Lost Islamic History

Sets the scene: a dry, tribal Arabia sitting between the Roman and Persian empires, where poetry was the great art and memory mattered more than writing.

Key points

• Tribe and clan were the basis of survival and protection, and hosting a guest was a point of honour.
• Poetry was the height of Arab culture. The famous long odes were memorised and recited for generations.
• The Ka‘bah, built by Ibrahim and Isma‘il for the worship of one God, had become crowded with idols.
• The Ghassanids served Rome and the Lakhmids served Persia as client kingdoms, while Aksum in Abyssinia traded across the Red Sea.

Think aboutA people who could memorise thousands of lines of poetry received the Qur’an. How did that habit help preserve it?

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A compact walk through the Seerah, from his ﷺ early life in Makkah to the Hijrah, the years in Madinah and his passing.

Key points

• Known as al-Amin before prophethood, he received the first revelation in the cave of Hira in 610.
• Persecution, the boycott of Banu Hashim and the Year of Sorrow led to the Hijrah in 622, the start of the Islamic calendar.
• The Charter of Madinah set out one community, with rights and duties for the city’s Jewish tribes.
• Badr, Uhud, the Trench and the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah led to the opening of Makkah in 630 with a general pardon.

Think aboutMany Companions saw Hudaybiyyah as a setback. What did the truce make possible in the two years that followed?

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How the community held together after the Prophet ﷺ, and how four caliphs led a state that grew from Arabia to Egypt, Syria and Persia.

Key points

• Abu Bakr ended the Ridda wars and had the written Qur’an gathered into one compilation.
• Under ‘Umar, Syria, Iraq and Egypt joined the state. He received Jerusalem’s surrender in person and guaranteed its people’s safety.
• ‘Uthman built the first Muslim navy, and the last of the Sassanid lands came under Muslim rule by 651.
• ‘Uthman’s killing in 656 opened years of trial for ‘Ali: the Battle of the Camel, the arbitration with Mu‘awiya, and the Kharijites who finally killed him.

Think aboutAbu Bakr chose ‘Umar for his ability rather than kinship. Why did that matter for the caliphs who came after?

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The Umayyads turn the caliphate into a dynasty and push its borders to Spain and Sindh, until the Abbasids overthrow them in 750 and build Baghdad.

Key points

• Mu‘awiya reunited the state from Damascus, but by naming his son Yazid he made the caliphate hereditary.
• Karbala in 680 and the revolt of ‘Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr shook the dynasty before ‘Abd al-Malik restored it.
• In 711 Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed into Iberia and Muhammad ibn al-Qasim reached Sindh.
• Taxing non-Arab converts as if they were not Muslim fed resentment. ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz tried to undo it, and the Abbasids rode it to power.

Think aboutLater Muslims called ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz the fifth rightly guided caliph. What earned him that name in just over two years?

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The House of Wisdom and the scholars it drew to Baghdad, and what they achieved in mathematics, astronomy, geography, medicine and physics.

Key points

• Al-Ma’mun’s House of Wisdom brought translators and scholars together in one place, with Arabic as their shared language.
• Al-Khwarizmi spread the Indian numerals with zero and gave algebra its name.
• Al-Razi and Ibn Sina moved medicine towards observation and testing, and hospitals treated the poor for free.
• Ibn al-Haytham’s experiments on light helped shape what we now call the scientific method.

Think aboutThese scholars often opened their books with verses about reflecting on creation. How would seeing study as worship change the way you learn?

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How fiqh, ‘aqidah and the science of the heart grew, using the hadith of Jibril (Islam, Iman and Ihsan) as the framework.

Key points

• The four schools of Abu Hanifa, Malik, al-Shafi‘i and Ahmad ibn Hanbal differ in how much room they give to reasoning, and each spread to different regions.
• Mainstream scholars answered the Kharijites and the Mu‘tazila, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal stood firm through al-Ma’mun’s inquisition.
• The Ash‘ari and Maturidi schools, with the Athari approach, became the three Sunni schools of creed.
• Early figures such as al-Hasan al-Basri and al-Junayd shaped the path of purifying the heart.

Think aboutThe hadith of Jibril is the backbone of this chapter. Can you name the six pillars of iman it lists?

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Three centuries of threats from the Qarmatians and Fatimids, the Crusaders and the Mongols, and the leaders who answered them.

Key points

• The Qarmatians raided Makkah and carried off the Black Stone, while the Fatimids ruled Egypt from their new city of Cairo.
• The First Crusade took Jerusalem in 1099. Zengi, Nur al-Din and then Salahuddin united Syria and Egypt against it.
• Salahuddin won at Hattin and entered Jerusalem in 1187 without a massacre.
• The Mongols destroyed Baghdad in 1258, and the Mamluks stopped them at Ain Jalut in 1260.

Think aboutDivision let the Crusaders in, and unity under Salahuddin turned them back. Where else in the book does that pattern repeat?

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The whole story of Muslim Iberia, from Tariq’s landing to Córdoba at its height, the taifa kingdoms, Granada and the Moriscos.

Key points

• ‘Abd al-Rahman I, the Umayyad who escaped the Abbasids, founded the emirate of Córdoba. ‘Abd al-Rahman III declared a caliphate in 929.
• Córdoba’s libraries and its Great Mosque made the city a gateway for learning into Europe.
• Rivalry between the taifa kings let the Christian kingdoms advance, until the Murabitun and then the Muwahhidun held them back for a time.
• Granada fell in 1492. The Moriscos kept Islam alive in secret until they were expelled between 1609 and 1614.

Think aboutThe Alhambra’s walls repeat “There is no victor except Allah”. What does that mean coming from a state that was slowly losing its land?

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How Islam reached West and East Africa, the Americas, China, India and Southeast Asia, mostly through trade, scholars and Sufis rather than armies.

Key points

• Mali grew rich on gold. Mansa Musa’s hajj in 1324 showed its wealth, and Timbuktu became a centre of scholarship.
• On the Swahili coast and in Southeast Asia, merchants and intermarriage brought Islam into local cultures, with Pasai and then Melaka leading the way.
• Millions of the Africans enslaved in the Americas were Muslims, and some, like the leaders of the 1835 revolt in Bahia, Brazil, were scholars.
• In China the Hui became fully Chinese and fully Muslim, and Admiral Zheng He led the Ming treasure fleets.

Think aboutTrade carried Islam to places no army reached. What made merchants such good ambassadors for the faith?

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The rise of the three gunpowder empires: the Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals.

Key points

• From a small frontier state, the Ottomans grew until Mehmed II took Constantinople in 1453.
• Selim I brought Egypt, Syria and the holy cities under Ottoman rule in 1516–17, and Suleiman the Lawgiver reorganised the empire’s laws.
• Shah Isma‘il I founded the Safavid state in 1501 and imposed Twelver Shi‘ism on Iran.
• Babur founded the Mughal empire at Panipat in 1526, and Aurangzeb had the Fatawa-e Alamgiri compiled.

Think aboutThe three empires were rivals, yet a traveller could cross all of them and feel at home. What did they share?

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How the Ottoman and Mughal empires weakened while Europe colonised most of the Muslim world.

Key points

• Stalled wars, sultans raised in seclusion and inflation from American silver weakened the Ottomans. The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 was their first big loss of land by treaty.
• The Tanzimat rebuilt Ottoman law and schools on European lines, and Abdulhamid II answered with pan-Islamism and the Hejaz Railway.
• The East India Company took control of India, and after the revolt of 1857 Britain ruled directly and ended the Mughal line.
• France took Algeria in 1830, Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, Russia took Central Asia, and the Dutch the Malay Archipelago.

Think aboutSome reformers copied Europe and others looked back to the early Muslims. Which approach does the book seem to favour, and do you agree?

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The two answers Muslims gave to decline, renewing tradition or copying the West, and the nation-states drawn up after the First World War.

Key points

• Reformers such as Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, Shah Waliullah and Hassan al-Banna each called for renewal in a different way.
• During the First World War, Britain made promises that could not all be kept: to Sharif Husayn, to France in the Sykes–Picot Agreement, and to the Zionist movement in the Balfour Declaration.
• The caliphate was abolished in 1924, Pakistan was founded in 1947, and the Nakba followed in 1948.
• Most new Muslim states took secular, national forms, and the debate about Islam’s place in public life continues.

Think aboutThe book ends with an open question about Islam’s role in public life. How would you answer it?

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