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1 results

  • 12 - Muhammad and the rise of Islam

  • from PART II - THE SEVENTH CENTURY
  • Edited by Paul Fouracre, University of Manchester
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 December 2005, pp 317-345

  • Summary

    Muslim tradition speaks of the existence of soothsayers or sorcerers (kahins) in the pre-Islamic period. The period immediately preceding the Arab invasions had proved as disastrous for the Sasanian Empire as for Byzantium. The Qur'anic revelations were being used in early Muslim worship and memorised by the faithful. Like Moses before him, Muhammad, the 'seal of the Prophets', was involved in social action as well as preaching. The formation of the Islamic empire, which followed the death of the Prophet in 632, falls conveniently but not rigidly into two phases. The first was an explosive and surprisingly easy series of conquests of the territories closest to Arabia, which soon brought Byzantine Syria, Palestine and Egypt as well as Sasanian Iraq into the orbit of government from Medina. The second involved protracted and more difficult conquests that eventually added Sasanian Iran and parts of Central Asia in the east and the North African littoral in the west.