The Spread of Islam began when prophet Muhammad (570 - 632) started preaching the revelation he claimed to have received from God at the age of 40. During his lifetime the Muslim ummah was established in Arabia by way of their conversion or allegiance to Islam. In the first centuries conversion to Islam followed the rapid growth of the Muslim world created by the conquests of the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphs.
Muslim dynasties were soon established and subsequent empires such as those of the Abbasids, Fatimids, Almoravids, Seljukids, Ajuuraan, Adal and Warsangali in Somalia, Mughals in India and Safavids in Persia and Ottomans were among the largest and most powerful in the world. The people of the Islamic world created numerous sophisticated centers of culture and science with far-reaching mercantile networks, travelers, scientists, hunters, mathematicians, doctors and philosophers, all of whom contributed to the Golden Age of Islam.
The activities of this quasi-political community of believers and nations, or ummah, resulted in the spread of Islam over the centuries, spreading outwards from Mecca to the Atlantic Ocean in the west and the Pacific Ocean on the east. As of October 2009, there were 1.571 billion Muslims, making Islam the second-largest religion in the world.
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Famous quotes containing the words spread and/or islam:
“Every thought is public,
Every nook is wide;
Thy gossips spread each whisper,
And the gods from side to side.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)