Lesson 13: The Arab Empire

Muhammad founded Islam

At the end of the 6th and beginning of the 7th centuries, the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula were mostly nomadic, and tribes fought and killed each other for water and pasture. Prior to the birth of Islam, the Arabian Peninsula was characterized by the polytheistic worship of clans and tribes, and places like Mecca believed in Allah but did not exclude other deities. Muhammad elaborated on the religious idea of Allah alone and founded Islam.

Muhammad first preached in the city of Mecca, proclaiming that Allah is the one true God and that those who believe in Allah will ascend to heaven after death or fall into hell. Due to opposition from traditional forces, he led a number of followers to move to Medina in 622 and established a religious community based on a common faith, the Muslim commune. The members of the commune were treated as brothers and sisters and were forbidden to kill each other, and they were subject to the decisions of Muhammad, the Messenger of God, in matters both inside and outside the commune. In 630, Muhammad led the Muslims to occupy Mecca. Thereafter, various tribes in the peninsula sent envoys to Medina to recognize Muhammad's dominance and the Arabian Peninsula was basically unified.

The Arabian Empire

After the death of Muhammad, his successors continued to expand. The strong appeal of Islam led to unprecedented unity and high morale among the Arabs, who poured out of the Peninsula like a tidal wave. The Muslim army marched north into Syria, destroyed Persia in the east, then conquered Afghanistan and northwestern India, and reached the borders of China's Tang Dynasty; in 751 they defeated the army of the Tang general Gao Xianzhi and took control of most of Central Asia. On the western front, they conquered Egypt and swept through North Africa; on the battlefield of southwestern Europe, the Arabs drove into Spain, then crossed the Pyrenees and were stopped by the armies of the Frankish kingdom. By the middle of the 8th century, the Arab Empire was formed. It spanned three continents, Asia, Europe and Africa, and was the largest empire in the world at the time. The expansion of the empire was accompanied by the widespread spread of Islam beyond the Arabian Peninsula.

Arab culture

During the prosperous period of the Arabian Empire, the caliph valued knowledge and believed that "the most beautiful adornment of man is knowledge". 830 years later, the caliph established the "Palace of Wisdom" in Baghdad, which was a combination of an academy of sciences, a library, and a translation library. In order to recruit translators, he paid them in gold, the weight of which was equal to the weight of the translated works. As a result, a large number of Greek, Persian, and Indian texts were translated into Arabic. On the basis of absorbing and digesting foreign cultures, Arab scholars created a glorious Arab culture.

Arabic numerals are the unique contribution of the Arabs to the world culture. The Arabs transformed the ancient Indian counting method from 0 to 9, forming the "Arabic numerals" we now commonly use. The complete algebra was created by the Arabs. There is a lot of Arab contribution to what we often call "Western medicine". The two books written by the Arabs, "Medical Integration" and "Medical Canon", have long been regarded by the European medical community as classics in the field of medicine. The popular "Night Tales from Heaven" is a treasure of Arabic literature, with its wonderful ideas, twists and turns, and beautiful language.

The Arabs have played a role in bridging the East and the West and have made remarkable contributions to the development of world culture. Chinese inventions such as papermaking, compass, gunpowder and Indian cotton and sugar were introduced to Europe by the Arabs.

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