1.2D: Islamic Cultural Traditions

The World's Three Largest Monotheistic Faiths all began in the Middle-East

Main idea

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all arose in the Middle East. These three religions are all monotheistic and share similar beliefs and religious prophets.

The Middle East (Western Asia) is the birthplace of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All three religions are closely related and referred to as “Abrahamic” religions—meaning they each worship the God of Abraham mentioned in their holy texts. All three religions also believe that Abraham was a prophet who received God’s word.

Judaism developed first along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea in modern Israel and Palestine over 4000 years ago.

The Jewish religion was monotheistic (believing in one God) in a world where many traditional religions were polytheistic.
Because Judaism is not a proselytizing religion, the numbers of Jewish followers have remained relatively small compared to other significant world religions.
Portions of the Jewish holy book, the Torah, are in the Christian Bible and the Muslim Quran.
The Jewish people spent much of their history living under non-Jewish leadership after outsiders conquered their homelands. Jewish people have experienced periods of great prosperity under some non-Jewish governments and periods of great despair under murderous and brutal leaders like Hitler.

Christianity developed second and emerged from the teachings of Jesus (4 BCE to 33 CE). Jesus was born Jewish and sought to reform Jewish practices, not start a new religion. Christianity as a religion based on the teachings of Jesus arose in the centuries after his death. While Judaism recognizes Jesus as a historical figure, they do not recognize him as the son of God or a messiah.

Roman leaders persecuted Christians until Emperor Constantine officially adopted the religion. Ten years later, it became the Roman Empire’s official religion—replacing traditional Roman polytheism.
Christianity remained dominant in Western Europe when the Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476 CE.
Christianity was also the official religion of the Eastern Roman Empire—also known as the Byzantine Empire. This portion of Roman survived until 1453 when Turkish people who followed the Islamic faith conquered what remained of Byzantine territory.
After the rise and expansion of Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries, many Christians in the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain lived under Islamic rule.

Islam developed last and began on the Arabian Peninsula in what is today Saudi Arabia. The Islamic Prophet Muhammad (570 CE – 632 CE) founded the religion after he said he received messages from God. Muslims believe that Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was a prophet who received God’s messages. They do not think that Muhammed was diving (connected to God). Islam rapidly expanded as Muhammad and later Islamic leaders conquered territory.

The Quran is the Muslim holy book. It contains portions of the old testament found in the Jewish Torah and Christian figures such as Jesus.
Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet and performed miracles.
Muslims do not believe that Jesus was divine, just a prophet who received God’s word like Moses and Muhammad.

	Judaism	Christianity	Islam
Comparing Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Belief in one god
Belief in Abrahamic god
Accepts all prophets before Jesus
Jerusalem is a holy city
Jesus is a prophet	X
Jesus is the son of God	X		X
Muhammad is a prophet	X	X
Eating pork restricted		X

Islamic Cultural Elements

Main idea

The Quran and hadiths influenced the formation of Islamic culture.

The Islamic world (Dar al-Islam) developed a rich culture of art, architecture, governance, law, language, and social practices. As Islam expanded into new regions, Islamic culture also spread and mixed with other cultures to create varied versions of Islamic culture and tradition.

The two most influential documents in Islam are the Quran and the Hadith. Together these documents had the most significant influence on the formation of Islamic culture.

The Quran: Muslims believe the Quran is God’s word and that he spoke it directly to Muhammad. It is the holiest text in Islam and was written during Muhammad’s lifetime.

The Hadiths: The Hadiths are a series of traditions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad that cover many topics that the Quran fails to address. Unlike the Quran, the Hadiths are not Muhammad’s words and were written down and recorded centuries after his death.

!AP exam alert!

The Islamic world and its history are one of the main topics in the first four AP world history units. The ability to recognize elements of Islamic culture in the areas where the Islamic religion expanded is a must.

As was common during this period, Islam did not separate religion and the state. Rulers in Islamic territories were Islamic and directly supported the Islamic faith. Most modern Islamic societies still connect the state and the Islamic faith.

Islamic rulers often built vast government bureaucracies, although the size of the government bureaucracy varied across different Islamic civilizations.
It was common in the Islamic world to find government bureaucracies staffed by non-Muslims in areas with large non-Muslim populations.
Early Islamic leaders placed great importance on supporting math, science, and the arts. Various Islamic dynasties were great patrons (supporters) of scholars and artists and devoted state resources to universities.

Islam has its own legal code called Sharia, based on the Quran and the Hadith. There is no universal Sharia law, and its rules and use vary across Islamic civilizations. common elements of Islamic law include:

guidelines for resolution of conflicts between people, groups, and states
classifications of sins and crimes and their punishments
instruction on morality and ethics
legal distinctions between different social groups like Muslims and non-Muslims, men and women, and free people and enslaved people.

Like most places in the world during this time, the Muslim world was patriarchal. However, Muhammad’s first wife had been an educated woman who owned her own business. As a result, women had some legal protections in Sharia. Elite Islamic women were also more educated and involved in business than most non-Islamic women.

Sharia law made legal distinctions between men and women. Women could not make legal accusations on their own as courts viewed women’s testimony as half of a man’s.
Sharia also protected women’s right to inherit property and keep ownership of property they had before marriage.
Women could remarry if widowed, receive a cash settlement if divorced, practice birth control, and sometimes initiate divorce proceedings.

The areas into which Islam expanded contained significant non-Islamic populations. The treatment of these non-Islamic religious groups varied across time and location. While some Islamic conquest resulted in forced conversions, Islamic practices generally forbid forced religious conversions. Verse 2:256 of the Quran states, “Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion.” As a result, complete religious conversion of societies into which Islam expanded often took hundreds of years or never happened.

The Jizya tax: Some Islamic rulers required non-Muslims to pay a special tax known as Jizya. The Jizya tax exempted non-Muslims from military service and paid for their military protection.

Since the days of Muhammad, Islam has valued learning and knowledge. The Quran states, “Allah grants me knowledge of the ultimate nature of things.” Islamic leaders prioritized education, knowledge, and discourse.

Centers of Islamic learning: Across the Islamic world, Islamic rulers constructed and financially supported some of the most important centers of learning during this era in history. These libraries attracted scholars from across the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds.

Various rulers of the Abbasid Empire established one of history’s great libraries and centers of learning in Baghdad—the House of Wisdom.
This learning center hosted scholars who came to study the books and manuscripts in the library and discuss and debate with other scholars from around the world.
Scholars would often stay for years before traveling home and spreading the knowledge they had acquired.

During the middle ages, the Islamic world contained some of the world’s most advanced architecture.

Domed architecture: One of Islam’s most significant architectural accomplishments was constructing free-standing domed buildings, usually mosques or mausoleums. With the support of wealthy Islamic rulers and merchants, Islamic architects built magnificent Islamic domes from Africa to Southeast Asia.

Courtyards in Islamic architecture: Islam is famous for its four-walled courtyards, often used as gardens or community spaces. Many of the world’s most magnificent courtyards exist within Islamic mosques and mausoleums.

Floral and geometric art: Islam also developed rich artistic traditions. One common element of Islamic art is the absence of human and animal forms in religious art. Some Islamic scholars argued that including these forms in art was disrespectful to God because it was God’s job to breathe life into the world, not artists. As a result, Islamic craftspeople decorated mosques and mausoleums with elaborate floral and geometric patterns, vibrant colored paints, and precious gemstones.

Islamic Culture Shapes Spain, Africa, and Asia

Main idea

As the Islamic religion spread across Afro-Eurasia, so did Islamic culture.

The expansion of the Islamic religion also spread Islamic governance, law, language, art, and architecture.

Islam conquered Catholic Spain in the early 8th century. By 1000 CE, around 75% of Spain had converted to Islam.

The most important legacy of Islamic rule in Spain was the transfer of knowledge into western Europe. The philosophical, mathematical, and scientific understanding that European scholars gained from studying in Muslim Spain helped lead to the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Islamic music, poetry, the veiling of women, Islamic artistic styles, and abstinence from pork eating became a part of Spanish society. Jews and Christians also adopted many of these cultural practices.
Islamic rulers constructed mosques and four-walled Islamic courtyards throughout Spain. After the reconquest of Spain by Christian armies, mosques were converted to Christian churches.

The Christians retake Spain: By the middle of the 13th century, all that remained of Islamic control on the peninsula was Granada’s small caliphate on Spain’s southern coast. In 1492 Granada too fell to the Spanish armies of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain. In 1609 King Phillip III expelled all remaining Muslims and the descendants of former Muslims who had converted to Catholicism.

Early Islamic armies conquered North Africa along the Mediterranean Coast. West and East Africa became Islamic through the peaceful transfer of Islamic culture through trade and interactions with Muslim merchants. Conversion to Islam brought social promotion. For African merchants, conversion better connected them to the wealthy Islamic merchant communities of North Africa and the Middle East. For monarchs and the ruling class, connection to Islam gave their rule the backing of a powerful global religion. It also provided rulers access to an educated class of scholars who could help them administer their government and territories.

Islamic culture in Africa: Initially, Islam remained confined to urban areas amongst the ruling classes and high-status individuals.

Many rulers converted to Islam and created Islamic states.
Islamic rulers and universities used the Arabic language.
West Africa had developed several cities that were centers of Islamic learning. Cities such as Timbuktu hosted schools, Islamic universities, and libraries to study the Quran. Students from across West Africa came to study in these Islamic universities.
Rulers and wealthy merchants supported the construction of mosques.
Early Muslim rulers did not force Islam practices on most of their populations. Ordinary people retained their native languages and did not speak Arabic.
In the rural areas where most of the population lived, traditional African religious practices remained the most common form of worship until the 19th century.

While Muslim merchants had lived and traded for many years in South Asia, Muslim rule came to the subcontinent through conquest in the 13^th century.

While significant minorities of people converted to Islam, Islamic rulers never managed to convert most of the South Asian population.
India’s Islamic dynasties constructed some of the finest examples of Islamic domes and courtyards anywhere in the world. The most famous is the Taj Mahal.
A new language called Urdu developed. This language contains many words from traditional Indian languages but also many Persian and Arabic words. It also uses a Persian-Arabic writing script. Today, Urdu is Pakistan’s official language and has over 50 million speakers in India.

Turkish Islamic armies conquered Anatolia—the modern country of Turkey—and parts of Eastern Europe from the Christian Byzantine Empire. Islamic conquest transformed Anatolian society. Conversion of Anatolia was easier than in places like South Asia because its population was much smaller, and more Muslims moved into the area during the conquest.

By 1500, 90% of Anatolian society had converted to Islam.
Rulers built new Islamic architecture and converted Christian churches into Islamic mosques.

Islam first arrived in the island region of Southeast Asia with Islamic merchants who set up diaspora communities from which they lived and traded. As these merchant communities’ wealth grew, their influence amongst the ruling classes increased. Over time, rulers converted from Hinduism and Buddhism to Islam.

Newly converted rulers sponsored the building of mosques.
The upper classes increasingly adopted the Arabic language and wrote religious and government documents in the Arabic script.
Scholars created the Jawi script for writing the Malay language in Arabic as early as the 15th century.
Non-elites continued to practice their earlier religions. Only over centuries did Islam replace earlier belief systems and become dominant.

1.2D: Islamic Cultural Traditions

Learning Objective 1D

Historical Development 1

Historical Development 2

Historical Development 3

Contents

The World's Three Largest Monotheistic Faiths all began in the Middle-East

Islamic Cultural Elements

Islamic Culture Shapes Spain, Africa, and Asia