How Did Islam Contribute To The Rise Of Civilization

The Middle East, so called “the cradle of civilizations” witnessed the rise of the powerful civilizations and was the birthplace of the World’s most widespread religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Islam was not only about faith as some other religions; it also had political and military roots, which in turn changed the some aspects of the Middle East. In 622, the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca left the town and went to Medina, where Islam had more followers. This event was called emigration, in Arabic- hijra. It is be considered as the beginning of the Islamic Period. From that time on, the Prophet Muhammad was not only an ideological leader, but also a political leader whose followers would lately conquer

The sources before Islam were not that much reliable, while Islamic sources considered to be more accurate. Ansary says that “Muslims began to collect, memorize, recite, and preserve their history as soon as it happened” . The Muslim Arabs, guided by the Prophet Muhammad, created a huge Muslim empire only in 20 years. After the collapse of Sasanian dynasty by Arabs, many new lands came under the control of the new empire including Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia and all of the Arabian Peninsula. Even Lockman makes strong and highly arguable claims in order to show The New Empire’s power saying that “Palestine, the “holy land” in which Christianity had been born, had been lost…”. However, we cannot say that it is completely true, as there are number of sources shows the reverse

The Arabs removed the barriers between the Middle East part of Byzantine and Sasanian world. Despite the fact that these two were enemies before, under the control of the New Empire, they came to be “trade friends”. We can say that the establishment of the New Empire had more positive effect on economy than negative. For example, agricultural condition of Iraq was not satisfying in the 7th century. However, when the Arabs conquered Iran, they paid much attention to the improvement of agriculture here and stimulated the economical conditions of these lands. As in other cases, there were also exceptions. Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt did not flourish as soon as they were captured. It took quite a lot of time compared to other provinces. There were problems with trade and it slowed down the prosperity of these lands. Moreover, nomadic attacks in the end of the 7th century were one of the factors slowing down the