Introduction

Created by a religious genius, Muhammad, Islam took root in the seventh century among the Arabic people, who carried it with extraordinary rapidity across North Africa to Spain and through the Near East into Persia. This remarkable achievement was due, first of all, to the inherent attraction of Muhammad's monotheistic religious vision. Both simple and profound, it created a community of believers, called Muslims, around the conviction that Allah is God and Muhammad is the last and greatest of his prophets. In the Qur'an, the book of Muhammad's revelations, Muslims found the guidelines for living in submission to Allah and for bringing many nations under his sway.

Like the Romans before them, the Muslims created a vast empire, knitted together by a common language, Arabic, the shared values of religion, and economic connections. In the period of its greatest glory, from the eighth to the twelfth century, Islam absorbed much of the culture of ancient Greece and of Persia while making major contributions to the arts and sciences. Although often at war with Christian nations, Islam nonetheless served as tutor to the nascent civilization of the Christian West.