From their new Capitol in Damascus (in Syria, across from Beirut), Islamic armies raced eastward
from Mesopotamia to India to Central Asia, while also eastward to Egypt and North Africa.
A century after its inception, Islamic calls to prayers issued from minarets on the Atlantic
all the way to the outskirts of China, an "empire" vaster than Rome at its apex.Many causes explain the rapid expansion. Decline of orderly government, particularly Byzantine, in the century before Mohammed, resulted in decay of the desert irrigation systems, instigating desire for more arable land. Byzantine oppression of various religious sects alienated multitudes in Syria and Egypt. Arab troops were more disciplined and agressive than the enemy, and, fighting with empty stomachs, knew victory meant nourishment. Also, Arab conquerors could best be paid by their leaders with encouragement to seek new lands. Skillful Arab horsemen were superior to Greek and Persian cavalary and infantry. Result: conquests more rapid than that of Romans, more enduring than those of Mongols -- the greatest feats in military history.
- in 635 (3 years after Mohammed's death) Damascus was conquered;
- in 636 Antioch was conquered;
- in 638 Jerusalem was conquered;
- by 640, all of Syria was conquered;
- by 641, Persia and Egypt were conquered;
- after 20 years of consolidation, Balkh (in Afghanistan) was conquered in 705;
- in 709 Bokhara (in Afghanistan) was conquered;
- in 711, the southwestern part of Spain was conquered;
- in 712, Samarkand (in Uzbekistan in Asia steppes) was conquered
Al-Hajjaj Ben Yusuf (?-714), Governor of Iraq under the Umayyad Caliphates of Abdul al-Malik and Walid, governed zealously, though barbarously: draining marshes; irrigating arid tracts; restoring and improving the canal system; as a former schoolmaster, revolutionized Arabic orthography by introducing diacritical marks. Calif Walid (x-y) encoraged industry by sponsoring new markets and better roads; constructed schools and hospitals (including the first known lazar houses), homes for aged, disabled, and blind persons; beautified the mosques of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, and built a great mosque in Damascus which still stands. Meanwhile, Walid composed verses and music, played the lute, and hosted other poets and musicians. The Abbasid caliphate ruled an empire from the Indus (in Pakistan) to the Atlantic; northwest India, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, Turkestan, Persia, Armenia, Syria, Palestine, Cyprus, Crete, Egypt, and North Africa. Calif al-Mansur ("The Victorous", x-y) generously patronized arts, letters, and sciences. He also enduringly reorganized the government and the army, created an inspection system to deal with corruption and waste, and created the post of vizier (aid to calif) which played a great role in future regimes. His son, Al-Mahadi (x-y) extended his father's wise governance, pardoning all except the most dangerous felons, beautified the cities, supported arts and sciences, administered his empire competently. Al-Mahadi sent his son, Harun, to take back territory reconquered by Byzantium, driving Byzantine forces back to Constantinope and exacting a peace treaty. For this accomplishment, Al-Mahadi renamed his son Harun-al-Rashid ("Aaron the Just"), to become one of the most famous rulers in history and known to generations of children through The Arabian Nights. Caliph Harun-al-Rashid (x-y) gathered in Baghdad an unexcelled assembly of poets, musicians, rhetoriticians, jurists, dancers, grammarians, physicians, artists. Contemporary courts of Empress Irene (x-y) in Constantinople and Charlemagne in France -- and later, Tsüan Tsung in China -- were unequal in wealth, power, splendor, influence. Although entrusting administration and policy to his vizier, Yahya, yet shared in administration, led his army in the field, safequarded his frontiers, became known as a just judge and -- despite his libarality -- left the treasury with considerable wealth.
The year 874 saw founding of the Persian Samanid dynasty that ruled Transoxiana and Kurasan until 999, making Bokhara and Samarkhand rivals in arts and learning to the court of Baghdad, hosting Avicenna (x-y, greatest of Medieval philosophers) and al-Razi (x-y, greatest of Medieval physicians). In 962, Turkish adventurers established a Ghaznevid dynasty in Afghanistan. The second ruler, Mahmud (x-y) brought to his court many scientists, including Biruni (x-y), and many poets, inlcuding Firdausi (x-y, greatest of Persian poets). This dynasty fell to the Seljuk Turks, moving westward from Lake Baikal (x-y), gradually absorbing various Islamic dynasties under Seljuk control of Baghdad. Seljuk rulers took the title "sultan (maste)", reducing califs to a religious role, and gave this region the stability to withstand the "Holy Crusades". In 1046, the Seljuk Turks conquered Islamic rivals in Armenia, a country which had been the first nation to embrace Christianity (in 303). Before this, 642-1046, the califs allowed free religious practice for its Christian majority. Calif Ashot III (x-y) was much loved by his people; founded many churches, hospitals, convents, almshouses. His son, Gajik I (x-y), created a center for literature, theology, and philosophy.
These and other Islamic "advances" occurred at a time when trans-Spain Europe was so much more inferior that some scholars have applied, to this place and time, the exaggerated term "Dark Ages". Will Durant writes in The Story of Civilization, IV The Age of Faith, p. 109: "Exploitation in Asiatic Islam never reached the mercilessness of pagan, or Christian, or Moslem Egypt, where the pesant toiled every hour, earned enough to pay for a hut, a loincloth, and food this side of starvation. There was and is much begging in Islam, and much imposture in begging, but the poor Asiatic had a protective skill in working slowly, few men could rival him in manifold adaptation to idleness, alms were frequent, and at the worst a homeless man could sleep in the finest edifice in town -- the mosque." And on p. 211: "Theoretically, the Moslem faith was the simplest of all creeds -- 'There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet.' (La ilaba il-Allah, Muhammmad-un Rasulu-llah. ) The simplicity of the formula is only apparent, for its second clause includes the acceptance of the Koran and all its teachings." On p. 212: "Prayer, almsgiving, fasting and pilgrimage [to Mecca] constitute the 'Four Duties' of Moslem religion. These, with belief in Allah and Mohammed, are 'The Five Pillars of Islam'." On p. 218: "As in most religions, the various sects of Islam felt toward one another an animosity more intense than that with which they viewed the 'infidels' within their midst. To these Dhimini -- Christians, Zoroastrians, Sabaeans, Jews -- the Umayyad caliphate offered a degree of toleration hardly equaled in contemporary Christian lands. ....
"The Jews of the Near East had welcomed the Arabs as liberators. They suffered now divers disabilities and occasional persecutions, but they stood on equal terms with Christians, were free once more to live and worship in Jerusalem, and prospered under Islam in Asia, Egypt, and Spain as never under Christian rule. Outside of Arabia the Christians of western Asia usually practised their religion unhindered; Syria remained predominantly Christian until the third Moslem century; in the reign of Mammun (813-33) we hear of 11,000 Christian churches in Islam -- as well as hundreds of synogogues and fire temples. Christian festivals were freely and openly celebrated; Christians pilgrims came in safety to visit Christian shrines in Palestine; the Crusaders founds large numbers of Christians in the Near East in the twelfth century, and Christian communities have survived there to this day. Christian heretics persecuted by the patriarachs of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, or Antoch were now free and safe under a Moslem rule that found their disputes quite unintelligible. In the ninth century the governor of Antioch appointed a special guard to keep Christian sects from massacring one another at church. Monasteries and nunneries flourished under the skeptical Umayyads; the Arabs admired the work of the monks in agriculture and reclamation, acclaimed the wines of monastic vintage, and enjoyed, in traveling, the shade and hospitality of Christian cloisters. For a time relations between the two religions were so genial that Chritisns wearing crosses on their breasts conversed in mosques with Moslem friends. The Mohammedan administrative bureaucracy had hundreds of Christian employees; Christians rose so frequently to high office as to provoke Moslem complaints. Sergius, father of St. John of Damascus, was chief finance officer of Abd-al-Malik, and John hiimself, last of the Greek Fathers of the Church, headed the council that governed Damascus. The Christians of the East regarded Islamic rule as a lesser evil than that of the [Christian] Byzantine government and church.
"Despite or because of this policy of tolerance in early Islam, the new faith won over to itself in time most of the Christians, nearly all the Zoroastrians and pagans, and many of the Jews, of Asia, Egypt, and North Africa. .... Gradually the non-Moslem populations adopted the Arabic language and dress, the laws and faith of the Koran. Where Hellenism, after a thousand years of mastery, had failed to take root, and Roman arms had left the native gods unconquered, and Byzantine orthodoxy had raised rebellious heresies, Mohammedanism had secured, almost without prosletism, not only belief and worship, but a tenacious fidelity that quite forgot the superceded gods. From China, Indonesia, and India through Persia, Syria, Arabia, and Egypt to Morocco and Spain, the Mohammedan faith touched the hearts and fancies of a hundred peoples, governed their morals and molded their lives, gave them consoling hopes and a strengthening pride, until today it owns the passionate allegiance of 350,000,000 souls, and through all political divisions makes them one."
P. 227: "With these [above-cited] provisos, we msu concede that the early caliphs, from Abu Bekr to al-Mamun, gave successful organization to humn life over a wide area, and may counted among the ablest rulers in history. They might have devastated or confiscated everything, Like the Mongols or the Magyars or the raiding Norse; instead they merely taxed. .... Under the caliphal government lands were measured, records were systematically kept, roads and canals were multiplied or maintained, rivers were banked to prevent floods; Iraq, now half desert, was again a garden of Eden; Palestine, recently so rich in sand and stones, was fertile and wealthy, and populous. Doubtless the exploitation of simplicity and weakness by cleverness and strength went on this system as under all governments, but the caliphs gave reasonable protection to life and labor, kept career open to talent, promoted for three to six centuries the prosperity of areas never so prosperous again, and stimulated and supported such a flourishing of education, literature, science, philosophy, and art as made western Asia, for five centuries, the most civilized region in the world."P. 236: "... throughout Islam -- through whatever diversity of peoples -- the language of learning and literature was Arabic; Latin had no wider realm. .... When the Moslems captured Samarkand (712) they learned from China [of the] product papyros -- paper. The first paper-manufacturing plant in Islam was opened at Baghdad in 794 by al-Fadl, son of Harun's vizier. The craft was brought by Arabs to Scicily and Spain, and thence passed into Italy and France. [By 891] Baghded had over a hundred booksellers. Their shops were also centers of copying, calligraphy, and literary gatherings. Many students made a living by copying manuscripts and selling the copies to book dealers. In the tenth century we hear of autograph hunters, and of book collectors who paid great sums for rare manuscripts. ....
"Most mosques had libraies, and some cities had libraries of considerable content and generous] accessibility. About 950 Mosul had a library, established by private philanthropy, where students were supplied with paper as well as books. Ten large catalogues were required to list the volumes in the public library at Rayy. Basra's library gave stipens to scholars working in it. .... When Baghdad was destroyed by the Mongols it had thirty-six public libraries. Private libraries were numberless; it was the fashion of the rich to have an ample collection of books. .... In a thousand mosques scholars were as numerous as pillars .... The old cultures of the conquered were eagerly absorbed by the quick-witted Arabs, and the conquerors showed such tolerance that of the poets, scientists, and philosophers who now made Arabic the most literary and learned tongue in the world only a small minority were of Arab blood."
P. 239-41: "The Umyyads wisely left unhindered the Christian, Sabaean, or Persian colleges at Alexandria, Beirut, Antioch, Harran, Nisibis and Jund-i-Shapur; and in those schools the classics of Greek science and philosophy were preserved, often in Syruac translations. [Durant here, in a footnote, cites Introduction to the History of Science by Geroge Sarton for "revealing the wealth and scope of Moslem culture".] .... By 850 most of the classic Greek texts in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine had been translated. .... The continuity of science from Egypt, India, and Babylon through Greece and Byzantium to Eastern and Spanish Islamd, and thence to northern Europe and America, is one of the brightest threads in the skein of history."
The above covers Eastern Islam; comparable events occurred in Western Islam. Important examples of Islamic contributions in arts, science, literature, philosophy are cited in appropriate files at this Website.