Compensation was paid in money rather than blood and only the culprit was executed. In 628, the Makkah tribe of Quraish and the Muslim community in Medina signed a truce called the Treaty of Hudaybiyya beginning a ten-year period of peace. War returned when the Quraish and their allies, the tribe of 'Bakr', attacked the tribe of 'Khuza'ah', who were Muslim allies. In 630, Muslims conquered Mecca. Muhammad died in June 632. The Battle of Yamama was fought in December of the same year, between the forces of the first caliph Abu Bakr and Musailima.After Muhammad died, a series of Caliphs governed the Islamic State: Abu Bakr, Umar ibn al-Khattab (Umar І), UthmanibnAffan, and Ali ibnAbiTalib. These leaders are known as the Rashidun or rightly guided Caliphs in Sunni Islam. They oversaw the initial phase of the Muslim conquests, advancing through Persia, Egypt, the Middle East and North Africa [7].

2.Geography of Arabia

Arabia is a peninsula in the southwestern part of Asia, bounded on the east by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman: on the south bv the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, on the west by the Red Sea; to the north lies Palestine and a wide desert extending almost to the Euphrates; while in the northwest it is connected with Africa by the peninsula and isthmus of Suez. It contains over a million square miles, and is consequently about one‑third as large as the United States. It has never been thickly populated, for probably almost all of the country is a desert waste and very few parts are suited to pasturage or agriculture. Most of it is apparently an elevated plateau, covered with shifting sand. All but one of the rivers dry up during several months of the year[3]. Mountain‑chains or hills, whose prevailing direction is parallel to the coast, shut out the sea‑breezes and cut off the rain‑fall from the interior. There are no forests, and comparatively little vegetation. The horses, for which Arabia has long been noted, have to find their food in the extensive tracts of thin desert grrass. Some of these statements have to be made tentatively, for Arabia has been only partially explored and the interior is little known.The occupations of the Arabs were influenced bv these geographical conditions. In the seventh century, the inhabitants could be divided into two general classes: the Bedouins, who lived in tents in the desert, and the dwellers in houses, who were to be found only near the coast in the southern and southwestern parts. The Bedouins were a pastoral people, and made their living chietSv from their flocks and herds. The house‑dwellers practised sortie agriculture and were traders, but remained in close touch with the nomadic life of the desert. There was no central government; the organization was by tribes. In times of peace the family was the unit; only in case of war did the head of the tribe have any real authority outside his immediate family. Polygamy was the rule for those who could afford the expense. Private vengeance for injuries was the custom, but a feud might be stopped by a payment similar to the wergeld. The Arabs were noted for their vivid imagination and great love for poetry[5]. .

3. The great unifying agent in Islamic civilization.

On the outer edge of the Latin world, in Spain, Sicily, and North Africa, and surrounding Byzantium in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, was the world of Islam. For centuries, Islam was both a threat and the source of new ideas to the Greek East and Latin West. Between the 7th and 12th centuries, Islam became the center of a brilliant civilization and of a great scientific, philosophic, and artistic culture. Although its language was neither Greek nor Latin, Islam absorbed a great deal of Greek culture which it managed to preserve for the Latin West. In general, it can be said that Islam absorbed and added its culture to the heritage of Greece, Rome, Judaism, Christianity, and the Near East[2].

In the beginning the Muslims were both open and cautious. They borrowed and integrated elements of other cultures into their own. The new religion of Islam, which we will get to in a moment, adopted elements of Christian, Jewish, and pagan religious beliefs and practices. The Muslims tolerated religious minorities within territories they had conquered so long as these minorities recognized Islamic political rule, paid taxes, and did not proselytize among Muslims. Still, the Muslims were careful to protect the purity of their religion, language, and law from any foreign influence. With the passage of time, and with increased conflict with both eastern and western Christians, this protective instinct grew stronger. In the end, Islamic culture did not penetrate the west in the same way that Germanic culture did, but would remain strange as well as threatening to the West.The home of Islam is the Arabian Peninsula. The Peninsula is predominantly desert and the tribes who inhabited this area were nomadic, that is, they traveled from place to place. Politically, Islam was not a unified territory nor was there any centralized government.

The great unifying agent in Islamic civilization was clearly that of Muhammad (c.570-632). He was born at Mecca and raised by family of modest means. His father had died in the year of his birth and his mother died when he was 6 years old. At the time of Muhammad's birth, Mecca was one of the most prosperous caravan cities[4]. However, Mecca was still tied to the traditional social and religious life of the Arabian world. In other words, it was governed by the tribal societies of the desert. Membership in the tribe was determined by blood descent. In such an order, the interests of the individual were always subordinate to those of the group or tribe. Each tribe worshipped its own gods in the form of objects from nature (moon, sky, dog, cat, ram) but all Arabs worshipped one object in common: the Kaaba, a large black stone enshrined at Mecca. It was the Kaaba that made Mecca significant as a place of worship and pilgrimage. As a youth, Muhammad worked as a merchant's assistant, traveling the major trade routes of the Peninsula. When he was 25, he married the widow of a wealthy merchant and became a man of means. He also became a kind of social activist, critical of Meccan materialism, paganism, and the unjust treatment of the poor and needy. Muhammad worked hard at his career but like so many saviors and prophets, Muhammad was plagued by doubts. His doubt increased to such an extent that he left Meccan society and lived a life of isolation in the desert. In 610, and at the age of 40, he received his first revelation and began to preach. He believed his revelations came directly from God, a God who spoke to him through the angel Gabriel, who recited God's word to him at irregular intervals. These revelations grew into the Qur'an which his followers compiled between 650 and 651. The basic message Muhammad received was a summons to all Arabs to submit to God's will. Islam means "submission to the will of God.

The basic beliefs of Muhammad's religion were (1) that God is good and omnipotent, (2) that God will judge all men on the last day and assign them their place in either Heaven or Hell, (3) that men should thank God for making the world as it is, (4) that God expects men to be generous with their wealth, and (5) that Muhammad was a prophet sent by God to teach men and warn them of the last judgment. For Muhammad, there were also five obligations which were essential to his faith: (1) the profession of faith – there is no God but Allah and Muhammad was the last prophet, (2) prayers had to be uttered five times daily, (3) the giving of alms, or charity, (4) fasting, and (5) the pilgrimage to Mecca. These laws are recorded in the Qur'an, a book which contains all of the revelations of Muhammad. Despite the faith of his flock, Muhammad met with disappointment as he preached his religion at Mecca. Jews and Christians failed to convert. His faith was totally rejected by the authorities at Mecca. It should be obvious that the merchants at Mecca would have objected to Muhammad's belief–actually a profession of faith – that men should be generous with their wealth. The authorities tried to quiet Muhammad and so he left for the northern city of Medina in the year 622. The journey to Medina – the hegira (the breaking of former ties) – became the true foundation of the Islamic faith. The hegira also marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. At Medina, Muhammad created an Islamic community. Besides the profession of faith, Muhammad also specified that at his community there would be strict rules governing diet wine, gambling and usury were prohibited; he set up his own legal system; and prohibited infanticide. After settling in Medina, his followers began to attack the caravans on their way to and from Mecca. By 624 his army was powerful enough to conquer Mecca and make it the center of the new re ligion. Muhammad died in 632 and his death presented his followers with a series of profound problems. He never claimed to be of divine origin yet his loyal followers saw no reason to separate religious and political authority. Submitting to the will of Allah was no different than submitting to the will of Muhammad. Unfortunately, Muhammad never named a successor. Who would lead the faithful? Soon after his death, some of his followers selected Abu Bakr, a wealthy merchant and Muhammad's father-in-law as caliph, or temporal leader[6]..

In the early 7th century, Muhammad and successive caliphs, took up the Arabic custom of making raids against their enemies. The Qur'an called these raids the jihad (striving in the way of the Lord). The jihad was not carried out as a means to convert others for the simple reason that acts of conversion to the Islamic faith were voluntary. The Byzantines and Persians were the first to feel the pressure of Arab raids. At Yarmuk in 636, the Muslims defeated the Byzantine army. Syria fell in 640. A decade later, the Muslims had conquered the entire Persian empire. Egypt, North Africa and Spain (with its center at Córdoba) were all conquered and under Muslim rule by the 720s. In 732, a Muslim army was defeated at the Battle of Tours, and Muslim expansion in Europe came to an abrupt halt.One of the main problems confronting the Islamic world was the choice of caliph. When Muhammad's son-in-law was assassinated, Muawiyah, a general, became caliph. Muawiyah made the caliphate hereditary in his own family, thus creating the Umayyad dynasty. One of the first things Muawiyah did was to move the capital of the Muslim world from Medina to Damascus in Syria. However, internal dissension over the caliphate created a split in Islam between the Shiites, or those who accepted only the descendants of Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law, as the true rulers, and the Sunnites, who claimed the descendants of the Umayyads were the true rulers. This split exists to this day.In the 8th and 9th centuries, under the Abbasid caliphs, Islamic civilization entered a golden age. Arabic, Byzantine, Persian and Indian cultural traditions were integrated. And while in Europe, learning seemed to be at its lowest point, the Muslims created what I suppose could be called a high civilization. Thanks to Muslim scholars, ancient Greek learning, acquired from their contact with Byzantine scholars, was kept alive and was eventually transferred to the West in the 12th century and after (see Lecture 26). But not only did Muslim scholars preserve the heritage of Greek science and philosophy, they added to it by writing commentaries and glosses, thus adding to what eventually became the western intellectual tradition. Throughout the Qur'an one can find a strong emphasis on the value of knowledge in the Islamic faith. The Qur'an encourages Muslims to learn and acquire knowledge, stemming from, but not limited to, the Muslim emphasis on knowing the unity of God. Because Muslims believe that Allah is all-knowing, they also believe that the human world's quest for knowledge leads to further knowing of Allah[1]. .

4. Early Conquests.

The yoke placed upon the believers was not a light one and the religion needed a strong leader if it was to be generally accepted. Consequently when the prophet died there was a.t first consternation among his sincere followers; and many Arabs, especially Bedouins, seized the opportunity to revolt, as they resented so keenly the restrictions and taxation imposed upon them by the new religion. Abu‑Bekr, who was chosen as caliph, or successor, had been one of the earliest converts and most sincere believers. At the prophet's death he had said: Ye people! he that hath worshiped Mohammed, let him know that Mohammed is dead; but he that hath worshiped Allah, that the Lord liveth and doth not die. By his wisdom and boldness he managed to stem the crisis and to reduce all Arabia to obedience again. Then began Early the wonderful conquests. The Arabs, united into a nation for the first time, under the inspiration of the new religion, destroyed the empire of the Sassanids and robbed the Roman Empire of many of its wealthiest provinces; between 634 and 649 Syria, Palestine, Armenia, Cyprus, Crete, Rhodes, and Egypt were subdued and wrested from the Roman Empire. This was due partly to the weakness of the Empire, which attempted no effective resistance partly to the religious differences and political disaffections among the inhabitants; and partly to the reckless daring and fatalism of the Moslem leaders[3]. Mohammed had tattght, Fear the heat of combats ? Hell is hotter ! Paradise is before you. The Arabs among the population of Syria had welcomed their brethren and embraced the religion, and, in general, the inhabitants of the conquered lands found the Arab yoke lighter than the Roman, and seldom attempted revolt. Persia had been conquered with almost equal ease, between the years 632 and 642. It had been weakened by its unsuccessful wars against the Roman Empire, and many of the inhabitants were disaffected on account of the absolutism and incompetence of the rulers. Islam was now dominant from the eastern boundary of Persia to Tripoli in Africa. The Arabs were pushing onward in every direction when their advance was interrupted by civil war at home.

5. Civil War

During these years the caliphs had been chosen from the old companions of MGhammed Abu‑Bekr, after ruling two years, had been succeeded by Omar, caliph when the latter died, Othman had been elected. Although he had been a believer from the first, he did not have the intense feeling of hostility to the people of Mecca that was held by most of the old believers. He was accused of favoring his kinsmen the Ommiads, who were among the leading men of Mecca and had formerly been opposed to the prophet. This supposed predilection for the Ommiads aroused antagonism and finally led to the assassination of Othman in 656. These internal dissensions, which had checked the advance of the Mussulmans, were greatly increased by the election of Ali, the son‑in‑law and adopted son of Mohammed, to succeed Othman. Ali did nothing to punish the murderers of the latter and was suspected of having been an accomplice. Civil war broke out at once and the rebellion was led by Aisheh, the widow of the prophet. The fighting lasted one hundred and ten days and there are said to have been ninety battles. It was called the war of the camel, because Aisheh rode on a camel in directing the revolt. She was finally captured and the war ended. But the Ommiads then began a new war. After some fighting the xvhole matter was referred to arbitration and decided adversely to Ali[5]. One of the Ommiads was proclaimed caliph and took Damascus as his capital, but Ali refused to submit and held Persia and Mesopotamia. He was assassinated in 66I by a member of a new sect, the Kharijites, who wished to have no caliph, but a democratic government..

6. Ommiads at Damascus.

Under the Ommiads at Damascus the rule was much more centralized and the office of caliph became hereditary The rulers were not religious and were interested in Islam only as a political factor. The old believers in Medina and Mecca were much scandalized and attempted to become independent, but both cities were captured by the Ommiad caliph. Most of the inhabitants of Medina were put to the sword, the Kaaba at Mecca was burned, and the rebellion was put down so thoroughly that all Arabia recognized the authority of the ruler of Damascus. The large income which flowed in from the Mohammedan conquests caused a change in the standard of living luxuries became common and much of the former democratic simplicity was lost; but as yet Islam retained its vigor as a conquering religion and the population soon increased sufficiently to make further advance possible.

7.Conquest of Africa.

The second great period of Mohammedan conquest began in the last decade of the seventh century and continued for about fifty years. The caliph first directed his efforts to Africa, where Carthage was taken and destroyed in 697, and by 708 almost the whole of the northwest as far as the ocean was subdued by the Arabs. But this was a conquest from the Berbers rather than from the Roman Empire. After the defeat of the Vandals the heavy taxation under the Empire and the persecutions of the Jews and heretical Christians had caused many of the inhabitants to leave Africa [2]. The imperial government was too weak to keep the old inhabitants, the Berbers, in obedience, and the former provinces became more or less independent states, acknowledging sometimes a theoretical subordination to the Empire, but having lost much of the Roman civilization. Christianity had been superseded to a great extent by a mixture of nature‑worship and fetishworship. As a result, although separate Berber states made an obstinate resistance, the Arabs were able to subdue one portion after another, and many Berbers eventually became Mohammedans.

8. Conquest of Spain.

From Africa the Mohammedans passed over into Spain. There the Visigothic kingdom was weak and rent with dissensions some of the leading men were anxious to see the king defeated and the inhabitants were severely oppressed and ready for any change. Consequently a single victory, in 7II, was sufficient to open the whole country to Tarik, who commanded the army, and from whom Gibraltar takes its name. It is said that his forces numbered only about twelve thousand, of whom all but three hundred were Berbers. If this is true, it is a striking illustration of the way in which the Arabs used the subject peoples to extend their conquests. In Spain the Visigothic nobles frequently joined with the invaders. New bands of Arabs or Berbers poured into the country, and soon all the peninsula, except the mountains of Galicia, was occupied by the Mussulmans.

9. Battle of Poitiers.

They pressed on across the Pyrenees and began to reduce southern Gaul, until in 732 they met with their first real check near Poitiers, where Charles Martel had led a great host in order to prevent their advance. From the fragmentary accounts of the meeting of the two armies we can glean the main facts; for nearly a week Christians and Mohammedans watched one another, waiting anxiously for the moment of battle; finally the Arab leader attacked; in the heat of the fight the Franks, who had formed in hollow square, were like an immovable ocean; they stood shoulder to shoulder without giving way, as if they were frozen to the ground, and with their swords hewed down the Arabs. Night at length put an end to the contest; in the morning the Franks saw the tents of the Mussulmans deserted, but feared an ambush; finally they sent out spies, who learned that the squadrons of the Ishmaelites had vanished in the night. Later legends embellished their victory and recounted that three hundred and seventy‑five thousand of the Arabs together with their king had been killed, while the Frankish loss was only fifteen hundred. Even in mod ern times the importance of this battle has been greatly over estimated. It was not a very decisive conflict the Arabs with drew, but continued their raids elsewhere in 743, for example, they pillaged Lyons, and they were not expelled from Narbonne until 759. But all further advance was effectually checked by the revolt of the Berbers in Africa, who regretted their lost independence. Their rebellion made it impossible for the Mohammedans in Spain to get any new recruits from the East, as they held the country through which reinforcements must be sent [5]. Unconsciously, they were aiding Charles Martel in the consolidation of his power in Gaul.

10. Conquests in the East.

In the East the Mohammedans had made great advances during this same period; they had captured Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand and had advanced to the boundary of China they had taken Kabul and had subjugated the valley of the Indus. But they did not succeed in getting possession of Asia Minor, and twice they failed in attempting to reduce Constantinople by siege. The city on the Bosphorus was then, as so often later, the bulwark of Europe. In spite of these defeats the Mohammedan dominions reached their greatest extent under the Ommiads.

11. Islamic History after the Mongol Invasion.

The Mongols devastated the eastern lands of Islam and ruled from the Sinai Desert to India for a century. But they soon converted to Islam and became known as the Il-Khanids. They were in turn succeeded by Timur and his descendants who made Samarqand their capital and ruled from 1369 to 1500. The sudden rise of Timur delayed the formation and expansion of the Ottoman empire but soon the Ottomans became the dominant power in the Islamic world.

From humble origins the Turks rose to dominate over the whole of Anatolia and even parts of Europe. In 1453 Mehmet the Conqueror captured Constantinople and put an end to the Byzantine empire. The Ottomans conquered much of eastern Europe and nearly the whole of the Arab world, only Morocco and Mauritania in the West and Yemen, Hadramaut and parts of the Arabian peninsula remaining beyond their control. They reached their zenith of power with Suleyman the Magnificent whose armies reached Hungary and Austria. From the 17th century onward with the rise of Western European powers and later Russia, the power of the Ottomans began to wane. But they nevertheless remained a force to be reckoned with until the First World War when they were defeated by the Western nations. Soon thereafter Kamal Ataturk gained power in Turkey and abolished the six centuries of rule of the Ottomans in 1924. While the Ottomans were concerned mostly with the western front of their empire, to the east in Persia a new dynasty called the Safavids came to power in 1502. The Safavids established a powerful state of their own which flourished for over two centuries and became known for the flowering of the arts. Their capital, Isfahan, became one of the most beautiful cities with its blue tiled mosques and exquisite houses. The Afghan invasion of 1736 put an end to Safavid rule and prepared the independence of Afghanistan which occurred formally in the 19th century. Persia itself fell into turmoil until Nader Shah, the last Oriental conqueror, reunited the country and even conquered India. But the rule of the dynasty established by him was short-lived. The Zand dynasty soon took over to be overthrown by the Qajars in 1779 who made Tehran their capital and ruled until 1921 when they were in turn replaced by the Pahlavis [7].As for India, Islam entered into the land east of the Indus River peacefully. Gradually Muslims gained political power beginning in the early 13th century. But this period which marked the expansion of both Islam and Islamic culture came to an end with the conquest of much of India in 1526 by Babur, one of the Timurid princes. He established the powerful Mogul empire which produced such famous rulers as Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan and which lasted, despite the gradual rise of British power in India, until 1857 when it was officially abolished. Farther east in the Malay world, Islam began to spread in the 12th century in northern Sumatra and soon Muslim kingdoms were established in Java, Sumatra and mainland Malaysia. Despite the colonization of the Malay world, Islam spread in that area covering present day Indonesia, Malaysia, the southern Philippines and southern Thailand, and is still continuing in islands farther east.

As far as Africa is concerned, Islam entered into East Africa at the very beginning of the Islamic period but remained confined to the coast for some time, only the Sudan and Somali land becoming gradually both Arabized and Islamized. West Africa felt the presence of Islam through North African traders who traveled with their camel caravans south of the Sahara. By the 14th century there were already Muslim sultanates in such areas as Mali, and Timbuctu in West Africa and Harar in East Africa had become seats of Islamic learning. Gradually Islam penetrated both inland and southward. There also appeared major charismatic figures who inspired intense resistance against European domination. The process of the Islamization of Africa did not cease during the colonial period and continues even today with the result that most Africans are now Muslims caring on a tradition which has had practically as long a history in certain areas of sub-Saharan Africa as Islam itself.

CONCLUSION:

Islam was destined to become a world religion and to create a civilization which stretched from one end of the globe to the other. Already during the early Muslim caliphates, first the Arabs, then the Persians and later the Turks set about to create classical Islamic civilization. Later, in the 13th century, both Africa and India became great centers of Islamic civilization and soon thereafter Muslim kingdoms were established in the Malay-Indonesian world while Chinese Muslims flourished throughout China. Islam is a religion for all people from whatever race or background they might be. That is why Islamic civilization is based on a unity which stands completely against any racial or ethnic discrimination. Such major racial and ethnic groups as the Arabs, Persians, Turks, Africans, Indians, Chinese and Malays in addition to numerous smaller units embraced Islam and contributed to the building of Islamic civilization. Moreover, Islam was not opposed to learning from the earlier civilizations and incorporating their science, learning, and culture into its own world view, as long as they did not oppose the principles of Islam. Each ethnic and racial group which embraced Islam made its contribution to the one Islamic civilization to which everyone belonged. The sense of brotherhood and sisterhood was so much emphasized that it overcame all local attachments to a particular tribe, race, or language-all of which became subservient to the universal Brotherhood and sisterhood of Islam. The global civilization thus created by Islam permitted people of diverse ethnic backgrounds to work together in cultivating various arts and sciences. Although the civilization was profoundly Islamic, even non-Muslim people of the book participated in the intellectual activity whose fruits belonged to everyone. The global civilization created by Islam also succeeded in activating the mind and thought of the people who entered its fold. As a result of Islam, the nomadic Arabs became torch-bearers of science and learning. The Persians who had created a great civilization before the rise of Islam nevertheless produced much more science and learning in the Islamic period than before. The same can be said of the Turks and other peoples who embraced Islam. The religion of Islam was itself responsible not only for the creation of a world civilization in which people of many different ethnic backgrounds participated, but it played a central role in developing intellectual and cultural life on a scale not seen before. For some eight hundred years Arabic remained the major intellectual and scientific language of the world. During the centuries following the rise of Islam, Muslim dynasties ruling in various parts of the Islamic world bore witness to the flowering of Islamic culture and thought. In fact this tradition of intellectual activity was eclipsed only at the beginning of modern times as a result of the weakening of faith among Muslims combined with external domination. And today this activity has begun a new in many parts of the Islamic world now that the Muslims have regained their political independence.

REFERENCES:

1. Bosworth CE (1968). The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (A.D. 1000-1217). In: Boyle JA (ed) The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 5. The Saljuq and Mongol Periods. Cambridge University Press.

2. Eghbal Ashtiyani, A. (2001) . History of Iran, Tehran: Tehran University publication.

3. Keddie, N. R. (2006). Modern Iran Roots and Results of Revolution, New Haven. Yale University Press.

4. Savory, Roger. (1999) Iran under the Safavids

5. Sicker, M. (2000). The Islamic World in Decline From the Treaty of Karlowitz to the Disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Praeger Publishers.

6. Saidiyan, Abd Alhossein (1991). Peoples of the World, 4th edit. Tehran, Science and life pub.

7. The Islamic Revolution and its Roots,(1998), Abbas-Ali Amid Zanjani ,Tehran: Tehran University.

Received on 01.12.2013

Modified on 12.01.2014

Accepted on 02.02.2014

Research J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 5(1): January-March, 2014, 10-16