History of Islam

Islam was started by a man named Muhammad. Muhammad was a wealthy merchant who lived a pretty average life for an Arab. But that all changed while he was 40, because it was at this time that an angel commanded him to write down the word of God as Gods newest prophet after Jesus. He did this, and went to his town of Mecca to preach the new word of god. Well, the Meccan people didn’t like this new message so they threw Muhammad out. Muhammad then travelled to a neighbouring city of Medina and started preaching there. Unlike Mecca the Medinans liked this newest phase of Christianity and quickly appointed Muhammad as the leader of the city. The leaders of Mecca decided they had to stamp out Islam and so attacked Medina, but they were defeated so thoroughly that the Medinans captured Mecca, and it became a Muslim city. The religion itself, Islam, consists of 5 basic pillars, or important religious actions. The first of these is the Shahada, which is basically an oath that you believe that god is the only deity, and that Muhammad is his last prophet. The second pillar is Salat, or prayers, which is were Muslims pray to god five times a day, in the direction of Mecca. Zakat is the third pillar and is where you are supposed to give money or service to those in need. The Fast of Ramadan is a month long fast where no Muslim is allowed to eat during the day. The final pillar is called the Hajj, which is where all Muslims must go and visit the Ka’bah, a holy shrine in Mecca. After adding Mecca to the early Islamic empire the Muslims went north and captured considerable land from the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire. This and the conquest of the rest of the middle east was what the first dynasty of the Islamic empire did, with the second capturing north Africa and Spain. After this dynasty the empire slowly shrank and never reached that size again. The third dynasty is called the Abbasid dynasty and started as a more intellectual dynasty and converted the empire, turning the Muslim percentage of the population from 40% to somewhere in the 90s. This dynasty lasted 500 years but disintegrated due to lazy rulers. The next dynasty is known as the Ottoman Empire and lasted 600 years until it fell apart due to World War 1. This empire is still around today, but is normally referred to as a country, so the Islamic empire never really ended but sort of transformed to todays world.