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1 results

  • 1 - THE GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING

  • from PART VIII - ISLAMIC SOCIETY AND CIVILIZATION
  • Edited by P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton, Bernard Lewis
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Islam
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    21 April 1977, pp 441-468

  • Summary

    There is a closer relationship between Islam and its geographical setting, than that of any other of the great monotheistic religions. At the time of Muhammad, the oases of the Hijaz were prosperous market towns; these cities were caravan centres which had organized the relations between southern Arabia and the Mediterranean world ever since the decline of the former, towards the end of the fifth Christian century, had permitted them to take up the reins and assume the directing role. Two very different families of nomadic peoples, the Arabs and the Turks, undertook the diffusion of Islam, and the imprint left on the human landscape differed in each case. The essential instruments for the conversion of the countryside to Islam were the nomads rather than the peasants. The Muslim town, in fact, bears the marks of an almost total absence of municipal organization. Islam affected the condition of agriculture most through its landowning structure and laws of real property.