Ever wish you could learn the most condensed version of Muslim history, just the most basic need-to-know stuff? That’s what this is.

In Arabic, these topics are put under the headings:

السِّيرة والتاريخ

Seerah and Taareekh

Seerah is the study of the biography of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and taareekh is history (literally, “dating”).

History studies in Islamic light provide a different approach than what you may be used to. In the West, we hear the famous saying of George Santayana, “whoever does not learn from history is condemned to repeat it.” However, history classes in the West are not designed to admonish or teach such lessons. After all, until college, you only learn about the existence of different nations when the West subjugated them. Thus, you are taught an unquestionable series of events that justifies western supremacy. When reviewing Islamic history, we survey the good, the bad and the ugly, and drawing lessons from all that–without painting the actions of Muslim leaders or generals under a broad rosy brush. You see how Allah deals with His creation, tests, rewards and avenges them in this Life.

Learning the history of Islam helps your recognize your own place in the Muslim world, where you fit, just as it assists you in identifying better with the Muslims around the world and those you meet personally, having learned of their struggles, socially and politically.

However, that may be more relevant when the historical context is closer to home. Let’s rewind.

When you read the biography of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and his companions and other righteous leaders and scholars throughout Muslim history, your iman increases as you see how they relied upon Allah in times of great difficulty and stress, and how Allah raised their fame and made them victorious over those who fought, rejected or criticized them wrongfully. Reading about their lives, morals and habits increases your own resolve to be courageous, generous, humble, ascetic and more involved in worship. Seeing how they took failures and mistakes as learning opportunities and wake-up calls for repentance further turns our hearts towards penitence. It also gives you an appreciation for the position of the Prophet’s companions and the scholars of Islam. You then feel happiness and gratitude for the blessings Allah has conferred upon the Muslim world. But as you turn the pages further towards the present, you wince as the Muslims neglect their Creator and ultimately fall into the despised and disrespected situation we see today.

Seek to first learn Islamic history from orthodox Muslim scholars who give precedence to authentic narrations over the suspicious, and can cast a light on the proper Islamic stance towards words, behaviors or policies recorded in the annals of history. Western historians present many parts of Islamic history in a manner that ultimately raises more questions than it solves and saps any spiritual or moral benefit you could have gotten from history reading, not to mention, frequently distorting or ignoring authentically reported traditions in favor of dubious and anonymous tales. They will also praise who and what may be more worthy of condemnation and speak poorly about those more worthy with Allah of recognition. This no doubt greatly affects how a person views Muslim history and the Muslims in general, when the first impression received is pessimistic, dry, and condemning of Islam’s successes.

The most famous Islamic historian Abu Ja`far Muhammad ibn Jareer al-Tabari (d. 310 ah) set the stage for Muslim history by including the history of the prophets of Allah, from Adam, the first of mankind, to Nuh and the flood, to Ibrahim and his offspring, to Yusuf, bringing his family to Egypt, to Musa leading the Children of Israel out of Egypt, to David and Sulaiman making the children of Israel a strong nation by Allah’s Will, to their disobediences leading to their imprisonment by foreign armies, to their return to Israel, to Isa sealing the line of Israeli prophets and escaping death by crucifixion during their Roman occupation, to their diaspora. This history is vaguely familiar to most, although the Quran offers to correct some subtle details that serve to exonerate the dignity of God’s chosen prophets and clarify the reality behind some controversial events that the unknown biblical authors, scribes and creators of canon mistook. This era–from Adam through Jesus–falls under the heading of Islamic history, because we always view them as prophets of Islam.

The life of our Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, from the signs indicating that Allah would send revelation to a new person among the descendants of Ismail ibn Ibrahim, to how that began in 610 CE and what he faced of persecution when calling to Allah in Mecca. Then, his noble life continues when Allah decreed his migration to Medinah, whose believers offered him protection and pledged obedience to his leadership. It was mostly in Medinah that Allah gradually revealed the laws to the Muslims shaping them into a model and obedient society. All this while the Muslims fended for their newfound nation and Allah decreed the events that would lead to their supremacy in the Arabian Peninsula until the completion of revelation before the Prophet’s last earthly breath in the month of Rabee’ al-Awwal of the 11^th year after migrating to Medinah, roughly 632 CE.

The era of the rightly guided caliphs (successors, sometimes called the patriarchal period in Western scholarship) was led by Abu Bakr (d. 13), then Umar (d. 23), then Uthman (d. 35), and finally Ali (d. 40). This administratively formative period, spanning three decades, was filled with several large and highly successful military campaigns to consolidate lands and loyalties in the Arabian peninsula and then to defend against potential challenges from Roman supremacy in Greater Syria and Egypt, and the Persian empire in modern-day Iraq and Iran. Challenges from those empires were met with an Islamic manifest destiny, that saw the end of the Persian empire, and the permanent expulsion of the Byzantines from the Middle East and North Africa. This era turned controversial as large mobs of ignorant new Muslims, under the influence of impostor Muslims of Persian and Jewish loyalties began asserting themselves over the Prophet’s remaining companions. This led to Caliph Uthman‘s assassination, and then the instigators split into two factions forcing the Muslims into battle against each other. This civil war era corresponded with the five-year caliphate of Ali ibn Abi Talib, who moved the capital from Medina to Iraq.

 

The Umayyad dynasty (41-132 after hijrah, corresponding to 661-750 CE) began when the Muslim world was united under the rule of Mu’awiyah, of Mecca’s Umayyad family, who made Damascus the new center of the Muslim empire. To avoid disagreement or war with regard to political succession, he elected to take pledge for his son’s future ascension to leadership, thus, in effect, turning the caliphate into a dynastic kingship. They continued the expansionist liberation policy of the rightly guided caliphs, winning the North African coast all the way to the Atlantic. The stage had was set for them to win Spain and parts of southern France to the west, along with much of Central Asia and modern-day Pakistan to the east.

In spite of these gains in the name of Islam, the Umayyad dynasty was discouraged and suspected non-Arab converts to Islam and failed to preserve balance and mutual respect among the great Arab tribes. This resulted in losses on the battlefield as well as deadly family feuds in the political arena.

Also, the inexcusable and wholly avoidable massacre of Husain, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and his family in the year 61 AH at Karbala’ during the `Ashura holiday after he aborted an attempt to lead a new dynasty. This left a permanent scar in the minds of Muslims, especially in Iraq, where his father, Ali, previously moved the capitol and resided until his death twenty years prior.

Perhaps the most damaging to the Umayyad dynasty’s reputation and the primary excuse prompting the vast majority of the Muslims to hope for an end to their rule was the appointment of harsh and brutal governors. The most notorious was al-Hajjaaj. During one attempt to sequester a rebellion, he catapulted boulders into the Sacred Sanctuary of Mecca, striking the Ka`bah holy house of worship built by Prophets Ibrahim and Ismail.

The Abbasid caliphate (132-656 ah/750-1258 CE) began when a long-planned secret movement blossomed into a full-scale revolution. The movement’s leadership was composed of descendants of ‘Abbaas ibn Abdil-Muttalib, uncle of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. After overcoming all opposition to rule, their most significant caliph, al-Mansour (r. 136-158 after hijrah), moved the capitol to the newly founded city of Baghdad. The Abbasids combined the Roman-influenced administrative structure of the Umayyads with remnants of the Persian bureaucratic tools and extravagance. The Abbasid royalty was also known for being patrons of literary, intellectual and scientific achievements.

Unlike their predecessors however, the Abbasids made little territorial addition to the overall Muslim dominated lands except small acquisitions in Anatolia or modern-day Turkey. Contrarily, throughout the decades and centuries, as governors became more powerful and sought dynastic rule for their heirs, provinces broke away from direct central control. Other regions succumbed to the weight of powerful movements or tribes with heretical creeds. Even the Abbasid family themselves became subjugated nominal rulers for centuries under different groups of opportunist generals from their own Caliph’s special secret service Turk army and then under permanent house arrest when the Shee’ah Buwayhid family seized power, until finally, the Sunni Turkic Seljuk tribe and their chieftains wrestled the puppet strings out of the hands of all others. Prior to the Seljuk takeover, however, the pathetic weakness of the Abbasid state was so detrimental, that for decades, the Hajj pilgrimage was abandoned, as bandits and heretical anti-Islamic “Ismaili Assassin” esoteric sects would ransack pilgrims and even vandalize and loot the sacred sanctuary in Mecca.

In spite of the dismal political frontier, the Islamic sciences, carried by scholars much aloof from the political drama and sustaining themselves independently from the state, reached a maturity and golden age of publication as its formative years came to a close during the third century after the Prophet’s migration. Furthermore, it was during the Abbasids’ time that the religion of Islam itself as a creed and conviction spread most among their subjects and even made a presence in lands as distant as South East Asia, as Muslim merchants dominated the trade scene and had a passion for spreading their faith to the acceptant coastal residents and island dwellers between the Indian and Pacific oceans during the 12^th and 13^th centuries CE.

When the Abbasid family finally won their independence from puppeteer parties, their empire had shrank to the size of Iraq in 590 ah/1206 CE. Not long after a weak caliph with a nefarious heretical minister at the administrative helm, the Abbasid dynasty fell to the armies of Genghis Khan’s progeny as they sacked Baghdad and massacred well over a million of its inhabitants including the last Caliph in February 1258. It is said that the rivers first ran red as the city’s inhabitants were all beheaded over the bridge, and then they ran black, as the library of Baghdad was categorically treated like garbage and likewise tossed into the Tigris river.

If we rewind nearly two centuries, the Seljuks scored a major victory against the Byzantines at Manzikert, Anatolia, prompting the European Christians to unite, determined to “take back” Jerusalem, end their economic woes, and learn the secrets of Muslim civilization advancement via the Crusades. They took and occupied Jerusalem for nearly a century until Salaahud-deen (aka Saladin), emerging general of the Zengi dynasty—remnants of the Seljuk slave army outposts known as Atabegs—reconquered Palestine in 1187 and saw the exit of the Crusaders.

Salaahud-deen would create a dynasty encompassing Egypt, Greater Syria (aka Levant or ash-Shaam), the Hijaz (Mecca & Medinah) stretching down to Yemen, seeing the end of Shee’ah rule in these regions. Replacing his dynasty was the Mamluk (lit. owned, slave) empire that defeated the Mongol army in the battle of Ain Jaloot in September of 1260 CE, avenging the destroyed Abbasids.

Meanwhile, a Turkic chieftain named Osman led his tribe to a series of victories against the Byzantines affording him a small kingdom in Anatolia and creating a dynasty from his descendants. The Uthmaaniyyoon or Ottomans would go on to conquer nearly all of southeastern Europe, culminating in the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 CE—ironically triggering the European “Renaissance”. Under the rule of Suleiman “the Magnificent” or “the Lawgiver” (1520-1566 CE) the Ottomans were given authority over much of Sunni Muslim lands and would later be called the caliphs of the Muslim world. They ruled the Mediterranean as well, and helped give safe passage to Jews and Muslims fleeing forced conversions and identity-genocide during the inquisitions of Spain and Portugal–lands the Muslims once ruled while tolerating the religious diversity therein. The Ottomans would also defend Sunni Muslims in Iraq and Iran from massacres and forced conversions perpetrated against them by the Safavid dynasty (1502-1736) of Twelver Shi’ite Shah Ismail.

The Ottomans’ slow decline, amid many victories all the while, began with treaties to bolster trade relations with neutral European powers, allowing them to install a consul in Istanbul and give their merchants more freedom in Ottoman ports. These agreements, known afterwards as “the capitulations” made it so that if there would ever be a dispute between members of the two parties—a European and an Ottoman—a European consul would judge over the dispute and nearly always rule against the Muslims, saving their own countryman, no matter how scandalous the case. Meanwhile, the Ottomans’ servant army, made of Christian converts to Islam, called the Janissaries, once the most feared force in Europe began to lose considerably, as they became distracted by revelry and status, forcing the Caliphate to approve treaty after treaty, making land concessions to Russia and the new Balkan states of Southeast Europe.

In the 19^th century, the Ottomans attempted European style governmental reform in every sphere they could, ultimately defaulting on their debts to European banks in 1876. Nationalism as well as the intense spread of calls for freedom of religion and equality under the law swelled and ignited multiple revolts. Zionist and modernist journalists attempted to claim that the answer for all the Muslims’ woes was to impersonate the Europeans in everything they do, from politics and economics, to dress, table manners, atheism and immorality. Ultimately, the last sultan that welded any authority, AbdulHamid II, was deposed in 1909 on trumped up charges while secularism swept in.

While Turkey was battling to save what it could of its property and culture, nearly all the rest of the Muslim world was tied in the noose of European “colonization”.

Many of them finally gained their independence within the first years following World War II, and the rest followed in the 60’s, but it would not be until the fall of the Soviet Union that the final suppressed countries of Central Asia gained their independence. In each case, the mission of the European powers, after economic and material exploitation, included reducing the status and power of Islamic scholars and judges, as well as removing Islam from school curriculums. This caused the great ignorance we see among Muslims today and lack of respect for Islamic authority. None of the Muslim countries—after being divided along arbitrary and turbulent borders—was granted independence until it was guaranteed that the new leadership would be friendly to Western nations and suppressive to Islamic revivalist movements. They carved borders so that strong Muslim populations were placed amid non-Muslim majorities, like Patani as a part of Thailand, instead of Malaysia; and Mindanao (where Francois Magellan was killed) as a part of the Philippines, even though they were an historically separate entity, and made a deal between India and Pakistan for Kashmir, that would guarantee a perpetual suspicion and animosity between the two powerful nations. And let’s not forget Palestine and Israel, after World War 2.

Meanwhile, in 1744 a puritanical movement started in the heart of the Arabian desert, as a theology scholar named Muhammad ibn Abdil-Wahhaab won the protection and support of tribal chief Muhammad ibn Saud. They debated and fought against practices antithetical to the core of Islamic monotheistic teachings. In a climate fraught with social ignorance and superstition plus political corruption and opportunism, the “Saudi/Wahhabi” movement used its might to spread the most fundamental teachings of Islam. When they were banned from hajj, they responded by seizing Mecca without battle, where they spread the core teachings of Islam, proving inspirational to Muslim visitors from all over the world who were suffering from oppressive heretical or colonialist regimes in their own lands. The Saudi state was extinguished by Egyptians on the authority of the Ottomans in 1818. A third Saudi state, embracing the same principles as the first, rose to power between the two World Wars, when they and other Arab and Muslim countries would make their oil discoveries. Through their great financial successes, they have accommodated hajj pilgrims from around the world, humbly served Muslim causes and spread orthodox Islamic teachings around the world.

European border division practices led to waves of Muslim immigrations to Western countries as they fled persecution. Some of them imported a strong Islamic background they hoped to cling to as they would band together in their new homes and create cooperative Muslim minorities. It is through their efforts, by the Grace of Allah, that we find masjids in every major city of America, several dozen translations of the Quran, and numerous other materials, programs and services for Muslim and public benefit, though a lot remains to be desired. Although many of those left behind suffered dismal conditions, persecution at best, genocide at worst. This is especially true in Palestine, Bosnia, Burma, Thailand, Sinkiang (China) and the Philippines as they try to keep their faith steady between calls to abandon their heritage and the invitations to take up arms with separatist resistance movements.

Muslims now live all over the world. They are, by the Decree of Allah, fulfilling the words of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ who said, “Truly, this religion will reach all that the night and day envelope, and Allah will make this Word enter every home, giving dignity to those who embrace it, and humiliation to those who resist it,” recorded by Ahmad, al-Haakim, and ibn Hibbaan.

In spite of their numerical strength and resources, Muslims still fight among themselves due to racism, class warfare, political corruption, economic weakness and crippling massive religious ignorance. Their greatest strength may lie in the Islamic spirit that flickers in the heart of each, driving them to good manners and lofty principles when reminded of their proud heritage and the least common denominator of their unity, Islam.

The next chapter in history mentions you and I, and how we are influenced by the events around us, and choose to react, hopefully contributing to make the world a better place, in the name of Islam.