Hot answers tagged islam
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Columbus was not, in fact, the first to cross the Atlantic. There were Norse communities living in Greenland from the 10th Century. They even had some temporary settlements in North America proper. However, the Norse weren't as good at eking out a living in the North Atlantic as the Inuit, and (after 500 years) eventually got wiped out by some combination of ...
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In my History of Islam classes there was some review of Pre-Islamic Arabia and a few things were covered, from my class notes we talked about:
Arabia being a part of the major trade route along the Red Sea Coast, from southern Palestine to Yemen. Medina and Mecca were located along this route, Mecca was the more important city where caravans stopped and ...
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Actually the motivation is pretty well-known. The motivation for the invasion of Spain was similar to that of all Muslim conquest of the period. Islamic armies under the command of the "The Rightly Guided Caliphs" and the following Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs benefited from a unifying religion to form a large and motivated armed forces, out of what had ...
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Because this question has been edited many times I have to clarify that I am answering the version that asks:
What caused the Iranian 1979 revolution to become Islamic?
Short Answer (more suited for causal conversations in bars): It was easier to portray the Shah as anti Islamic ruler in league with the Western powers bent on destroying Islam in an Islamic ...
12
Sure, it's possible. Many things are possible. Likely, however, is another question.
The link you posted describes a vague story of sailing west into the Atlantic, finding an island, trading with the locals, and returning home. Could the island be in the New World? It could, but it could just as easily be one of the islands in the Atlantic.
For me to ...
10
No one "coined" it; it is a romanization of the genitive form of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The -i suffix is the usual way to transliterate it, just as we have Saudi, Kuwaiti, Omani, and so on. (The more common way in English to create a genitive for a thinker would be to use the Greek-derived -ic or the Latin-derived -an, hence you do see Wahhabic and ...
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Technically, Pakistan's blasphemy laws are inherited from the British. In the early days of the Raj, the British Parliament appointed a commission chaired by Lord Macaulay to create a comprehensive penal code for British India. Chapter XXV of the resulting Indian Penal Code, adopted in 1860, covers offenses related to religion. The amended IPC was adopted as ...
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The biggest reason for the decline was the Mongol invasion. The Siege of Baghdad in 1258 effectively ended the 500 year old Caliphate. Many people were killed outright, estimated around 2 million, plus the entire area was laid to waste, notably destroying the irrigation and canal system, causing continuing hardship.
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The question as it was posed is not entirely accurate. The Sephardic Jews are, rightly, the most famous Jewish community of the Ottoman Empire. However, in Istanbul, you could find synagogues and associations belonging to Ashknazi immigrants from Europe. These were all pre-Zionist immigrants from, if memory serves, Russia. In fact, there was a power struggle ...
6
One of the recurring themes in history I find fascinating is the spread of sects. You'll often find that when a group wants to separate itself from a foreign power structure, it will embrace a fashionable herecy. For this reason, the old views generally are kept toward the religous culture's central seat of secular power, and the new ones become popular ...
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There are no known contemporary opinions— perhaps because there was no such event to form an opinion about.
Entire books have been written on the loss of the library, but I would first note that most historians reject this story as scurrilous. In fact, the orientalist Bernard Lewis, not ordinarily considered a propagandist for Islam, wrote an essay entitled ...
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As an addendum to Choster's answer, Here is the English usage of "Wahhabi", according to Google's book data:
(Click for larger image)
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The word "caliph" comes from the Arabic "khalifa", which means "successor [of the Prophet]". The caliph claims a religion-based legitimacy, instead of popular support as in republics. The philosophy is totally different. A caliphate's objective is to have a government based on the Sharia, while a republic seeks to have a government based on popular will.
...
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There are only approximately 20,000 Zoroastrians in Iran, which is about 0.026% of the total population. I would not say Zoroastrianism is strong in Iran in terms of the total population. The only way Zoroastrianism can be said to be strong in Iran is because it has the second-largest Zoroastrian population after India (~69,000). See List of countries by ...
5
According to Wikipedia it was the Alvids who started it:
They were descendants of the second Shi'a Imam (Imam Hasan ibn Ali)
and brought Islam to the south Caspian Sea region of Iran. Their reign
was ended when they were defeated by the Samanid empire in 928 AD.
According to this Wikipedia link Safavids were the ones who imposed it:
Although ...
5
I could imagine, it is a kind of spiritual home. Jews immigrated from Muslim countries to Muslim countries (ok, Spain was Christian when the Jews were banished, but it was a new thing, and the Jews remembered on the better days under Muslim authority.)
When Jews were evicted from Central/Eastern Europe they looked for similar societies to settle. They had ...
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Most of the information I have found indicates that the Arab Christians were caught in the crossfire between the Muslims and the Christian Crusaders. In fact, they were often slaughtered along with the Muslims. Most likely this was because the Crusaders did not want to risk being infiltrated by Muslims posing as Christians.
Ironically, the Crusades ...
4
Short answer
Pre-Islamic Arabians were polytheistic, worshiping 360 gods; the chief god was the moon-god. They later became monotheistic because of Muhammad.
Long answer
In 1944, Gertrude Caton-Thompson (1888-1885), an influential English archaeologist, discovered a temple of the moon-god in southern Arabia. The symbols of the crescent moon and no less ...
4
The decline of the "Muslim Golden Age" was due to multiple factors that are commonly associated with the decline of most major empires. Much of what was to blame for the decline was a condition referred to as imperial overreach. This is a condition where an empire which has undergone rapid expansion is unable to maintain control over the various ...
3
According to Colin McEvedy, in 737 after the Muslim Conquest of Spain, the population on the peninsula was around 4 million. Nearly all of that would have been in Muslim-held territory, as there simply wasn't much else but a couple of little strips of land in the mountainous northern coastal region. Toledo was the only city of any real size in Western Europe ...
3
I have recently written an answer to the question you have linked. There I explain in detail how, alongside preexisting polytheistic religions, the Arabic Peninsula was largely monopolized by Judaism and Christianity by the 5th century. The structure of religious belief was then not different from that of other countries of the time.
By the 6th century, ...
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I take your question as "just before the advent of Muhammad." Therefore I will not delve into ancient history, and limit the answer to late-antiquity and early Middle Ages.
First of all we have to note that people in the Arabic Peninsula could (and can) be divided geographically between the (mostly) arid North (notwithstanding oases and narrow coastal ...
2
The history of the Jews post-Diaspora is quite complicated.
For one thing, I believe there was always a significant Jewish minority in the Muslim world, so one answer would be that they did in fact do just what you suggested.
However, there were always some in Europe too. In part, this was because they were inadvertantly encoraged to live there. Christian ...
2
You're thinking of the First Fitna - the Battle of the Camel was a significant battle therein.
Caliph Uthman was assassinated because his and his predecessor's policy of appointing family and those with tribal affiliations to important posts was massively unpopular (altho overall Uthman's reforms were effective). In his place, Ali ibn Abi Talib was ...
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The Safavid dynasty, which continuously ruled Iran from 1501 to 1722, made Shi'a Islam the official state religion. Over this period most Iranians converted to Shi'a Islam.
Ismail I, the founder of the Safavid dynasty, made conversion mandatory.
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Like virtually every other country, Iran values having a culture that is not simply defined by its predominant religion. Iran, therefore, has a close attachment to its pre-Islamic (or better, non-Islamic) civilisation. Besides being a source of pride in its own right, this heritage also serves to differentiate the country and people from its surrounding ...
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@ChintaLaura's explanation is excellent - well researched and reasoned analysis of the question you asked. Your question however hints at a deeper interest in the function of government and various alternative mechanisms to fulfill that function. I think Fukayama's Origins of Political Order might provide a useful analytical framework. Loosely summarizing ...
1
The Wikipedia article on Al Andalus mentions this:
Arabs, and Berbers comprised eighty percent of the population of
Al-Andalus by around 1100.
BTW as well as this:
Jews constituted more than five percent of the population.
If you are looking for a source published in book form, I would recommend Ibn Khaldun: The Mediterranean in the 14th ...
1
The most all encompassing quote I can find is this:
The newspaper report that about a fortnight ago my eldest son Harilal, now nearing fifty years, accepted Islam and that on Friday last 29th May in the midst of a large congregation in the Juma Masjid at Bombay he was permitted to announce his acceptance amid great acclamation and that after his speech ...
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As a young foreign woman married to a Iranian in 1979 I agree with the statement below. I never wore Hijab anywhere in Iran till the Ayatollah' demanded we foreign woman who were NOT raised as moslems had to comply. Our freedoms were restricted not by choice and even when we supported the revolution at that time every Iranian no matter what he believed ...
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