Chapter 2 offers an introduction to the history of Islam and Muslims with a focus on events and processes that influenced and remained important for the origin and development of the Muslim firaq. It examines the period of late antiquity, what the Qurʾan has to say about sectarian splintering, the Prophetic era, and the period after the death of the Prophet. It focuses in particular on the events of the Saqīfa, the first Muslim fitna (civil war), and the establishment of the early Muslim dynasties. The shift from the Umayyad to the ʿAbbāsid eras offers an introduction to the idea of a Muslim school of thought, while the notion of caliphal power is examined using the examples of Umayyad persecution of “heretics,” as well as the miḥna. The Turkic invasions, including the Mongols, offers an opportunity to examine the nature of political and military power, and to see how such configurations change with the introduction of gunpowder and the establishment of the “gunpowder empires.”

Chapter 2 examines the doctrines of two sociopolitical factions that influenced later Sunnī thought: the Umayyads and the ʿUthmāniyya. These two factions were most active in the earliest periods of Islamic history (the seventh and eighth centuries). Historians have attributed the earliest expressions of anti-ʿAlid sentiment to members of these groups (alongside the Khawārij). Since anti-ʿAlids active before the fall of the Umayyads did not leave primary documents discussing ʿAlī, this chapter relies on ḥadīth and on biographical and historical literature to elucidate the doctrines of the two groups. The case studies in Chapter 2 include Companions of the Prophet and other early Muslims who were portrayed as anti-ʿAlids. A commitment to the belief in the righteousness of the Companions played an important role in the reception of anti-ʿAlid ḥadīth in Sunnī Islam. It created an incentive for scholars to reject or charitably reinterpret not only texts that disparaged ʿAlī but also those that portrayed other Companions despising him.

This chapter surveys the rise of the Abbasid family as a branch of the Prophet's Hashimite clan, and the background of discontent against the Umayyads. After focusing on the Abbasid revolution in Khurasan-Transoxiana (747-750), the chapter surveys the consolidation of Abbasid rule under the caliph al-Mansur, and the establishment of a new capital at Baghdad in 762. The transition to the reign of al-Mahdi shows the first signs of Abbasid bureaucracy with the Barmakid ministers, and the emergence of an Islamic ideology, with an emphasis on patronizing the 'ulama and supporting the pilgrimage to Mecca.

This chapter investigates the emergence of imperial space in the early Islamic world, 7th–12th centuries, and Muslim notions of empire in this period. It examines how an imperial space was conquered under the Prophet Muhammad, Rashidun Caliphs and Umayyad dynasty, reaching its height in c.740, followed by its fragmentation under the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258). The role of jihad in this expansion is examined, along with the institutions that bound the empire together and the reasons for its disintegration. The expansion of the frontiers of the Islamic world only began again under Turkish dynasties, the Seljuqs, Qarakhanids and Ghaznavids in the 11th century, when parts of Anatolia, Central Asia and India were conquered. Finally, this chapter considers how imperial space was visualised and represented in this period, examining the evidence of maps in manuscripts of works by Arabic geographers of the 10th–11th centuries.