Worlds of Islam

1. Worlds of Islam AP World Key Concept 1.2 Developments in Dar al-Islam from c. 1200 to c. 1450

3. Identify some similarities and differences in the spread of Islam to India, Anatolia, West Africa, and Spain. (Hint: How did Islam spread and was it the dominant faith?) • invasions by Turkic-speaking warrior groups from Central Asia • encounter were violent indeed, as the invaders smashed Hindu and Buddhist temples and carried off vast quantities of Indian treasure • Turkic rule became more systematic, although their small numbers and internal conflicts allowed only a very modest penetration of Indian society. • Disillusioned Buddhists as well as low-caste Hindus and untouchables found the more egalitarian Islam attractive • Sufi holy men, willing to accommodate local gods and religious festivals, helped to develop a “popular Islam” that was not always so sharply distinguished from the more devotional forms of Hinduism • was never able to claim more than 20 to 25 percent of the total population • lived quite separately, remaining a distinctive minority within an ancient Indian civilization, • which they now largely governed but which they proved unable to completely transform.

4. Delhi sultanate Ruled Northern India from ca. 1200-1500 Turkic based people Combined Indian and Islamic civilization Destroyed Hindu and Buddhist temples Connected India with larger trading networks Repelled Mongol invasions

5. Islam in Anatolia (Turkey) • invaders initially wreaked havoc • Sufi practitioners likewise played a major role in the process of conversion • far more profound cultural transformation than in India. • Actually benefitted from centralization of Byzantine empire-easier to replace than start up. • By 1500, the population was 90 percent Muslim and largely Turkic-speaking • Population smaller, more Turkic speaking/native • Turkish language, not Arabic, predominated. Some Sufi religious practices, such as ecstatic turning dances, derived from Central Asian Turkic shamanism

6. Seljuk Turks • Originated from Eastern Anatolia • Ruled SW Asia from 11th to 14th Centuries • Controlled Western trade routes from Asia • Created large armies of slaves, called Mamelukes • Took large quantities of Byzantine empire and pressured empire; which led to: • Fought against Crusaders from Europe (and won) • Fought against Mongols from the east (and lost)

7. Mamluk sultanate • Slaves in Seljuk Empire • From South, Eastern Europe (Turkic Caucasian) • Fierceness led to raising of their status • Led conquest of Egypt for Seljuks • Shortly before Mongols defeat • Stood up to and defeated the Mongols • Controlled Egypt until Ottoman conquest in 1500’s

8. Islam In West Africa • Islam accompanied Muslim traders across the Sahara (no invasion) • gradual acceptance, largely peaceful and voluntary • important link to Muslim trading partners, much as Buddhism had done in Southeast Asia. • offered a source of literate officials to assist in state administration as well as religious legitimacy • Timbuktu symbol of literacy and commerce • Arabs/Arabic not dominant • Sufi holy men played a far more modest role •  Although many rulers adopted Islam, they governed people who steadfastly practiced African religions  • Islam became Africanized even as parts of West Africa became Islamized.

9. Islam in Spain (Al-Andalus) • portrayed as a place of harmony and tolerance between its Muslim rulers and its Christian and Jewish subjects. • Córdoba was among the largest and most splendid cities in the world • From beginnings to around 1000, tolerance and cooperation were the norm • Tensions gradually rose up to 1200, when a era of open conflict began known as the Recoquista began –the Spanish Crusade to reclaim a Catholic Spain. • Had been a symbol of the Arab practice of preserving Greek learning during the dark ages.

10. Why was commerce in the Islamic world valued as a positive thing? • commerce was valued positively within Islamic teaching, for Muhammad himself had been a trader. • pilgrimage to Mecca, as well as the urbanization that accompanied the growth of Islamic civilization, likewise fostered commerce

11. What ideas and technologies were diffused and exchanged as trade and commerce developed a “capitalist” economy that spanned the Old World? • Muslim conquest of northwestern India opened the Middle East to a veritable treasure trove of crops that had been domesticated long before in South and Southeast Asia • Ancient Persian techniques for obtaining water by drilling into the sides of hills now spread across North Africa as far west as Morocco. • technicians made improvements on rockets, first developed in China • Papermaking techniques entered the Abbasid Empire from China in the eighth century, with paper mills soon operating in Persia, Iraq, and Egypt. • Stimulated by Greek texts, a school of Islamic thinkers known as Mutazalites (“those who stand apart”) argued that reason, rather than revelation, was the “surest way to truth.” • Indian numerical notation, for example, Arab scholars developed algebra as a novel mathematical discipline • built on earlier Greek and Indian practice to create a remarkable tradition in medicine and pharmacology •  first hospitals, traveling clinics, and examinations for physicians and pharmacologists also were developed within the Islamic world • enormous body of Arab medical scholarship entered Europe via Spain, and it remained at the core of European medical practice for many centuries.

12. Explain the effects of intellectual innovation in Dar al-Islam. 1.2 Learning objective F Intellectual Innovation Intellectual Transfers Abbasids sought preservation and commentaries on Greek moral and natural philosophy; applied to their own House of Wisdom in Abbasid Baghdad; great collection of Western and Eastern knowledge Scholarly and cultural transfers in Muslim and Christian Spain • Nasir al-Din al-Tusi: developer of Trigonometry • Áishah al-Bàuniyyah :Sufi poet, conveyed female perspective of society • Advances in medicine: Ibn Sinna(father of Modern Medicine); first hospitals, traveling clinics, and examinations for physicians and pharmacologists also were developed within the Islamic world