The rise of the Islamic Empire

• Soon after Muhammad's death, the Islamic armies conquered a vast Empire
• In a few years, the Ancient Empire were swept away by the Arabs, who until then were living at the edge of the world and never drew attention
• This moment is difficult to understand because we are lacking contemporary sources
• It is also controversial: be careful with what you read!
• Conquering the world

  1. At the time of his death in 632, Muhammad had not left any instructions regarding his succession, and he had only girls

  2. His companions appointed Abu Bakr as Caliph (Khalifa, calife)

  3. He tried to reinforced Muhammad's political work, since his death revealed its fragility

  4. Several Arab tribes abjured Islam in 632 since they considered their conversion as a personal oath to Muhammad

  5. When he died in 634, Islam had spread all over Arabia

  6. It became conceptualized as the religion of the Arab people and gave them a unity factor

  7. The Arabs were ready to expand, which they did under the reign of caliph Umar (r.634-644)

  8. In 634, 2 armies were sent against Byzantine Syria and against Sasanian Iraq

  9. Their generals were surprised by the easy victories

  10. State of exhaustion of both the byzantine and Sasanian armies

  11. Islamic armies were composed of hard men, galvanized by their new faith and its universal ambition

  12. They were also attracted by easy booties

  13. They were led by skilled generals, like Khalid B. Al-Walid, whose battleplans are still taught now in military schools

  14. In 636, the Byzantine are vanquished and let the Islamic armies take Jerusalem and more widely, conquer Syria

  15. The same year, the Sasanian (Persians) lost a key battle at Al-Qadisiyya, Leaving Iraq to the Arabs

  16. In 640, Islamic armies conquered Egypt and launched their first raid toward the Maghrib

  17. In the East, Muslims attacked Sasanians Iran, whose conquest put an end to the Sasanian Empire (654)
• The disintegration of the Community

  1. Paradoxically, these successes went along a very difficult political transition, from a small-scale state to a wide empire, which was very though

  2. Ruling from Medina, Umar was Murdered in 644

  3. Uthman b. Affan was appointed as a caliph, but he soon became unpopular

  4. He was murdered in 656

  5. His death led Ali to be appointed as caliph, which stirred up a civil war (fitna= disorder) between 656 and 661

  6. Ali was eventually murdered in 661, which allowed Mu'awiya to become caliph

  7. That war paused for some years the Islamic conquests

  8. It also had very important consequences within the Islamic community itself, since the theorical unity of the Believers was now lost

  9. The division of Islam into 3 branches, Sunnism, Chiism and Kharijism, actually roots into that civil war

  10. The Islamic state recovered its stability with Mu'awiya

  11. He became the first Caliph of the Umayyad dynasty

  12. His geopolitical sense made him decide something ground-breaking: to rule from Damascus in Syria and leaving Medina

  13. With that decision, Arabia returned to the shadow, which lasted until the discovery of oil during the 1930s

  14. Peace and order having been restored, the conquest could resume
• The conquest of the Umayyads

  1. Towards the north, with 2 sieges against Constantinople (674-78 and 717-18)

  2. Towards the North-East (Caucasus and Inner Asia). Samarqand was conquered in 712

  3. Towards the South-East, until the Indus valley (today's Pakistan), where the Islamic troops entered during the 710s

  4. Towards the West with the conquest of the Maghrib (670-710s) and Al-Andalus (711-714)

  5. Wanting to reach Constantinople by the West, the Muslim armies crossed the Pyrenees and penetrates the Merovingian kingdom taking control of Septimania

  6. The first cracks were beginning to appear within the Islamic empire

  7. The most peripherical provinces were not controlled, and taxes did not always reach the capital

  8. Plus, the conquest put the Arabs in a position of superiority that was source of political and social discontent

  9. Moreover, the Muslims armies had lost of their religious ardour, and their pockets were full, which led them to lack of motivation

  10. In the middle of the 8th cent, the Islamic empire lost 2 important battles, whose strategical importance has been exaggerated by their "mediatic" dimension

  11. The first happened around Poitiers or Tours, in 732 or 733. More a symbolic point

  12. The second happened in Inner Asia, in Talas, in 751. Nothing happened in the geopolitics

  13. The borders of the medieval Islamic world were the set for centuries

  14. The only loss was Al-Andalus

  15. Nothing moved until the 11th
• Caliphate


  A lieutenancy of Muhammad, without the ability to receive the will of God
• Ambitions of the Umayyads

  • Creating something new, inspiring from political practices of Pre-Islamic Arabia
  • Muhammad himself
  • The other Empires of the Middle East
• Umayyad caliphs

  • Abd al-Malik (r.685-705) was probably the one who did the most important reforms
  • Creation of provinces (Wilaya)
  • Arabization of the administration. Arabic became the most spoken language of the Empire in the middle of the 9th cent
  • Promotion of the Hegirian calendar
  • Creation pf a new currency system (gold= dinar, silver= dirham). Visually speaking, these coins are fully Islamic since they are bearing religious texts and excepts from the Qur'an
  • Stabilisation of the tax system (Zakat for Muslims, Jizya and kharja for non-Muslims)
• Despite these reforms, the Umayyads kept ruling their Empire in an unsuitable way. This led them to be overthrown in 750 during the "Abbasid revolution", mostly supported by Persian Muslims
• Abbasid caliphs

  • The caliph is the one who lead the Islamic community, the official title is amir, but he ca, be called imam, like the believer that leads the prayer in every mosque
  • He also is and administrator, who has to administrate a wide empire in which many non-Muslims are living at peace
• To symbolize their new power, the Abbasids left Damascus and settled in Bagdad, that they created ex nihilo in 762 in the heart of the Mesopotamia, and close to Babylon (appearing a lot in the Bible and the Qur'an), getting closer to Persia, where the Abbasid mvmt had its first roots, and away from the Mediterranean Sea
• Bagdad quickly became a global city that many medieval authors celebrated
• • In Town, the Abbasids caliphs progressively isolated themselves from the urban population
  • They hired/bought Turkish soldiers to protect them, who got an increasing political role, like the Pretorian guards in the Roman Empire
  • At the court, they imposed a very specific protocol, associating symbols from other Empires to Islamic symbols
  • They deepened the administrative work of the Umayyads, creating offices (diwan) to control the respect of the statal administration
• • Their empire was too big to manage, and quickly the most peripherical provinces took their independence (Al-Andalus,)
  • In the 10th cent, the caliphal power weakened
  • In. that moment, the Abbasids only ruled Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and Iraq
  • During the newt cent, they could rule only Iraq and sometimes just Bagdad itself