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Impact of Islam in the modern world
2. Achievements of Islamic civilization
Achievements of Islamic civilization
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Islam is one of the largest religions existing today, with a total of about 1.6 billion1 followers, according to Pew Research Center. The sheer immensity of people following this religion is staggering, but the influence that Islam has had on world history is even more important. Without Muslim advances in areas such as math, science, and medicine, the western world wouldn’t have existed. After the Roman empire fell, Roman knowledge was preserved in Muslim and Byzantine libraries. Muslims had interest in learning because mathematicians and astronomers were required to know when to recite certain prayers and which direction Mecca was in. Also, Islamic rulers wanted to live longer and needed physicians to treat their illnesses2. These needs led to scholars and physicians adding onto the knowledge they had preserved from the Roman Empire. These additions helped to advance learning and saved countless lives all around the world. Islamic Civilization flourished from about the mid 8th century to 1258, when the Mongols captured Baghdad3. The extreme wealth and prosperity of Islamic civilization during this time was apparent in the Muslim city of Cordova. The city had “[...] 27 libraries, numberless bookstores, 800 public schools… and a total population of 300,000,4” according to Phililp Hitti in his book, Capital Cities of Arab Islam. Hitti goes on to say that “[c]ordova’s people [...] walked on paved streets… all this at a time when hardly a town in Europe [...] counted more than a few thousand inhabitants.4” These excerpts show how powerful the Islamic culture was while Europe was in a state of disunity and chaos. Islamic poets created great works, such as the Rabi'ah al-Adawiyya, one of the greatest pieces of Islamic literature... ... middle of paper ... ...ch, Roger B., Linda Black, Larry S. Krieger, Phillip C. Naylor, and Dahia Ibo Shabaka. World History: Patterns of Interaction. Evanston, Illinois: McDougal Littell, 1999. [Document 1] 3. Abbas, Tahir. Islamic Radicalism and Multicultural Politics. New York: Routledge, 2011. [Outside Source] 4. Hitti, Philip K.. Capital cities of Arab Islam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972. [Document 2] 5. Document 8 [I didn’t know how to cite this.] Excerpt from the Qur’an around 6. Clute, John , and John Grant. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, 2 ed., s.v. "Arabian fantasy." New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. 7. Holdich, Sir Thomas. The Gates of India. London: The MacMillan Company, 1910. [Document 9] 8. Kramers, J.H.. The Legacy of Islam. *: In research of various sources, I have seen estimates anywhere from 2020 to 2050. I chose the year most sources claimed.
Muslim cities, both capitols and non-capitols, have a very important role in the Post-Classical Muslim society which include the spread of the Islamic faith throughout the eastern world, and Trade amongst Muslim and Non-Muslim cities. This allows them to flourish and be so much more technically advanced then other places at the time.
...ir religion upon the people (325). Thus, these peoples found refuge in Muslims from Byzantine oppression (325). Muslim conquerors tolerated other religions and offered protection for many peoples (326). Christian Europe developed a lasting fear and suspicion of the Muslims as they were assaulted and challenged by them at all fronts (326) In both the east and west the Muslim invasion was confronted and halted though contact between Muslims and Christians continued (326). Muslims regarded Byzantium “as a model to learn from and improve upon” (326). Despite the differences between the Christian west and the Muslim world, there was creative interchange between the two (326). Sine the Arabs were more advanced, the West benefited from this interchange most (326).
Azim A. Nanji, ed., The Muslim almanac : a reference work on the history, faith, culture, and peoples of Islam: Muslim Women Writers,(Detroit, MI : Gale Research, 1996), 315
Howe, Helen, and Robert T. Howe. A World History: Ancient and Medieval Worlds. Volume 1. White Plains, NY: Longman, 1992. 533.
...alebi, M., Yusoff, K., and Nor, M.R.M,. (2012). The Impact of Islamic Civilization and Culture
The Arab and Islamic Empire made some of the greatest contributions to the world during its reign. During a time when Europe was in the midst of the Middle Ages was cut off from the rest of the world, the Arab Empire flourished with trade and intermingling. As Christian Europeans struggled to reclaim Jerusalem for themselves with the Crusades, the Muslims’ vast territory not only housed Jerusalem, but Mecca, and land as far as Cordova, Spain. Where European Medieval doctors were untrained and performed numerous amputations, and leeching, Islamic doctors studied and practiced advanced medical treatments. The Muslims made great contributions to education, science, and trade alike. The Muslims were able to make contributions that impacted the
Before the rise of Islam Arabia was a desert wasteland who’s once great trading cities have fallen on hard times. Arabia is the last of inhabited lands towards the south, and it is the only country, which produces frankincense, myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, and laudanum. (1) The population was divided into rival tribes and clans that worshiped local gods. In the uninhabitable desert zones a wide variety of Bedouin cultures had developed over the centuries based on camel and goat herding. Towns and agriculture flourished on a limited scale. Over the peninsula the camel nomads, organized in clans were dominant. Although urban Islam had been pressured by writers of the Muslim civilization, the Bedouin world, in which the religion came, shaped the career of its prophet, his teachings, and the spread of new beliefs. Mecca and Medina were large extensions of the tribal culture of the camel nomads. Their populations were linked to kingship by Bedouin peoples. Bedouin herders occupied most of the habitable portions of Arabia. Farmers and town dwellers carved out small communities in the western and southern parts of the peninsula. Foreign invasion in the inroads of Bedouins people had all but destroyed the civilization before the birth of Muhammad. Mecca, located in the mountainous regions along ...
The Muslim people made many exceptional achievements and great contributions that spread to and affected the entire world, particularly Europe. Several factors encouraged them to pursue experimentations and developments in different fields. First and foremost, the faithful Islamic people had to know the direction of Mecca as well as the time of day in order to know when and in which direction to pray. This meant they had to rely on mathematicians and astronomers to accurately calculate these. The rulers of the Muslim Empire wanted trained physicians treating them when they became ill. This encouraged much research and study in the medical field. They had a deep curiosity about the world around them and everything in it. This strong curiosity can be traced all the way back to Mohammed himself, who was very curious about the world and was always searching for a real truth.
Rushdie, Salman. Haroun and the sea of stories. New York: Granta Books in association with Viking, 1990. Print.
After the fall of the Roman Empire many classical texts had been thought to be lost forever to the Europeans. However, in the Middle East, the study of history was considered fascinating for Muslims and as a result they recorded their own history and the history of others (Bassiouni). As a result, many of the texts believed to have lost had been translated from Greek to Syriac during the sixth and seventh centuries by monks that lived in Palestine. These texts were translated and developed in centers of learning, such as in Baghdad where there existed a “House of Wisdom” in which thousands of texts were stored. All these texts were translated into European languages during the Middle Ages and managed to influence all of Europe (Shah). Through their translations, Muslims allowed the wisdom of great Greek writers like Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid to be regained and rediscovered by future philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists.
Through 600 to 1000 CE the Islamic world had expanded beyond its original territories through war, trade and cultural diffusion. As it interacted and expanded across Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Byzantine Empire the Islamic world spread the influence of its culture and religion, turning Islam into a great world religion.
During the tenth century, Islam was the largest religion which covered more than half of the known world. According to History-world.org, a nonprofit nonpartisan website that provides well-sourced history research, “The Islamic state expanded very rapidly after the death of Muhammad through remarkable successes both at converting unbelievers to Islam” (History-world.org). Islam was beginning to grow so rapidly and began to spread all across Europe. For example, Asghar Ali wrote an article called “Causes and Spread of Islam” where he points out that, “Islam was growing at rapid rates that before it completed 100 years of its origin
Islam changed the face of the Middle East by applying methods of unity through religion, advancement of education, and by giving women a place in their society. These changes all lent a hand in making the Middle East what it has become today, a culture full of people who are devoted to becoming better and is full of diversity with people from all walks of life who have all come to serve the same purpose though Islam.
The Islamic empire put a lot of focus on education. Muslims wanted to advance science to better the lives of their kingdom. They needed mathematicians and astronomers to figure out when to pray and what direction Mecca was in. They also wanted to revive texts from other cultures and learn from them after translating the into Arabic. The Islamic capital of Cordova, with a population
The Holy Quran (Arabic Text with the English Translation by the late Sir Muhammad Zafrullah Khan: President of the 17th Session of U.N. General Assembly and later Judge and President of the International Court of Justice at the Hague, London; Curzon Press