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Introduction
xxxi J
in 630. By the time of his death in 632, many of
the Arabian tribes had established alliances with
him and converted to Islam, setting the stage of
the subsequent conquest of Syria, Iran, Egypt, and
North Africa.
The rapid defeat of Byzantine and Persian
armies, weakened by years of internal dissension
and warfare, brought the Arab armies unimagined
new wealth and power. Led by the caliphs, suc-
cessors to the prophet Muhammad, the fledgling
Islamic state at first kept its capital in Medina,
but it later shifted northward to Damascus, Syria,
which remained the seat of the Umayyad Caliph-
ate from 661 to 750. Conquest of territories
beyond the Arabian Peninsula did not immedi-
ately result in mass conversions to Islam, how-
ever. Rather, the evidence indicates that Islam
remained a minority religion in these regions for
several centuries after the initial waves of con-
quest. Local populations who accepted Muslim
rule were given the choice of either converting
or paying special taxes in exchange for accepting
the status of “protected” non-Muslim subjects
known as ahl al-dhimma, or simply dhimmis. The
Arab Muslim minority formed an aristocracy that
lived in its own cantonments near the communal
mosque and the ruler’s palace. The offspring of
Arab Muslim fathers and non-Arab, non-Mus-
lim mothers were raised as Muslims but held a
second-class status among their coreligionists.
There were also non-Arab converts called the
mawali (clients), many of whom had been cap-
tured as prisoners of war during the conquests,
then granted their freedom upon conversion. The
majority of Muslim subjects, however, remained
Christians, Jews, and Zororastrians. As dhimmis,
they were secure in their property, communal life,
and worship as long as they paid taxes, remained
loyal to Muslim authorities, and did not either
try to proselytize to the Muslims or attack their
religion.
Weakened by dynastic conflicts, tribal rival-
ries, and local uprisings, the Umayyad Caliph-
ate was exterminated in 750 by a coalition of
forces, including Shiis and the mawali, from
Iraq and eastern Iran. A surviving member of
the Umayyads was able to escape to Spain, how-
ever, where he established the western branch
of the Umayyads in Cordoba, inaugurating an
era of extraordinary cultural florescence that
was due in large part to the fruitful interactions
of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. The defeat
of the Umayyads in Syria brought the Abbasids
to power. They were a party claiming descent
from al-Abbas, Muhammad’s paternal uncle.
The Abbasid Caliphate, which lasted until it was
brought down by the Mongol invasion in the
13th century, moved the capital from Damascus
to Baghdad, a new garrison city that they had
founded on the banks of the Tigris River. It soon
became the leading center of commerce, the arts,
and Islamic learning of its time. The Arab rul-
ing elite realized that they had to share power
with Muslims who came from non-Arab origins,
as more of their subjects converted to Islam,
intermarried with them, obtained positions in
government, and became masters of the Arabic
language—the lingua franca of the empire—and
Islamic learning. It was during the Abbasid era
that Sunni and Shii doctrines and institutions
were systematized, Greek and Persian texts were
translated and discussed, and sciences such as
astronomy, geography mathematics, optics, and
medicine flourished.
Each of these developments contributed to
the spread of Islam beyond the Middle East to
Africa, the Indian Ocean basin, Central Asia,
and Southeast Asia during the ensuing seven or
eight centuries. Transregional trade south of the
Sahara, along the Silk Roads to Asia, and across
the Indian Ocean as far as Java resulted in the
establishment of Muslim trading communities
linked to local cultures through intermarriage as
well as commerce.
India is an excellent example of the differ-
ent ways by which Islam became established in
a new land. Peaceful Muslim trading colonies
linked to Arabia and Iraq developed along the
K xxxii
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