The Roman Empire: The Islamic Golden Age

At a time when the West was still affected by the fall of the Roman Empire and it was plunged into cultural darkness, illiteracy, and overall ignorance, the Eastern part of the world, however, was flourishing. The Islamic Golden Age is the name given to the era in which Islam, the religion founded by the Prophet of Allah, Muhammad, in the seventh century, rapidly spread through the Mediterranean World and into Asia. First popular amongst Arab soldiers, the religion soon became attractive for other non-Arabs for its values, the message it publicized, and because of the social, financial, and political benefits the Muslims enjoyed in the Empire. The Islamic Golden Age of the eighth and ninth centuries is also characterized by much advancement

Based in Damascus, Syria, the Umayyads’ primary goal was to reaffirm the position of Islam amongst the caliphate’s newly acquired regions and to expand the faith of Islam to more territories by conquering regions like North Africa and Hispania in 711 (class notes). The Umayyads had also set their sight on parts of the remnants of the fallen Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire. Although Damascus was in constant war with Byzantium, the Umayyads borrowed many things from their biggest rival, notably in their architectural style. A proof of that borrowing is the Dome of the Rock, which was built in Jerusalem at the beginning of the Umayyad reign and is today the oldest surviving Islamic mosque (Petersen 296). Their administration was also taken care of by past Byzantine officials who were mostly Christians, which is shocking, considering that the Umayyads favoured Arabs and Arab culture above all else in the caliphate, which later becomes one of the reasons the peoples of the caliphate will revolt against the Umayyads (Goucher and Walton 143). Also, in contrast to the principle established after the Prophet’s death, which stipulated that the ruling caliphs must be descendents of Muhammad himself, the Umayyads overlooked that rule and turned the caliphate into a dynastic institution instead. For these reasons and many others, in 747, a new family, the