Rise of Islam

Islam emerged in Arabia in the early seventh century and, within a hundred years, ruled a territory from Spain to the Indus. Muhammad was born in Mecca around 570 and began receiving revelations about 610; the message of one God, recorded in the Quran, won followers but opposition from Mecca's merchant families forced the Muslim community to migrate to Medina in 622, the hijra from which the Islamic calendar counts. Battles at Badr, Uhud and the trench defended the community, and by 630 Muhammad controlled Mecca and had unified most of Arabia. After his death in 632 the caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali subdued the ridda rebellions and took Syria, Egypt, Persia and parts of the Caucasus from the exhausted Byzantine and Sasanian empires; the battle of al-Qadisiyya in 636 and the fall of Ctesiphon opened Iraq. Administration in Arabic and the payment of the jizya let non-Muslim communities keep their religion, and the new cities of Kufa, Basra and Fustat grew up around garrisons. Doctrine divided over the succession, producing Sunni and Shia, and by 750 the Umayyads had been overthrown by the Abbasids, who moved the centre of the empire east to Baghdad. The Quran remained in Arabic, and Arabic stayed the language of administration even under Persian governors.