The Achievements, Contributions, and Impacts of Islamic Society on the Western World

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.