Questions tagged [islamic-history]
concerns the political, economic, social, and cultural developments of the Islamic civilization. Not necesarily related to the religion itself.
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Why did Ottoman Sultans prioritize the title of Sultan over that of Caliph?
Upon the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517 which led to the defeat of the Memluk Sultanate, the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mutawakkil III was captured and sent to Constantinople where he surrendered to Sultan ...
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Was the Seljuk Empire an independent empire or an autonomous sub-entity of the Abbasid Caliphate?
The Seljuk Empire was formally part of the Abbasid Caliphate, which means that the Seljuk Sultan, supposedly, should have been responsible in front of the Abbasi Caliph in Baghdad.
Nevertheless,as ...
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What are the opinions of modern historians on the methodology of ḥadīth transmission and ‘Ilm al-Rijāl used by medieval Islamic scholars?
In the Islamic tradition of ḥadīth sciences (a.k.a. ‘Ilm al-Ḥadīth), a typical ḥadīth consists of the maṭn (the content of the ḥadīth) and the sanad (chain of transmitters). Ḥadīth transmitters in the ...
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Why were Ali al-Rida coins continued to be minted after his death?
In this Iranian website there's the following information:
براساس اسناد تاریخی موجود، سکههای ولایتعهدی امام رضا (ع) در ضرابخانههای مرو، سمرقند، اصفهان، محمدیه (ری)، فارس و نیشابور در فاصله سالهای ...
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Was Wahshi Wahshi ibn Harb's real name?
I was reading the Wikipedia article for Wahshi ibn Harb.
Wahshi ibn Harb ("The Savage, Son of War"), also known as Abu Dusmah was a former slave of Jubayr ibn Mut'im before becoming a ...
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Which date is true?
I was looking at this article about Battle of Karbala:
The Battle of Karbala (Arabic: مَعْرَكَة كَرْبَلَاء) was fought on 10 October 680 (10 Muharram in the year 61 AH of the Islamic calendar) ...
user40948
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Have the Arabs ever conquered Kayseri?
Is there any source that describes any battle for Kayseri during the Arab-Byzantine wars especially during Yazid ibn Muawiya's reign? I am certain there was a battle in the vicinity of Kayseri, even ...
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Who was the Moslem saint Sidi Rezegh?
Who was the Moslem saint Sidi Rezegh whose tomb is located in Cyrenaica, Libya, where an important battle was fought in 1941 between the British Eighth Army and the German Afrika Korps? I've tried ...
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How much exposure did the Islamic figure Mohammed have to the Abrahamic religions in Mecca at the time?
Modern Islam incorporates figures, ideas, and content from Judaism and Christianity.
If Islam appears to be heavily spawned from these Abrahamic religions, it raises the question of how these ...
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Is Islamic law largely derivative of Catholic canon law? [closed]
My understanding is that Islamic thought got its big boost in the "Al Andalusian paradise", which essentially consisted of the Muslim conquerors having the conquered peoples translate their ...
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Why did Muhammad Ali Jinnah leave Congress?
According to Wikipedia:
He was a member of the moderate group in the Congress, favoring Hindu–Muslim unity in achieving self-government, and following such leaders as Mehta, Naoroji, and Gopal ...
user56109
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Have any cultures had a four-element system different from fire, earth, air (or wind), and water?
Ancient Greek culture (Empedocles, Aristotle) had fire, earth, air, and water. Such a system is also known in Buddhism and alchemy. Sometimes the third of these elements is conceived as wind.
Hinduism ...
user46904
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What was the difference between bows/crossbows in the Carolingian Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate in the year 813?
Context: Two characters are teasing each other about what they view to be the "superior" form of ranged combat. One's from the Carolingian Empire (Lombardy region specifically), and the ...
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What are the main primary sources for the life and times of Shah Ismail I?
The Encyclopaedia Iranica seems mostly to base its account on Khvandamir, Hasan Beg Rumlu and to a lesser extent Khonji. Which of these (or any other primary source) has the most extensive treatment ...
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Why were slave armies used?
I’m aware of several instances where civilizations, mainly Muslim used slave armies. And so far as I’m aware this invariably resulted in the slaves becoming the de facto rulers of whatever people ...
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Where can I find the original Arabic version of bin Laden's 1996 fatwa?
For a paper in my Arabic class, I would like to cite from bin Laden's 1996 fatwa "إعلان الحرب ضد الأمريكيين الذين يحتلون أرض الحرمين الشريفين"
In English: "Declaration of War Against ...
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Anyone have an e-text of the Doctrina Jacobi in Greek?
I have been trying to find an e-text of the Doctrina Jacobi in its original language. Does anyone have the Doctrina Jacobi (The teaching of Jacob) ( text form) in the original Greek.
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Was climate a factor in the spread of Islam?
Pasted below is a google maps image that spans much of Europe, Asia and Africa. Note the lack of vegetation in a belt cutting across this image.
The question now is as follows. Why are the places with ...
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When did Averroes start to study medicine?
I'm doing research about Averroes, especially his interest in medical sciences. And I want to know his interest motivation, indication, and his age when he started to study medicine.
I looked at what ...
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What is the historical explanation behind the name of the French village Ramatuelle?
A village in France is called Ramatuelle.
Is that true that the name of the town comes from the Arabic word Rahmatu-Allah رحمة الله which means "the Mercy of God"?
How does a village in ...
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What is the origin of the names of planets in Arabic?
The names of the classical planets in Arabic (Mercury to Saturn) are not based on the usual Roman deities nor on the the classic elements like in East Asian countries. What is the origin of their ...
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Did the Black Death affect Muslim's prayers in the mosque? [duplicate]
How did the black death affect Muslims? Were they not allowed to go pray in the mosques? So if Muslims where not allowed to go to the mosque how did they complete their prayers?
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What fueled the street lights in 13th-century Cordoba?
Córdoba, Spain is often said to have had street lights in its Muslim period, which ended in 1236. How did those street lights work?
In Lawrence of Arabia, Prince Faisal was dramatized as having said ...
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Is it correct that many historical resources about Islam are written by Muslims? [closed]
Are a vast majority of first layer resources (I don't know what is jargon of this word, I mean resources which are not based on another resource) about history of Islam written by Muslims? If yes, is ...
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Why does Retsö claim that only members/clients of Arabian tribes were considered "real Muslims" in the Umayyad Caliphate before 750?
In his book "The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads", Professor Jan Retsö writes:
The conflicts were aggravated by the fact that the tribes identified
the ...
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Did any Muslim empire/kingdom have its capital in modern Pakistan except Lahore?
As far as I know, the Muslim empires and kingdoms in the Indian subcontinent were either based in Lahore or Delhi.
List of cities in Pakistan by population
I searched for the history of the top 10 ...
user44219
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What was the population of the Umayyad Caliphate in 750 CE?
What was the population of the Umayyad Caliphate at its greatest extent (750 CE)?
According to Wikipedia it was 22 million.
According to other various sources / websites it was 62 million (wikipedia ...
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Did Averroes really try to bury light in an attempt to create gold, or was that invented by Victor Hugo?
In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frollo relates a story that supposedly Averroes buried light in order to create gold from it, as, according to him, gold is light, but that it would not be for ...
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How many people did the Islamic Caliphate send to the Maghreb during the Arabization of North Africa?
I know that during the Muslim conquest of the North Africa it was more a military colonization than an Arabization an spread of their culture as the Berbers in North Africa kept their culture and were ...
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Why did the first Safavid Shia become Shia?
I'm currently reading the history of Safavid Iran (by Roger Savory) which was a Shia ruling. The eponym of Safavid is Safi-ad-din Ardabili that was a Sunni. We can be sure that his grandson Khvajeh ...
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How was Christian intermarriage with the Muslim Turks viewed by the Byzantines?
While learning about the Battle of Manzikert (1071) I was surprised to hear that the emperor Romanos IV agreed in the aftermath to a political marriage by giving his daughter to be married to Sultan ...
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How were enslaved girls usually dressed in Arabia in early Islamic societies?
After enslaved girls were purchased by their owners and brought to the owners' Islamic hometowns, was it acceptable for these girls to be topless in public?
Abdullah Sameer quotes Sheikh Hamza Yusuf'...
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How were wars financed under Islamic empires?
A related question is this thread, where the subject in question were banks, and how they operated and profited under Islamic rule.
In Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), charging interest on loans is ...
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How did Islamic finance under the early Caliphates profit or take loans if charging interest wasn't legal?
Under Islamic Law, any type of interest is considered usury and therefore illegal (in the religious context). How did lenders make money under this restriction? I am asking in the time frame from ...
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Historical examples and numbers for the value of ‘Jizya’ levied by Muslim states
Context
From the early Islamic conquests in the seventh and eighth centuries, down to the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, under Sharia law, Muslim rulers generally allowed non-Muslim subjects ...
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Is there any known pre-twentieth century history of the tomb of Sidi Rezegh?
Is there any known pre-twentieth century history of the tomb of Sidi Rezegh?
A variant spelling is Sidi Rizq from سيدي رزق at 31.8287°N, 24.1345°E in Al Butnan province, Libya near Tobruk and Al Adm.
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Did the Ottoman empire suppress the printing press?
I overheard this conversation a while back that the Ottoman Empire which flourished in all fields during the Golden Age of Islam were left behind after the introduction of the printing press in Europe ...
user38443
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Were early mosques originally oriented on Petra instead of Mecca according to archaeological record?
I have come across a claim that in early Islam, the focal point of orientation for prayers was not Mecca but was originally supposed to be Petra, and that originally Qiblas used to point in that ...
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Women in the Iranian revolution
Iranian women are now always portrayed as oppressed in the media and social media compared to the 1970s. I expected their situation to be similar to that for women in Saudi Arabia but after reading a ...
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The Abbasid ransom for the Black Stone (Hajar Aswad)
The Black Stone (Al Hajaru Al Aswad, popularly called Hajar Aswad) of the Kaaba in Mecca was stolen in 930 AD by the Qarmatians, and was returned 23 years later in 952 AD for "a huge" ransom paid by ...
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Why did the Umayyads spare some of the male members of the Family (Ahl-al-Bait) after Karbala?
Given that it's the Islamic month of Muharram, there's something that I have always wondered about the Battle of Karbala fought between Umayyad Empire and the family of the Prophet Muhammad.
In the ...
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History of Moti Masjid
Who built the Moti Masjid?
Google says it's Sahjahan who built it, but Wikipedia says it was built by Jahangir.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moti_Masjid_(Red_Fort) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Before 1800, were there major schools of Islamic thought that relaxed behavior rules for women on the Hajj?
It is my understanding that most comprehensive works of Islamic thought (past and present) do the following:
(a) Give rules or guidelines for behavior, some of them specific to women;
(b) Give rules ...
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How did Islam spread before the invention of the printing press?
Before the invention of the printing press the Koran must have been quite rare and not a lot of people must have read it.
If so, how did Islam spread so wide. Today most Muslims would, presumably, ...
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Why was Caliph Suleyman disliked by the noted generals in the Umayyad army?
Caliph Suleyman of Umayyad Empire was by all accounts a rash man who kept a grudge. He also appears to have had stormy relations with the Army's Walidist generals.
His only apparent support in the ...
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Is there evidence that the annual pilgrimage to Mecca facilitated cultural exchanges?
I've read once (but I don't recall where anymore) that the Hajj, that is, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, had an important non-religious consequence in medieval times, namely the fast spread of new ...
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What significant regions and countries became Muslim without being first conquered by a Muslim power?
Most if not all of the present Muslim countries & regions close to Europe (or in Europe, e.g. parts of Spain and of the Balkans) in North Africa and the Middle East became Muslim as a result or in ...
user8690
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Did the Byzantines forget using the caltrops?
Many of the Muslim conquests against the Byzantine empire (both Arab and Turkic) came down to clever use of cavalry. But the Romans had a handy helper against cavalry charges, the caltrop.
Did the ...
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Were there distinctions between Arab, Berbers and Iberian Muslims in 10th century Islamic Spain?
The Muslims of al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) consisted of Arabs, Berbers and native Iberians who converted to Islam (+descendants). Were there significant social distinctions between the three ethnic ...
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Why did the island of Bali remain Hindu when most of the rest of Indonesia converted to Islam?
The Wiki page on the spread of Islam in Indonesia stresses that our knowledge of this macro-historical process is fragmentary, for instance often we don’t how the religion diffused out into the ...
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