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Historically, Islam has been more than just a religion. Although it has a highly developed theology and ritual life, the main expression
of Islam has undoubtedly been its law (which is of divine origin), and that law covers such things as political life, taxation, social relations, marriage and divorce, and matters of diet and dress, as well as areas of
criminal and penal law. These aspects of Islam have permeated the way of life of whole societies, even of those groups whose religion was or is not Islam. For this reason, when we talk of the rise of Islam we refer to
the rise not only of a religion but also of a distinctive culture and civilization.
The rise of Islam in both senses of the word should be understood as an extended process, not as something which happened in a short space of time or was confined to a limited geographical area. Traditionally, emphasis
has been placed upon the career of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, who was
active in western Arabia in the early decades of the 7th century (he had his first prophetic experience in 610, and died in 632), and who founded and ruled the first Islamic state. Stress is also put upon the Arab
conquest of the Middle East outside Arabia, in the period between about 630 and 650. The territories conquered in this period were the springboard for a vast extension of the area under Arab Muslim rule: by about 750
the Arab Muslim empire extended from Spain and Morocco to the borders of India and China. The first waves of expansion, in which the
Abbasids had controlled vast areas of North Africa, Spain, and Central Asia, culminated in the loss of their capital, Baghdad, to the Shiites, in 945.In traditional accounts this expansion of Arab Muslim rule is attributed to the wish
to spread Islam: it is envisaged that the Arabs brought Islam with them and imposed it (by force or by offering incentives) on the peoples they conquered. This traditional view is an oversimplification. Modern research
has revealed that the development of some of the fundamental features of Islam was much more gradual. The development of the Sunni
and Shiite traditions of Islam, the creation of systems of law and theology, the elaboration of a rich tradition of religious and other writing, and the building up of a substantial body of people who identified themselves as Muslims, all took place outside Arabia in the period following the Arab conquest of the Middle East. Furthermore, it has become clear that the Arabs did not impose Islam by force on the peoples they conquered. More is now understood about the religious and cultural diversity of the peoples of the Middle East before the coming of the Arabs, and about the possible reasons why large numbers of them would have been willing to elaborate and adopt new religious, linguistic, and cultural identities following their conquest by the Arabs.
Precise dates for the rise of Islam are, therefore, unrealistic; most historians would agree, however, that the period between about 600 and 800 was of special importance. The 690s provide the first material evidence
(in the form of a new distinctive coinage and the building of the Dome of the Rock
in Jerusalem) of the development of the new religion and culture in the Middle East following the Arab conquest of the region. In the early years of the 9th century emerged the Arabic Muslim literature which, arguably, is the most distinctive feature of the religion and civilization of Islam.
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