Big Era Five: Landscape Unit 5.2

Why This Unit?

The study of religions in world history and geography courses is a basic requirement in every state’s academic standards, just as it is a major feature of the National Standards for World History. The importance of studying the origins, beliefs, practices, and spread of religion is a matter of consensus because this subject has contemporary relevance. Also, religious movements have been enormously significant in human history. Religious beliefs and practices have brought forth traditions and institutions that have shaped urban and rural life, built empires, and contributed to trade, literacy, and scientific development. Religious movements have influenced conflict and cooperation on many levels, and stimulated migration and travel.

The rise and spread of Islam in the seventh and following centuries CE profoundly affected large parts of Afroeurasia. This topic offers students an opportunity to study several interlinked historical processes. The story of the origins of Islam itself reaches as far back into the history of Southwest Asia as human settlement itself, since Muslims believe that the revelation given to Muhammad during the seventh century was only the final one in a continuous sacred exchange reaching back through all of the biblical prophets to Adam and Eve. The story also includes the rise and fall of empires from Mesopotamia to the Romans and Persians, and the rapid expansion of territory under Muslim rule under the early caliphate and the Umayyad Dynasty. The spread of Islam is a distinct phenomenon that historians relate to rapid advances in urbanization, the growth of trade networks in Afroeurasia, and a series of migrations. Islam also gradually spread as a faith and way of life among the populations of a region extending from the Iberian Peninsula to the borders of China. Not until about four centuries after the conquests of Southwest Asia, North Africa, and parts of Inner Eurasia did Islam become the majority faith of the population in those regions. Even then, religious diversity remained a hallmark of those societies matched only in modern multicultural societies like the United States.