Muhammad Bin Qasim

Pre-Islamic Arabia was a culture knit together by kinship. In this society there was no emperor or ruling elite. The people of pre-Islamic Arabia were bound together by nomadic tribes who made profit by trading and most importantly “raiding”. These raids were often described as small-scale warfare and were instrumented by tribal leaders in order to increase the wealth and power of the tribe (Gordon 5). This was the society in which Islam came to power. Warfare and raiding were essential in order to be successful in pre-Islamic Arabia. The integration of warfare into the Islamic religion created a similarity among Muslims, those who follow Islam, and non-Islamic Arabian people. This relationship and common interest established by the prophet Muhammad helped in the rise of Islam among non-Islamic

Islam played a huge role in the historical development of the Middle East and in North Africa. In this essay, I will discuss the impact of Islam's conquest of the Levant region in the Middle East, and into North Africa, and Spain. I will also look at the affect that invading forces, namely the Mongols, had on shaping the development of Islam. Beginning in the Middle East, and looking at Abu Bakr, we see the overtaking of many cities. Using one of the sources provided for this course we are able to see how quickly Abu Bakr began his conquest of the Middle East, especially Western Syria in the region of the Levant, "After the death of Muhammad, Abu Bakr became king and sent an army of 30,000 Arabs to conquer Syria in the first year of his reign.

A change that occurred in the political life of Islamic civilization was the shift from the election of a Caliphate to a more dynastical system. Previously, the caliphates were elected by the Islamic community. Capable leaders were preferred over heirs who were not as qualified. Sunni Muslims were firm believers of this concept, while Shia muslims believed that Ali should’ve

    Islam’s massive growth in size can be credited to the constant battles and war with surrounding areas. The Muslims were determined to share

The Safavids, Mughals, and Ottomans were powerful islamic empires that were able to rise to great influence and power, becoming main rivals to other European states in the process. This rise into power was possible because of their prodigious investment and development of their militaries, government operation under a fair, merit-based system, and tolerance for various religions; however, these societies faced their demise after crippling government corruption through negligent leadership and ever increasing social tension began to materialize.

The East, the land of cotton, fine silks, and rich coffee, was the land of three of the most powerful empires to ever grace the surface of the earth. The Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman Empires were known as the gunpowder empires, and they were feared throughout Europe because of their horsemanship, their power, and their armies. They dominated the stage for centuries, but, as with all things, history moves on. It stops for no man, and all goods things eventually come to an end. So it was with the powers of the East. As Europe prospered from exploration and improved though revolution, the Middle East suffered from poor weather, internal dissent, and a currency crisis that sucked the rulers in like quicksand. And so it was that the epicenter of the world shifted; Europe took the title of midpoint between East and West (Lecture, 09.09.).

The Muslim empires proved to be forces to be reckoned with when they stretched and

The Prophet Muhammad’s large influences over the foundations of Islam helped shape its empire into a powerful militant group that would result in the unification of Arabia in 622 AD . From there, Muhammad would be looked to by many as both a religious prophet and a competent military leader. Conquests made my Muhammad lasted from 622 CE to

This chapter begins with the Muhammad and the message he brings. It all began in the Arabian Peninsula, which was mostly desert. The people who lived there were called Nomadic Bedouin, and they are organized in family and clan groups. The importance of long-distance trade networks became important again between China, India, and Persia, Byzantium. The section starts talking about the early life Muhammad ibn Abdullah was born in to a Mecca merchant family in 570 C.E. He had a difficult life growing up, but in 595 C.E, he married a wealthy widow. By the time, he was thirty he became a merchant and exposed too many faiths. He had a spiritual transformation at the age of forty, and declared that there was only one true god, whose name was Allah, “the god.” His believe that Allah would soon bring judgment on the world, and the divine messenger, Gabriel, delivered these revelations to Muhammad. The Quran, also known as the “recitation,” is the holy book of Islam. Muhammad followers complied with his revelations. They had works of poetry and definitive authority on Islam;

In the center was the Arabian Peninsula, made out of evidently frail and isolated tribal social orders. Within hundred years, both domains would fall before the armed forces of Allah as Arabia united under the umbrella of Islam, which gave a guideline of association and inspirations. . (Esposito, John 1988) Under the successions of a number of Prophets, an inconceivable empire and a region of Islamic states would come to command a great part of the world. Its ministers would be fighters, dealers, and spiritualists. Islam would give the premise of a community and the common beliefs or authenticity for rulers and their strategies of extension and success. In this manner, for instance, the wars of success were termed faith, "opening or triumph" of the route for Islam. As Muhammad represented a Trans tribal state for the sake of Islam, so too the Islamic group got to be connected with a far reaching domain.

Modern day Pakistan’s land has traditionally been Muslim for many years. In the early nineteenth century it was ruled by Britain and considered part of the British Indian Empire. In 1947, a partition was granted from the British, and Pakistan and India were created as their own countries. As the previous British Empire divided,

Osama bin Laden is a powerful influential leader to his followers. He also has significance approaches to them as well. Bin laden created a new group in 1988 called al-Qaeda (“the base”) to where it would focus on a symbolic act of terrorism instead of military campaign. A year later in 1989 the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, soon after that bin laden returned to Saudi Arabia to step up fundraising for the new and more complicated mission (History.com 2009). The pro-Western Saudi royal family feared that bin Laden’s fiery pan-Islamist rhetoric might cause trouble in the kingdom, so they tried to keep him quite as they could. Therefore, the royal family took away his passport and refused to accept his offer to send “Afghan Arabs” to guard the borders after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 (History.com 2009). However, the Saudi royal family did not make it any better when they sought help from the “infidel” U.S. instead. Since bin Laden was furious about being snubbed by the Saudi royal family, he vowed that it would be al-Qaeda, and not the Americans, who would one day; prove to be “master of this world.”

The great empires of history, particularly in Islamic history, were the Ottomans of Turkey, Safavids in Persia, and Mughals in India. This text will be a brief run-down of the times in which Selim I, Suleiman I and Jahangir ruled, in hopes that if become familiar with who these rulers were in terms of the characteristics of their leadership and authority, we can interpret a picture what the society was like at that time. The common facts that Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires shared was that they all originated in Turkish nomadic cultures of the steppe, the class which originally dominated the states and social hierarchy was a military aristocracy, they were Muslim led and it was their devotion to Islam that encouraged them to carry the faith to new lands, they were based on conquest and the use of military technologies, they began with absolutist rulers and efficient bureaucracies and they surprisingly did not rule predominantly Muslim populations. The differences between the empires laid up to their ruler’s opinions, achievements and decree for example rulers of the Safavid and Mughal Empires exerted even more spiritual authority than the others, forcing their citizens to subject to their beliefs of the religion, Ismail and the emergence of Shiism.

As argued by H. L. Wessseling (1996: 366), the historical interpretation of the partition was based on imperialism due to entrepreneurship and therefore, “primarily a struggle for profitable markets of investment”. He opined that aside from the economic motives upon which the partition was based, there was indeed, consideration of strategic and political motives as well. From his perspective, the political elites in Britain had no plan for Africa; instead they were promoting their own preferences in Asia which was aimed at defending the crucial stake in both India and the East (p. 366). Furthermore, the development of transportation was paramount to the Middle East war because it promoted the development of Africa transportation network which was used to transport “bulky supplies” from Congo Rivers, through Juba and Egypt (Hargreaves, 1988: 54).

the conflict in the middle east between 1948-1973 was not purely fuelled by the interest and concerns of the superpowers but rather of a series of conflictual incidents, aswell as the main wars that took place from the years from 1948-1967 such as the: 1948 War, The Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur war of 1973. But although the conflict was not fuelled by the superpowers, the influence of the superpowers and the reach of the superpowers into the Middle East was evident in the years both prior and following 1978. But even despite the influence and interests of the superpowers between and including 1948-1967 being undeniably evident, the extent of this influence cannot be said to have “fuelled the conflict”.