Download Chapter 8 Outline -- Rise of Islam - tms-ancient

Ancient World History
Study Guide
Mr. Knutsen
The Meadows School
CHAPTER 8
The Islamic World, ca 600–1400
INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES
After reading and analyzing this chapter, students should be able to explain the origins and
development of the Arabs, and be able to delineate the main tenets of the Muslim faith. Then, students
should be able to discuss how the Muslims governed their vast territories. Finally, students should be
able to discuss features of Islamic society such as the position of women, Islamic interaction with
Western society, and the effect the Shi’ite/Sunni split had on Islam.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I.
The Arabs Before Islam
A. Social, Economic, and Political Organization
1. By the sixth century, most Arabs lived in settled communities.
2. Some oasis towns had large populations and developed economies.
3. Bedouins migrated from place to place with their livestock.
4. The tribe was the basic social unit of Arab society.
5. In northern and central Arabia, warrior aristocracies held power. In the south, religious
aristocracies tended to rule.
II. Muhammad and the Faith of Islam
A. The Life of Muhammad
1. Muhammad (ca 570–632) was a merchant who married a rich widow.
2. He had a moving religious experience at age 40.
3. According to Muhammad, God (Allah) sent him messages through his angel Gabriel.
4. These messages became the Qur’an after Muhammad’s death.
B. Islam
1. Several centuries passed after the death of Muhammad before Islam emerged as a fixed
religious system.
2. Before this could happen, Islam had to be differentiated from other monotheistic
religions, central theological issues had to be resolved, and legal issues related to the
hadith had to be dealt with.
3. The heart of Islam is submission to God through acceptance of his teachings as
revealed by Muhammad, the Prophet.
4. Monotheism existed in the Middle East before Islam.
5. Muhammad’s teachings combined political and religious ideas in the single, unified
concept of umma, or the community of believers.
6. Thus, Islam centralized both religious and political authority.
7. The fundamental obligations of all Muslims are known as “The Five Pillars of Islam.”
8. Islam forbids the drinking of alcoholic beverages, gambling, the taking of interest, and
licentious behavior.
9. Islam warns about the Last Judgment and paints a graphic picture of the suffering of
the damned and the rewards of the saved.
III. The Expansion of Islam
A. Expansion to the East and to the West
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Chapter 8: The Rise of Islam
Ancient World History -- Knutsen
Muhammad’s teachings brought him into conflict with some of the wealthy citizens of
Mecca. In 622 he was forced to flee to Medina, an event known as the hijra.
2. By 632, Muhammad had brought most of Arabia under Islam.
3. In time, Islam became a cultural force throughout the world, a development made
possible by the geopolitics of the ancient Middle East.
4. Within 100 years, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Persia came under Muslim
domination.
5. By 751, the Muslims had driven east into Afghanistan and central Asia.
6. In 713, the Muslims founded a colony in the Indus Valley.
7. In 711, Muslims defeated the Visogothic kingdom of Spain.
B. Reasons for the Spread of Islam
1. There is considerable debate over the meaning of jihad, or holy war, and its role in
promoting Muslim expansion.
2. The Muslim practice of establishing garrison cities facilitated expansion.
3. Lack of unity in Egypt and Syria aided the Muslim advance.
4. Some scholars believe that economic and political factors contributed to Muslim
expansion.
IV. Beginnings of the Islamic State
A. The Caliphate
1. When Muhammad died in 632, he had given no indication of how his successor should
be chosen.
2. Abu Bakr (573–634) was elected caliph.
3. Under Abu Bakr’s successors, the caliphate became an institution.
4. Between 656 and 661, civil war raged between followers of Ali (r. 656–661) and
followers of Mu’awiya (r. 661–680).
5. Mu’awiya won and founded the Umayyad Dynasty (661–750) with its capital in
Damascus.
6. Umayyad rule was dependent on personal connections and marriage alliances.
7. Mu’awiya’s victory had the following consequences:
a.
The caliphate evolved into a dynastic position, centered in an elaborate court
culture.
b. It created a split in Islam between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims.
B. The Abbasid Caliphate
1. The Abbasid clan overthrew the Umayyads and founded a dynasty that lasted from 750
to 1258.
2. Under the Abbasid the center of the caliphate shifted from Damascus to Baghdad.
3. The Abbasid worked to identify their rule with Islam.
4. The Abbasid borrowed from Persian culture.
5. The city of Baghdad came to represent Abbasid political ideals.
6. Under Harun al-Rashid (786–809), Baghdad became the leading city in the Islamic
world.
7. The Abbasid assembled an army of Turkish “slave soldiers.”
C. The Administration of the Islamic Territories
1. The Muslims appointed emirs (governors) to administer the various parts of the
empire.
2. Sacred law was interpreted by a group of scholars called the ulama.
3. The central administrative organ was the diwan.
4. A relay network called barid was used for communication within the empire.
5. The expansion of Islamic territory made the work of government more complicated.
6. In practice, many areas within the empire enjoyed considerable independence.
1.
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V.
Decentralization
A. Decline of the Abbasids
1. Rebellions, agricultural decline, hostile commercial interests, and other problems led to
the decline of the caliphate.
2. The costs of government strained the resources of the caliphate.
3. Despite efforts to reverse the decline, the Abbasid had, effectively, lost power by 945
when they became puppets of the Ayyubids.
B. The Assault of the Turks and Mongols
1. The Assault of the Turks and the Mongols, led by Hulagu (1217–1265), defeated the
Abbasids.
2. Hulagu tried to destroy Muslim culture, but his descendant Ghazan converted to Islam
in 1295 and began an Islamic revival.
VI. The Life of the People
A. The Classes of Society
1. The caliph’s household and the ruling Arab Muslims made up the aristocracy.
2. Converts constituted the second class.
3. The dhimmis (“protected people”), largely Christians and Jews, made up the third
class.
4. Restrictions on Christians and Jews were not severe.
5. By the beginning of the tenth century, wealth and talent had superseded birth as the
basis for social distinction in Islamic society.
B. Slavery
1. At the bottom of Islamic society were slaves.
2. Muslim expansion produced a steady supply of slaves.
3. Slaves worked as servants, as concubines, and as soldiers.
4. Slavery in the Islamic world differed in important ways from the slavery later practiced
in the Americas: slavery was not identified with blackness, slavery was not
synonymous with commercial plantation agriculture.
C. Race
1. The Qur’an stresses the equality of all races, but historical evidence demonstrates the
existence of racial prejudice in Islamic society.
2. Black slaves suffered racial discrimination.
D. Women in Classical Islamic Society
1. The Qur’an attempted to improve the status of women in Islamic society.
2. The Qur’an gave women spiritual and sexual equality.
3. In the early Umayyad period women enjoyed considerable economic, religious, and
political rights.
4. In the later Umayyad period, the status of women declined.
5. Society began to view women as subordinate to men.
6. Marriages were arranged by family members.
7. Muslim law allowed for divorce.
8. Men were allowed up to four wives.
E. Trade and Commerce
1. Islam encouraged profit-making enterprises and, in consequence, trade and commerce
were a central part of the Islamic world.
2. Muslims tended to look down on agricultural labor.
3. Muslim merchants and seamen developed an extensive network of maritime trade
routes.
4. Between 1250 and 1500, technological innovation, along with political developments,
resulted in dramatic changes in Islamic trade.
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Chapter 8: The Rise of Islam
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5. Camels made long-distance overland trade possible.
6. It seems likely that the Muslim world had a capitalist sector.
Urban Centers
1. Trade made the great cities of the Muslim world possible.
2. The presence of the caliph and his court in Baghdad added to the cities power and
prestige.
3. Córdoba in southern Spain was a major center of Islamic culture.
Education and Intellectual Life
1. Urban Muslim culture was built on a strong educational foundation.
2. In order to preserve the purity of the Arabic language, conquering Arabs established
elementary schools called Kuttabs.
3. The invention of paper played a key role in Muslim education.
4. Muslim higher education, which took place in the madrasa, prepared students to
perform religious and legal functions.
5. The Islamic madrasa differed in important ways from the European university.
6. Learning depended heavily on memorization.
7. Islamic culture was ambivalent about female education.
8. Islamic education was not institutionalized in the same way that education was
institutionalized in China and Europe.
9. Nonetheless, education in the three cultures shared many characteristics.
10. The Muslim world enjoyed a vibrant intellectual life.
11. Muslim scholars made advances in medicine and mathematics.
Sufism
1. Sufism developed in the ninth and tenth centuries.
2. In contrast to the legalism of mainstream Islam, Sufism focused on mystical
experience.
3. In the twelfth century groups of Sufis gathered around sheiks, or teachers.
4. Ibn al-’Arabi (1165–1240) was one of the most famous medieval Sufis.
Muslim-Christian Contacts
1. Jesus is mentioned in ninety-three sutras of the Quar’an.
2. Opinion among Muslim scholars about Jesus and Christianity was varied.
3. In the medieval period, Christians and Muslims met frequently in business and trade.
4. In the Christian West, Islam had the greatest cultural impact in Andalusia in southern
Spain.
5. Assimilated Christians in Andalusia were called Mozarabs.
6. By the tenth century, Muslim regulations closely defined what Christians and Muslims
could do.
7. By 1250, most of the Iberian Peninsula was under Christian control.
8. Outside of Andalusian Spain, mutual animosity characterized most Muslim-Christian
contacts.
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