Essay #4 - Compare and Contrast the Islamic and Byzantine worlds between about 600 and 1500 AD.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, power was relinquished to many different strongholds throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Trade was growing throughout the world and ready to be conquered. In Western Europe expansion was dominated by the Germanic people, they had entered their own Iron Age and were changing the basis of society in that region. Eastern Europe had already begun its transition from the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine Empire with the penetration of Christianity into all aspects of life. The Arab world was gaining strength and took over the rest of what the Roman Empire left behind after its fall using its new religion to expand, following the evangelical example of the prophet Mohammed. Both the Byzantine and Islamic worlds were defined by their use of a monotheistic religion in governing their empire 's, a first in Western history. .
Islam began in Mecca in 610 AD, but the start of the Muslim era is marked by the prophet Mohammed 's journey from Mecca to Medina in 622. The new religion quickly spread through the Arabian Peninsula and in the century that followed, Arab armies carried Islam to all the way from India to Spain. After 661, under the Umayyad caliphs, Islam dominated one third of the Old World and at its height it reached from the Atlantic Ocean on the west, across North Africa and the Middle East, to central Asia on the East. The Abbasid Caliphate, who replaced the Umayyad in 750, was distinguished by an impressive cultural florescence that successfully synthesized many of the achievements of subject peoples. Although many of its cultural leaders were not ethnically Arabs, some not even Muslim, the civilization reflected Arab values, tastes, and traditions. In order to aid continued progress in the expansion of the empire, new towns were founded originally as military encampments and stipends were paid to Arab soldier settlers, encouraging immigration and economic growth.
