escapes containment, but I think there's a big problem in post-colonial studies (or rather, the popularized version of post-colonial studies you see in social media discourse and activist communities) where there's this tunnel vision with settler colonialism that magnifies it into the only thing that matters. Because there is also non-settler colonialism, which is at the very least just as bad (if not more so, because you tend to get a higher rate of colonial extraction).

Moreover, when you bring post-colonialism into discussion with the history of the ancient world through to the early modern period, questions of settler vs. indigenous become really complicated. There are a lot of periods of history where population migrations overlapped with military and political transformations that are often described as conquest (both imperial and non-imperial), and those migrations and transformations included intermarriage and cultural change/exchange along a spectrum from voluntary to coercion.

If each of these instances are considered an act of colonialism, then almost every people and culture in the world are both criminals and victims - which leads to a kind of shrugging nihilism about human nature being a nil-nil draw. If on the other hand, we follow revisionist historians of the fall of Rome or the establishment of the Rashidun Caliphate or the Ottoman Empire etc. to their logical conclusion, we likewise run the risk of saying that the conquests we approve of are actually complex and marked by cosmopolitan diversity and cultural exchange and thus isn't colonialism, and only the ones we don't approve of get the scarlet C.

[totallynotcensorship]

sense Jerusalem is trending rn i thought it was a good time to address this

YES, PALESTINE DID EXIST PRIOR TO ISRAEL COLONIZATION

the oldest use of the name Palestine to refer to that region(i.e. land from egypt to phoenicia) dates to the 5th century BCE in herodotus's histories. and is later used by other greek writers like aristotle, polemon, and later pausanias

later on the name is also used by roman writers like ovid, tibullus, pliny the elder, statius and other. and before a zionist comes in and accuses me of antisemitism. the name is also used to refer to the same region by the philosopher philo of alexandria and historian josephus. two romano-JEWISH writers. have fun accusing them of antisemitism

and if "name of the region" isn't enough, it became the official name for the province under roman authorities, the first mention of the name as an official province name being in 135CE. the name continues on through the byzantine empire(a.k.a eastern roman empire), stayed through the muslim conquest by the rashidun caliphate until the end of the ottoman empire's rule over the region where Britain came in and the "League of Nations – Mandate for Palestine and Transjordan Memorandum" was signed establishing the colony of israel(a.k.a the Zionist fascist actively committing a genocide rn)

now on to the Palestinian people them selves

as for the people, a group named something along the lines of "peleset" is named as a neighboring group starting from 1150BCE in egypt as well the name palashtu(or pilistu) is mentioned in assyrian inscriptions on the nimrud slab around 800BCE

Palestinians are Canaanites by genetics, which means that they are related to other local groups of canaan and the levant like the Phoenicians

and for the zionists who like to pretend to care about Judaism, or the tanakh, the philistines is attested to in the torah and later in the books of judges and Samuel(does the name Goliath of GAZA ring any bills?).

zionists are white colonists who don't represent jews nor care about jews as anything more than a shield for criticism.

don't stop talking about palestine

[pwlanier]

WALL PANEL IN THE NAME OF THE PROPHET AND THE RASHIDUN CALIPHS

Damascus, Ottoman Syria, 18th or 19th century

In siliceous ceramic, painted in polychrome under transparent glaze, composed of nine tiles forming a decoration of three niches decorated with cypresses flanking a floral central vase, several fractures glued back, hulls and gaps.

Artcurial

[sane-human]

A bunch of drawings to get into drawing mode again c:

Two new characters are for the ancient Etruscans that lived in the general zone of Tuscany before the Romans conquered everything and the city of Alexandria!

(also decided to change the way the text boxes work, as in I'll color them also with the language colors!)

[zainab123]

Abu Bakr is the first Rashidun Caliph. The duration of his caliphate was two years and four months. The time immediately after the demise of Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) was very challenging. However, Abu Bakr very wisely dealt with all those challenges. 

[tamamita]

whats the difference between the groups of Muslims? what are they fighting about.

In short, there are three major denominations of Islam, and various sub-branches, but I won't go into the latter.

Sunni, literally standing for those who follow the traditions of the Prophet, are Muslims who believe that politically, the Prophet's companions, Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman were successors of the prophet, and the ones to establish the Rashidun Caliphate. Sunni Muslims base most of their traditions on various companions of the Prophet. The concept of Adalat al-Sahaba maintains that any companion that was present during the Prophet's time is a reliable person in terms of how they narrate traditions, thus establishing a multitude of hadiths from them. Although Sunni Islam (as a separate branch) didn't exist at that time, it became the standardized version of Islam when the Shi'as and Khawarijs rebelled against the Umayyads and the Abbasids, seeing the birth of the four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence to counter their theological principles.

Shi'a, literally partisans of Ali, hold that through traditions and scriptural basis, Ali, the brother in law to the Prophet had chosen him to be the leader of the Muslims upon the latter's death, as a result of various events that took place, the Prophet's household were treated unfairly and the repercussions of these events subsequently led to their martyrdom, which is an essential pillar of Shi'a Islam. Due to their rejection of Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and various other companions, they do not accept their chains of narrations in hadiths. Shi'as ultimately reject the concept of Adalat al-Sahaba, because traditions can not be accepted from unjust people. Most Shi'a Muslims (Twelver and Ismailis) put extreme emphasis on the Prophet's family and the line of Imamate through Ali and the Prophet's daughter, Fatimah, believing that only the Imams have the right to interpret the Qur'an in its esoteric and exoteric nature due to their infallibility, thus giving them absolute authority over the Muslims. Ali's tenure as the caliph saw much turmoil and ultimately led to his martyrdom. The subsequent death of Ali marked the end of the Rasidhun caliphate and transitioned into a monarchy with many of the Shi'as experiencing centuries of oppression.

Ibadism, a branch of Islam stemming from an extremist group called the Khawarij, they are a group of Muslims who did not agree with Ali's agreement to engage in arbitration with an opposing force that waged war against him over the caliphate. This led to a group of Muslims in Ali's army to defect, believing that judgment belongs to God alone, thus separating themselves from the rest of the Muslims. This group is known for their extremist approach and theology of Islam, but was quickly surpressed as they harassed innocent Muslims. The only remnants of the Khawarijs are the Ibadis and are relatively peaceful, albeit with some strict religious beliefs. They have their own collection of hadiths, but much of it is very close to the Sunnis corpus of traditions. They make up the majority of Muslims in Oman.

[howtomuslim]

Early Islamic Expansion- Colonialism or Conquest?

There’s a common narrative among many westerners of how Islam itself in its early days was a coloniser of many peoples and territories. How during its conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries, Islam suppressed the populations and forced upon them a new faith and language, echoing the narrative that its expansionism was strictly conducted by the sword. What was this earth-moving proof that had convinced those who hold this flawed and over-simplified view so deeply?

Firstly, let’s quickly summarise the zeitgeist of the times from a political perspective and then assess what this geographic expansion was and when it all happened. During the life of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, Western Asia was dominated by two empires that were in a bloody and violent war that had lasted for over eight decades. These two empires were the Byzantine and Sassanian empires. In the Arabian Peninsula, a region that wasn’t included in either’s domain, both intertribal aggression and constant raids were also concurrently rampant. When the fledgling faith became threatened in Medina by its various enemies in the early 7th century, the necessity for defence and thereafter the protection of its believers had to take priority for the Muslim regional minority.

With the Battle of the Trench, the failed attack on Medina by the Quraysh clan and their allies against the Muslims, thus began the eventual conquest of Islam overtaking the entire Arabian Peninsula during the lifetime of the Prophet, peace be upon him, followed by the Rashidun Caliphate. This saw the expansion span from the eastern borders of Persia, Turkey to the north, and Libya to the west. Finally, during the Umayyad Caliphate came the crossing of Islam into Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent, into the northwestern African lands of the Maghreb, and into the Iberian Peninsula. From 622 to 750 CE, over 120 years, Islam expanded rapidly across three continents.

Now, with this background, we can indulge in the confirmation or repudiation of the element of colonialism in Islam’s conquests. But one more quick digression: let’s define colonialism in simple terms. Colonialism is when one more powerful people invades and occupies another people, usurps their rights and natural resources for the sole purpose of self-interest, like what the British, French, and Spanish empires did to the world from the 15th to the 20th century, as well as what Israel is currently doing in Palestine during the supposedly civilised 20th century.

Beyond the facts, this foundation is how we must establish our conclusions and how we must compare the behaviour of Islam towards those conquered peoples relative to other nations of the time. We can’t expect Islam to behave as per 21st-century standards or even the 20th century. But even we should question that: was Islam actually more humane than even the colonialists of the 20th century?

One would note, when looking at the Islamic expansion and the short duration it took, the accomplishments suggest a speed of success unheard of. It was true that both the Byzantine and Sassanian Empires had fought their way to their eventual collapse over the decades, but still, the number of the Muslims paled in comparison. There are significant factors that played into this dynamic. These empires had shown extreme oppression towards the inhabitants of those occupied regions, while Islam exhibited a tolerance and relatively fair approach to those of other faiths. In general, in most of the conquered nations, the local inhabitants offered no resistance to the invading Muslims as they had little or nothing to lose by the changing of the guard. In some cases, such as in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, Islam was a liberator and hence openly welcomed such was the case in the opening of Jerusalem and Jews being allowed to return.

One aspect that differentiated Islamic forces from other preceding victorious armies was that Islam had embedded within its belief system the rules of engagement during warfare, with humanitarian tenets that understood there was to be the protection of women and children and to respect the property and symbols of other faiths. Yes, there were occasions when individuals broke such tenets, but these should be regarded as exceptions.

Was spread by the sword?

This is a narrative originating at the time of the Crusades when the sole ambition was to discredit Islam and give it a barbaric and savage reputation. A common misrepresentation of this narrative was the supposed forced conversions of conquered peoples, whereas the facts suggest that even prior to any imminent military engagement, the Muslim generals would offer the options of conversion to Islam, acceptance of dhimmi status (meaning the payment of an annual jizya tax), or trying their chances at armed conflict. Even upon Muslim victory, the first two options remained available.

The widespread and well-documented dhimmi system that dealt with non-Muslim citizens is proof that no forced conversions took place. There was a structure in place that allowed for religious continuity while also protecting rights with a structure that maintained the retention of physical land and property. Property records show that in the varying lands conquered in the previous Byzantine and Sassanian Empires, Muslims were a small minority during the early Islamic reign, ranging between 10 to 20% of the population up until a century or two after the initial conquest. In certain cases, such as in Iran and Egypt, Muslims as a majority of the population only came into being well into the 9th century. How can that possibly be forced conversion?

Another powerful counterargument for the case against Islamic colonialism is the fact that there was never really any extraction of resources out of the conquered lands and shipped off to Mecca back in Arabia. In actuality, trade and commerce throughout the new Islamic territories blossomed further during Islam’s reign and created a series of powerful cosmopolitan cities across the empire that would eventually become some of the greatest and brightest cities on the planet within the next two centuries: Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Cordoba. Meanwhile, Mecca and Medina, the supposed colonial centres, were humble in their expansion and prosperity for the next millennium and beyond.

A question that can always be asked to further prove this point: would the British ever have moved their capital from London to Delhi?

To exhibit the difference, the capital of the Muslim empire left the Arabian Peninsula with the coming of the Umayyad Caliphate, never to return. Such a decision only reflects that the Islamic empire wasn’t about the benefit of one people, nation, or territory over another, but that a new set of groups of united people, inclusive of those conquered, were now a new nation that had much larger collective aspirations.

One would think that the Islamisation of faith would result in the Arabisation of language, but the reality was the opposite. As the Islamisation of the populations took significant time to materialise, learning the language of the faith, Arabic, was never forced onto others. The fast-paced assimilation of Arabic was principally due to the fact that it was the primary language of trade, governance, and law within the Islamic empires, as well as being a language familiar to the populations of the Levant and Mesopotamia, who were mainly Aramaic speakers.

Arabisation wasn’t about the Muslim faith but was about integrating within a civilisation that was booming not just back in Arabia but everywhere. It became the common language for non-Arabs and non-Muslims to prosper. During the subsequent golden age, thinkers and scholars from across the empire wrote and relayed in Arabic, much in the same way that the English language spread all over the world during the 20th century due to globalisation and technology. Arabic achieved widespread acceptance for the sake of the transfer of knowledge and in aspiring to prosperity.

To learn more about Islam visit: Howtomuslim.org