A short sketch of Islamic History

This lecture discusses…

• An outline of Islam’s political history
• The period of caliphate
• The period of national dynasties
• An outline of the history of all the present day independent Muslim
countries.
 The Historical Atlas
• This map, published in 1926 in The Historical Atlas by William
Shepherd, depicts the expansion of the Muslim world from the time
of the Holy Prophet (SAW), through the Umayyad caliphate in 750
A.D. Courtesy of The General Libraries at the University of Texas at
Austin
 Five Periods
• Islamic history may conveniently be divided into five periods.

• The first period may be called the Arab period. This comprises the
times of (a) the first four Caliphs of Islam; (b) The Umayyads at
Damascus; (c) and the Abbasids at Baghdad.
 1 st Period (632 AD to 950 AD)
• The first period runs from 632 A.D. to 950 A.D., approximately.
• During this period the centralism of Islam was intact and the Caliph
was both the spiritual and the temporal head of the Islamic world.
• It was immediately followed by a hundred years of divided
principalities when the Caliph’s temporal power was reduced to
naught.
• It appeared as if Islam’s political power would entirely disintegrate.
 2 nd Period (1050 AD to 1250 AD)
• But about 1050 A.D. a new people appeared on the scene — the
Saljuqs.
• They accepted Islam and under them, for approximately two hundred
years more, the centralism of Islam was restored.
• Thus our second period—that of the Saljuqs—comes to a close
round about 1250 A.D.
 3 rd Period (1258 AD to 1500 AD)
• The third period begins with the Mongol onslaught in 1258 when
Baghdad was sacked, the Caliph killed, and the lands of Islam
entirely ruined.
• But in 20 years the Mongols themselves had accepted Islam.
• Their period, including that of Tamerlane, extends till about 1500
A.D.
 4 th Period (1500 AD to 1700 AD)
• From 1500 AD we enter the fourth period, that of the Safavids in
Persia, Ottoman Turks in Turkey, and the Great Mughals in India—
the period of national and regional dynasties.
 5 th Period (1700 AD-present)
• Finally, the period starting from about 1700 A.D. brings us to the
present day.
• In this period European powers began playing their role in the world
of Islam.
The Period of Caliphate
 Period of the Caliphate
• At the death of the Holy Prophet (SAW) of Islam in 632 A. D.,
practically the whole of Arabia proper had accepted Islam.

• Under his first duly elected successor, the Caliph Abu Bakr (RA), the
power of Islam was consolidated still further in Arabia.
• But it was during the time of the second successor, Hazrat Umar (RA), that
Islam spread outside Arabia and won its most glorious victories.
• The Byzantines and the Persians both thought Arabia belonged to them and,
construing the rise of Islam as a rebellion against them, hastened to march to
chastise the Arabs.
• A handful of Muslims faced numbers, in some cases in the ratio of one man to
ten, but the fiery zeal of the faith swept all before it. Damascus fell to the arms
of Islam in 635, Yarmuk in 636 and with it Syria. The fate of Persia was decided
at Qadisiya in 637 and Egypt was conquered in 640.
• But the reign of Caliph Umar (RA) was not memorable only on account of its
military glory.
• It was in his reign that for the first time in world history the principle was
recognized that the state was responsible for the material welfare of all its
citizens.
• It was recognized that the state had more obligations than rights.
• After Umar (RA) succeeded Usman (RA) and Ali (RA).
• After Ali (RA) the principle of election of the caliph died out.
• Mu’awiyah, who succeeded him in 661 as the Caliph, made the
Caliphate hereditary and the Umayyad dynasty began.
The Ummayad Dynasty
 The Ummayads
• Returning to the Umayyads: during the period of Mu’awiyah’s successor, Yazid,
the battle of Karbala happened in 680 A.D.
• Hazrat Alira‘s son Hazrat Hussainra declined to pay homage to a Caliph who had
not been elected in a shura [advisory or electoral council]. He was martyred on
the plains of Karbala.
• Among the Umayyad Caliphs Walid I was the most glorious.
• In his reign in 711 A.D., a handful of Muslims under Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed
over into Spain. In a few years they had overrun it with irresistible force and for
the next 700 years Spain was a Muslim country.
• During this period Muhammad bin Qasim invaded India and conquered Sindh
and Multan.
The Abbasids
 The Abbasids
• The Umayyads fell in 750 A. D. and were succeeded by the Abbasids, who, though Sunnis
in faith, came to power with the help of Khurasani Shias.
• The Abbasids transferred their seat of government from Damascus to Baghdad.
• The most glorious reign among the Abbasids was that of Haroon al-Rashid, the hero of the
celebrated Arabian Nights, and his son Mamoon.
• Islamic learning and the prosperity of the Muslim Countries was at a peak that it had never
reached before.
• About a hundred years after Haroon’s death, the power of the Abbasid caliphs began to
wane.
• In Khurasan, the Samanids took over power; in Fars, the Buyids; in Mesopotamia the
Hamadanis; in Africa the Fatimids and in Arabia the Carmathians.
• All these rulers (except the Fatimids) acknowledged the sovereignty of the Caliph in name
but the disintegration was so complete that it appeared as if Islam was politically doomed.
• The only event of note we may mention in this period occurred when Sultan Mahmud of
Ghazni for the first time laid foundation of a permanent Muslim rule in India.
The Saljuqs
 The Saljuqs
• During this period when the empire of the Caliphate had vanished,
and what had once been a realm united under a sole Muslim ruler
was reduced to a collection of scattered dynasties, a new race arose, a
new people accepted Islam, and with their fresh zeal poured new
blood into the dying veins.
• The Turkish Saljuqs accepted Islam; they bred a generation of
Muslim warriors to whom more than anything else the Crusaders
owed their repeated failures.
 The Saljuqs-Progress
• The first Saljuq sultan was Tughral Tughan Khan, who died in 1063.
• He was followed by his brilliant son Alp Arslan.
• This period was of unequalled prosperity and security. It also
produced the greatest Muslim statesman of all times, Nizam al-Mulk.
• The Abbasid Caliph still held sway over Baghdad but he delegated
all temporal power to the Saljuq Sultans.
• The Saljuq kingdom extended from the borders of Afghanistan to the
ends of the Arabian peninsula.
• Except Egypt and Spain all the Muslim world was united and never
after that period has it been united again in the same manner.
 The Saljuqs-Progress
• Alp Arslan was succeeded by his son Malik Shah.
• His period was the heyday of learning and original research in the
mathematics and sciences.
• In 1074 the observatory was founded where the celebrated Omar
Khayyam worked.
• The Jalali calendar was instituted which, in the judgment of a
modern scholar, is more accurate than our present Gregorian one.
• The Nizamia University in Baghdad was founded. This university
had the honour of having one of its chairs being occupied by the
celebrated Muslim dialectician Al-Ghazali.
 The Saljuqs-Decline
• The Saljuq power began declining towards the end of the twelfth century.
But even in its decline it had enough vitality to repulse the Crusaders.
• The great Saladin flourished about 1170.
• In 1171 after the decisive battle of Hattin when Saladin sent several Frank
prisoners to the Caliph Al-Nasir at Baghdad, the booty included a bronze
iron cross inlaid with the wood of the true cross. It was duly buried near
Baghdad.
• In the later part of the Saljuq period an ulcer grew in Islamic society.
• The Nizari Ismailis, also known as the Assassins, gained strength. They
held absolute sway over a few forts like Alamut, but the terror they
inspired with their secret activities made them a great power in the land.
The Mongols
 The Mongols
• In the beginning of the 13th century the Saljuq power had declined. Some other
dynasty may have taken their place but about 1220 occurred one of the greatest
eruptions in the history of the world.
• The nomadic tribes of Central Asia, the Mongols, swarmed over the whole
civilized world (both Europe and Asia) and under Genghis Khan and Hulagu
Khan swept like an avalanche all before them.
• About 1260 it appeared that Islam’s political power had disappeared for good;
Baghdad had been razed to the ground; the Caliphate obliterated; the lands of
Islam, Persia, Transoxiana [the area covering parts of modern-day Uzbekistan,
Kyryzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan] and Iraq laid completely waste.
The Mongols proved to be a formidable
fighting force, conquering much of Europe
and Asia. Yet they too eventually accepted
Islam
 The Mongols
• In the annals of Islam there has been no event with the like import.
• The destruction of Baghdad as metropolis of Islam, its reduction to the
status of a provincial town, and the murder of the Caliph, struck a fatal
blow at the semblance of unity which had subsisted among the nations of
Islam.
• The sack of Baghdad lasted a week while 80,000 people were put to death.
• The loss suffered by Muslim learning which never again regained its
pristine level defies description and almost surpasses imagination.
• Not only were thousands of priceless books annihilated, but also the very
tradition of accurate scholarship and original research was almost
destroyed.
 The Mongols-Acceptance of Islam
• But then again the miracle happened.
• The religion of the conquered itself conquered the conquerors.
• About 1275 the Mongol rulers had accepted Islam. Thenceforward, those very
Mongols were Islam’s greatest champions.

• “In its suddenness, its devastating destruction, its appalling ferocity, its
passionless and purposeless cruelty, its irresistible though shortlived violence,
the Mongol onslaught resembles some brute cataclysm of the blind forces of
nature rather than a phenomenon of human history.”

E.G. Brown, A Literary History of Persia (1906), 427. Translated and quoted from
D’Ohsson’s Histoire des Mongols, vol. I, p.387.
Tamerlane
 The next 200 years
• The political history of the next 200 years consists of the rule of Muslim Mongol princes in
Persia till about 1350 while Ottoman Turks established themselves in Asia Minor.
• Egypt was ruled by the descendants of Saladin.
• After 1350 another Central Asian conqueror arose, Tamerlane.
• He professed Islam but he had no other motive except world conquest and domination.
• He swept over Persia, India, Afghanistan, parts of Russia and some parts of China like Genghis
Khan before him.
• His most notable victory was over Bayezid I, the Sultan of Turkey in 1402. It checked for a
while the progress of Ottoman Turks to be the most dominant force in Islam but the net effect of
his conquests was ephemeral.
• His successors ruled over Central Asia and Persia for almost a hundred years when they were
supplanted by the Safavids.
• Thus the Mongol period, in which has been included Tamerlane, started roundabout 1250 and
came to end about 1500 A.D., except in India where the Mughal rule effectively lasted till about
1750 A.D.
 Muslim learning in this dark period
• Even in this dark period, we come across some of the greatest religious names.
• The first to mention is that of Shah Shams Tabriz. His disciple Maulana Jalal-ud-Din Rumi wrote
his Masnavi near about 1260. The author describes his work in the Masnavi as “The roots of the
roots of religion and discovery of the mysteries of reunion and sure knowledge.”
• The Sufi movement had its heyday in the thirteenth century. Sheikh Mohyuddin Ibn Arabi, the
greatest name in medieval Islam, a native of Andalusia, went to live in Damascus and died there
in 1240.
• In the literary sphere Hafiz-e-Shirazi and Sa’adi Shirazi belong to this period, while in
mathematics and astronomy, Naseeruddin al-Tusi was writing and compiling his table in the
13th century.
• In the historical field some of the greatest books were written in this period. Ibnul-Athir, Ibn
Arabshah, Ata-ul-Malik Juvayni being a few of the great historians.
• A short time later in Aleppo Shah Nimatullah (born 1330) was writing his famous prediction of
the coming of the Promised Messiah and his promised son.
The Period of National Dynasties
 The Period of National Dynasties
• Now we start with the fourth period of our history, starting about 1500 A.D.

• In 1500 the Safavids—a Shia dynasty—seized power in Persia.

• Persia had been Shiite throughout its previous history but it was the first time that
a Shia dynasty came to power.
• This had a profound effect on the course of future history.
• The Islamic world was divided into two antagonistic camps as it were—the Shiite
Persia, parts of Afghanistan and Iraq and the Ottoman Turk Empire comprising
Turkey, parts of Iraq, Arabia, Syria, Egypt and Algiers.
• Spain by now had passed out of Muslim hands.
• In India ruled the descendants of Tamerlane—the Great Mughals.
 From 1500 to 1700
• From 1500 to 1700 we witness the great kingdoms; that of Great Mughals Akbar, Jahangir, Shah
Jahan, and Aurangzeb in India; of the Safavids, Shah Ismail, Tahmasp, and Shah Abbas in Persia;
of the Ottoman Turks, Mohammed I, Selim I, and Sulaiman the Magnificent in Turkey.
• India was the greatest power in the world in the Mughal days.
• For Persia this was the golden period of her prosperity and well-being.
• The Turks ruled the biggest empire they had ever had.
• Among the Turkish Sultans Selim I conquered Egypt, Syria and Hejaz [parts of modern-day Saudi
Arabia] and assumed the title of Caliph.
• Sulaiman the Magnificent, who ruled from 1510-1566, conquered Belgrade and parts of Poland.
Vienna was besieged by Turkish armies while Turkey possessed the strongest fleet in the world.
• The Turkish empire extended from the frontiers of Germany to the Persian border. Although
during this period the centralism of Islam had disappeared, politically the Muslim world was at its
zenith.
• Eastern Europe lay prostrate under Turkish feet and as a contemporary European historian wrote
“Except for his war with Persia, there is nothing that can keep the Turk from annihilating us in
Europe.”
 After 1700
• Turkish power in Europe held intact till about 1800.
• But the Mughal Empire in India had begun disintegrating and during the course of next two
centuries was gradually supplanted by British supremacy.
• The Safavids in Persia lost their hold on the country and in 1727 Persia was conquered by the
Afghans.
• The Afghans were Sunnis and bitterly hated the Shiite Persians.
• This was the first time after Sultan Mahmud (about 1000 A.D.) that the Afghans asserted
themselves as an independent entity.
• They were soon however driven out of Persia by Nadir Shah who, rising from humble beginnings,
ultimately seized all power and came to rule over Persia. His career of conquests was as amazing
as that of Tamerlane or Napoleon.
• To finish with Persian history, Nadir Shah’s family was soon deposed and the Qajars took its
place. They tilled over Persia effectively till the revolution of 1906, when the Persians won for
themselves the Constitution.
 After 1700
• Concerning Turkish history, after 1700 a big element enters it with the coming of Russia. War
with Russia started about 1700. Turkish arms were at first victorious. In 1710 Peter the Great’s
army was menaced with total destruction.
• But about 1770 Turkish fortunes began to wane. Crimea got her independence from Turkey in
1788. France, the traditional ally of Turkey, broke her traditional role when Napoleon invaded
Egypt in 1798.
• After that Egypt under Muhammad Ali went out of the Turkish orbit and became quasi-
independent for some time.
• About the same time Algiers was captured by the French.
• The Greeks won their independence from the Turks about 1820 with the help of European
powers.
• The Turkish caliphate went on losing ground till power was seized from the Caliph’s hands by the
Young Turk Party in 1910.
• Turkey entered the wrong side in World War I and lost all her European and Asiatic possessions.
• The Arab countries as they exist today evolved after the first World War.
• Turkey itself had a political rejuvenation under Kemal Ataturk and is now materially one of the
most advanced Muslim countries.
 Independent
Muslim Countries
 Indonesia
• Islam began making itself felt in Java and Sumatra through the active
missionary work of Arab traders from a very early date.
• But only in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries did its political
power become important.
• The Arabic script displaced the Kavi (ancient Javanese) script.
• Among the various principalities ruled over by Muslim princes may
be mentioned the Sultanate of Aceh in Sumatra, not only for its glory
in the sixteenth century but also for the resistance which it offered to
the Dutch as recently as the nineteenth century.
• Indonesia won its independence from the Dutch and is now the most
populous Muslim country in the world.
 Pakistan
• Muslims came to India in the eighth century.
• But Muslim domination began about the twelfth century.
• For 300 years India was ruled by various Afghan dynasties.
• They were succeeded by the Mughals in 1526.
• The Mughal power passed after 200 years when the English took
over.
• Pakistan—the expression of Indian Islam for freedom—was brought
into existence in August, 1947.
 Afghanistan
• Afghanistan was a part of the Umayyad and Abbasid empires.
• It first had its separate existence about 1000 A. D. when the Ghaznavi
dynasty ruled over it.
• After that Afghanistan shared the fate of Persia, all through its
chequered history.
• It was no more than a province, sometimes of the Muslim Indian
Empire, sometimes that of the Persian.
• In 1725, however, the Afghans again rose and gained an independent
status.
• In the 19th century they clashed with Britain. Since then however,
Afghanistan has existed as an independent power.
 Central Asia
• Comprising Transoxiana and Russian Turkistan, this area formed part
of Persia till the eighteenth century.
• Russia gradually conquered Bukhara, Tashqand, and Samarqand in
the next hundred years.
• Now one hesitates to call them Muslim countries under the Soviets
because they have little contact with rest of Islamic world.
 The Arab Countries
• Iraq, Syria (including Palestine which throughout Muslim history
formed part of Syria) and Saudi Arabia shared the fate of Persia till
1500 A.D.
• After that they formed part of the Ottoman Turkish empire.
• They won their independence during World War I with British help.
• But the British, after the war, defected from their promises and
parceled out Syria to the French, keeping Iraq and Transjordan under
themselves,
• It is only after WWII that Syria, Iraq and Transjordan have gained
their independence.
 Turkey
• Turkey was first conquered for Islam by the Abbasids.
• Ottoman Turks migrated to it about 1288.
• Constantinople was taken in 1453 by Mohammad I.
• Turkey rose to great power but its decline started in the 19th century.
• In the first World War, alliance with Germany cost Turkey all its
possessions in Europe, Asia and Africa.
 Egypt
• Egypt was ruled by. the Umayyads till 750, then by the Fatimids till
1170, then by the Mamluks till around 1500, A.D. when Selim I
conquered it and incorporated it in the Turkish empire.
• It won independence in 19th century but lost it again to the British.
• The subsequent rise of Egypt in Middle East affairs, and its struggle
with Great Britain is all recent history.
• Now Egypt stands out as one of the paramount middle eastern
powers.
 Conclusion
• This very brief overview highlights the glorious
history of Islam

• There is one wonderful event in the history of

Islam which has been reserved for treatment at the
end.
• As stated earlier that at the lowest ebb of Islamic
political power, Islam’s religious vitality has
displayed itself again and again.
• Islam’s political might reached its nadir towards
the end of 19th century and about that time rose
Ahmadiyyat. Hazrat Ahmadas, the Promised
Messiah and the Mahdi was raised at Qadian in
1889 and through him Islam will be regenerated
spiritually and politically.