Spread of Islam

I

Introduction

Spread of Islam, rapid expansion of the religion of Islam through conversion and military conquest in the 7th and 8th centuries. Muhammad, the founder and prophet of Islam, began preaching his visions in Mecca (in present-day Saudi Arabia) in 610. Within 25 years he and his followers, called Muslims, had gained control of the entire Arabian Peninsula, and Islam was fast becoming the world’s third great monotheistic religion, after Judaism and Christianity. By 650 an organized Islamic state ruled Arabia (also known as the Arabian Peninsula), the entire Fertile Crescent (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine), and Egypt; by the early 700s Islam dominated a wide area, stretching from the fringes of China and India in the east to North Africa and Spain in the west.

The remarkable speed of this religious expansion can be attributed to the fact that it was accompanied by military conquest. Muhammad drew Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula to Islam by his forceful personality, the promise of salvation for those who died fighting for Islam, and the lure of fortune for those who succeeded in conquest. The caravan raids of the early years of Islam soon become full-scale wars, and empires and nations bowed to the power of this new religious, military, political, economic, and social phenomenon.

II

The Prophet Muhammad

Muhammad was born in Mecca into the prominent Quraysh tribe in about 570. In about 610 Muhammad received a vision of the angel Gabriel, who proclaimed him a prophet of God. Reciting from an expanding collection of revelations in verse form, which would later become the Qur'an (Koran), Muhammad began preaching the religion of Islam (islam, Arabic for “to surrender,” that is, to the will or law of God). At first, Muhammad made few converts among the pagan Meccans who worshiped many different gods. Over time Muhammad’s followers grew in number, and he began to be viewed as a threat by Mecca’s elite. Realizing their safety was at stake, in 622 Muhammad and his followers moved to Yathrib (later Medina), an oasis town north of Mecca. That migration (called the Hegira) would be later used to mark the initial year of the Islamic calendar.

Before Muhammad arrived, Medina had been wracked by violent feuds between the town’s major clans (groups of families who claimed descent from a common ancestor). Two years earlier, several clan leaders had met Muhammad and heard his teachings during a pagan pilgrimage to Mecca. The major clan leaders had invited Muhammad to Medina to arbitrate clan disputes as an impartial religious authority. In return, the leaders had pledged to accept Muhammad as a prophet, which lent credibility to the new religion of Islam. Those Medinians who converted to Islam were called the Helpers. Muhammad succeeded in expanding his role from arbiter of disputes to head of a new Arab community. He did this by making converts among Medina’s residents, by raiding Meccan caravans, and, eventually, by driving out the three Jewish tribes who conducted most of the town’s farming and metalworking.

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The men who had made the Hegira with Muhammad—known as the Companions of the prophet—were accustomed to the trade economy of Mecca and initially had no means of livelihood in mainly agricultural Medina. Muhammad decided to raid Meccan caravans to provide the Companions with income, as well as to accomplish two larger goals. First, success would restore the Companions’ self-respect, which had suffered by being driven from Mecca, and second, it would demonstrate the truth of Muhammad’s visions and indicate that they had God’s blessing. Also, by ruining Mecca’s trade he would demonstrate to the Meccans that Islam was something bigger than they had supposed.

A

Rivalry with Mecca

After a number of unproductive tries, the Muslims finally fell upon a caravan and captured it in January 624. They killed one of its guards, shedding the first blood in the name of Islam. The Helpers were troubled because the killing had taken place during a pagan sacred month in which bloodshed was forbidden. Two of Muhammad’s revelations from the Qur'an supported the raid (2:217,218). According to the revelations, the action of the Meccans in driving Muhammad and the Companions out of Mecca was worse than the violation of the pagan sacred month. The attack on the Meccan caravan sparked a series of clashes between Mecca and Muhammad.

In March 624 another victory further strengthened Muhammad’s fledgling Muslim group. Muhammad and about 300 of his men battled a Meccan force three times their size at the oasis of Badr. It was a great victory for the Muslims, and later generations of Muslims considered it a mark of nobility to have fought at Badr. Mecca sought revenge for the 50 Meccans who died at Badr in a great battle fought the following March at a hill called Uhud. Some 3000 Meccans and about 700 Muslims were involved. The Meccans won the initial battle. Muhammad rallied his men, but the Meccans, satisfied with having exacted their revenge, broke off the battle and left.

In 627 Medina was attacked by a force of about 10,000, consisting of Meccans and their tribal allies. The Muslims dug a great trench around their positions, which prevented a cavalry breakthrough. As a result, the Meccans retired after a few weeks of siege, and this became known as the Battle of the Trench. Muhammad used this show of Muslim strength to complete the process of driving the three Jewish tribes out of Medina. The Jewish tribes had found it impossible to accept the prophethood of Muhammad and the universal message of Islam, which undermined the Jewish position as the chosen people. Two tribes had been expelled earlier, and Muhammad suspected the third, the Banu Qurayzah, of conspiring with the Meccans during the Battle of the Trench. Therefore, he had all the remaining Jewish men killed and the women and children sold into slavery. Muhammad was now in control of Medina.

B

Conquest of Mecca

Mecca’s rivalry with Medina and the Muslims concluded with a series of events initiated in 628. As a demonstration of his strength and goodwill, Muhammad and about 1000 Muslims made the pilgrimage to the Kaaba, an ancient sanctuary of the local gods, in Mecca. Outside Mecca, Muhammad concluded an agreement with the Meccans that called for a ten-year peace; allowed the Muslims to make the pilgrimage to the Kaaba; called for the cessation of raids on Meccan caravans; and enabled any tribes allied to Mecca or to Medina to change sides if they so desired.

Muhammad spent the next year extending his control over the tribes in his region. In 630 Muhammad, having attracted large numbers of the younger men of Mecca to join him, marched into Mecca with about 10,000 Muslims and took the city without much of a struggle. One of the younger men was Khalid ibn al-Walid, who would later become the ideal Arab Muslim warrior and earn the title “The Sword of Allah.” (Allah is the Arabic word for “God.”) Within ten years of having been driven out of Mecca, Muhammad returned with the religion of Islam on the rise.

Several weeks after taking Mecca, the Muslims were attacked by about 20,000 Bedouin Arab tribesmen. These nomadic Bedouins, who had resisted submission to Islam, may have been motivated to attack by Muhammad’s destruction of pagan idols in the Kaaba and the conversion of the Kaaba into Islam’s holiest shrine. Muhammad overwhelmingly defeated the Bedouins, leaving him the strongest leader in the Arabian Peninsula. Many Arab tribes then sought alliance with Muhammad. In seeking alliance, these tribes agreed to recognize the prophethood of Muhammad, accept the religion of Islam, and pay an alms tax (zakat). A great confederation of Arab tribes united through Islam was emerging in Arabia.

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