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Muhammad was the founder of Islam, and is considered to be a messenger and prophet of God. He was an orphan who grew up to be a caravan manager and married his employer, a rich widow named Khadija. For many years, he was a merchant in Mecca, but was troubled by the growing space of the Bedouin morals of honor and generosity and the greedy behavior of the nobility, so he would meditate in isolation, and one night he was spoken to by an angel. He began to preach the words of the angel, or Islam.
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Muhammad was concerned about the materialistic noblility of Mecca, so he would make occasional retreats to the hills. One night, he was meditating and encountered and angel called Gabriel who directed Muhammad to preach what Gabriel had told him. The words that hepreached were written down years later, and they were called the Quran, which is the holy book of Islam.
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Muhammad and his followers retreated from Mecca to a city called Yathrib, later named Medina. This flight, called the Hegira, signifies the first date on the Islamic calendar. While in Medina, he won support from many of the townspeple, so he was able to form the first Muslim community, called the umma.
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With a respectable military force, Muhammad returned to Mecca and converted the Meccans to his mystery fatih. He made a significant trip to the Ka'aba, and proclaimed it a shrine of Islam, and destroyed symbols of other faiths, which opened up the door for Islam to spread, without interferring with the other traditional religions that could have gotten in the way.
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Mu'awiya replaced Ali in office, and made the caliphate hereditary in his own family, called the Umayyads. The new caliphate, with its capital at Damascus, remained in power for nearly a century.
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A revolt led by Abu al- Abbas led to the overthrow of the Umayyads, and established the Abbasid dynasty. This caliphate brought cultural, political, and economic change to Islam. They tried disintegrate the distinctions between non-Arab and Arab Muslims. This opened Islamic culture to the influences of other civilizations. They also moved the capital to Baghdad. Rulers also became more regal and autocratic. The dynasty began to crumble, once Harun al-Rashid died, and the Seljuk Turks took over.
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The Abbasids moved the capital of the Arabian empire to a city called Baghdad, on the Tigris River, east of the Umayyad capital of Damascus. It was placed to take advantage of the river commerce, and of the caravan route from Central Asia to the Mediterranean. The move allowed Persian influence to encourage a new cultural orientation.
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A Turkish leader took over Baghdad and seized power of the empire, assuming the title of sultan. The military and political power of the state was now in the hands of the Seljuk Turks.
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A series of Christian raids, known as the Crusades, on Islamic territories brought Jerusalem and other areas under Christian rule. They started in 1096, and went well into the thirteenth century.
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The new Abbasid dynasty encountered a period of grand rule under Harun al-Rashid. His reign is known as the golden age of the Abbasid caliphate, because culture and economics flourished. The Arab Empire now controlled many of the routes and had conquered many Roman provinces. Baghdad became the heart of a commercial market that spread all over the empire, which contributed greatly to the wealth of the Empire. But, this age didn't last forever, when Harun al-Rashid died, and the Turks took over.
