Islamic Site - Historical Background & Its Geography

At the time of Messenger Muhammad peace be upon him , his tribe, the Quraysh was in charge of the Kaaba, which was at that time a shrine to numerous Arabian tribal gods. Desert tribesmen, the Bedouin , and inhabitants of other cities would join the annual pilgrimage, to worship and to trade. Caravan-raiding, common during the rest of the year, was suspended during the pilgrimage; this was a good time, then, for travel and trade.

Muhammad peace be upon him, preaching the Laws of one God  (in Arabic, Allah Almighty). The Quraysh persecuted and harassed him continuously, and he and his followers eventually migrated to Medina , the Muslim community became a political and military force. In 630 C.E., Muhammad peace be upon him and his followers returned to Mecca as conquerors, and the Kaaba has been marked as a first Islamic State capital and the centre point for entire Muslim ummah. The Kaaba was built by the Messenger Ibrahim (Abraham) peace be upon him and his son Messenger Ishmael peace be upon him.

The Qibla, for any point of reference on the Earth, is the direction of the Kaaba. In Muslim religious practice, supplicants must face this direction in prayer. It should be noted that Muslims do not worship the Kaaba or its contents, any more than Christians worship churches or crosses; the Kaaba is simply a focal point for prayer. The Qibla points along the shortest path to the Kaaba. Because the Earth is approximately spherical, this path will be a great circle such as airplanes fly. The location of the Kaaba can be used together with spherical geometry to determine the Qibla for any given point on the Earth.

The Masjid al Haram  in the city of Mecca. It is considered by Muslims to be the holiest place on and is the focal point of the hajj  pilgrimage required of all able-bodied Muslims as one of the Five Pillars of Islam. According to Islamic tradition, the mosque was built by Messenger Ibrahim peace be upon him with the help of his son. They were ordered by Allah Almighty to build the Masjid. The mosque itself has always been an important part of Arab culture. Even in pre-Islamic days it was a site for pilgrimages by pre-monotheistic Arabs, who filled the Kaaba with idols of the gods they worshipped. This episode is seen as a corruption of what the Kaaba was meant for, and the fact that they had strayed from the path of God explains why God sent Muhammad peace be upon him as a messenger to the people of Mecca. Muhammad peace be upon him grandfather, Abu Muttalib, was a caretaker of the Kaaba, and Messenger spent much time there.

After the Hijra, Messenger Muhammad peace be upon him was forced to withdraw to Medina . Upon his return to Mecca years later, he ritually smashed all the idols in the Kaaba and cleansed it. This began Islamic rule over Kaaba, and the building of a Masjid around it.

Hajj is a routine exercise of entire muslim ummah in a year time and this congregation held at Mecca - kaaba. Today the pilgrimage structures the entire life of the Muslim. A believer is required to make attempt to attend this congregation.The Muslim's whole life is directed towards Quranic goal; all of life becomes a pilgrimage.

The Battle of Badr was a seminal event in the formative days of Islam. It is mentioned by name in the Quran  (3.122) Allah Almighty  helped you at Badr and you were weak') According to the historic traditions that have come down to us, the battle itself was a test so far as the Muslims were concerned. Victory at Badr crystallized Muhammad peace be upon him as a recognized effective combat leader and solidified his position in Medina . The traditions describe the enemy at Badr as, essentially, the entire manpower of the Quraysh (although several groups are described as declining to take part). Their number is estimated at about 1000 men. Muhammad peace be upon him is reported to have had 313 comrades. It was this battle that cemented the allegiance of the Medinans to the messenger.

It was a rumor which has been spread accidentally or intentionally that the business caravan of Mecca 's rich was attacked by Muslims this thing reacted like a fire, therefore people in Mecca collected their forces and rode out to teach Muhammad peace be upon him a lesson. It seems that they were expecting messenger to be leading no more than his Qurayshi followers whom the men from Mecca felt they could easily disperse.

The two forces met one another at the ground of Badr between Medina and Mecca and, after resting overnight, fought a battle on the next day. No description of battle as a whole has come down to us and apparently the historians believed that Meccans broke almost immediately and the battle dissolved into a collection of single combats. Muslims were victorious in this battle with minimum causalities rate in comparison to Meccans army. The outcome of this battle was the boost of confidence among Muslims and their robust impression on infidels and others (Christians & Jews). The Quran has also eloquently discussed this event and marked with this title “Yaumul Furqan” means the day when negative forces were standing apart from positive forces.

The Ottoman Empire, Turkish is a member of the Turkish family of languages, which includes Balkan Gagauz Turkish, Gagauz, and Khorasani Turkish in addition to Turkish. The Turkish family is a subgroup of the Southern Turkic languages, themselves a subgroup of the Turkish languages, which some linguists believe to be member of the disputed Altaic language family (which is considered part of the even more disputed Ural-Altaic language family) was an imperial power that existed from 1299 to 1923 1923 to rule the borders of the Mediterranean Sea. At the height of its power, it included Anatolia, the Middle East, part of North Africa, and south-eastern Europe. It was established by a tribe of Oghuz Turks in western Anatolia  and ruled by the Osman i dynasty. This has also been interpreted as referring to the Empire's position as gateway between Europe and Asia .In its day, the Ottoman Empire was also commonly referred to as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , though it should not be confused with the modern nation-state of that name. The Ottoman State originated as a Beylik within the Seljuk Empire in the 13th century. In 1299, Osman I declared independence of the Ottoman Principality.Murad I was the first Ottoman to claim the title of sultan (king). With the capture of Constantinople  in 1453, the state became a mighty empire with Mehmed II as its emperor. The Empire reached its apex under Suleiman I in the 16th century, when it stretched from the Persian Gulf in the east to Hungary  in the northwest, and from Egypt  in the south to the Caucasus  in the north. The Empire was situated in the middle of East and West and interacted throughout its six-century history with both the East and the West. During this period, the Empire vied with the emerging European colonial powers in the Indian Ocean. Fleets with soldiers and arms were sent to support Muslim rulers in Kenya  and Aceh and to defend the Ottoman slave and spice trade.In Aceh, the Ottomans built a fortress and supplied huge cannon.The Dutch Protestants were helped by the Ottomans against Catholic Spain.

In the 17th century, the Ottomans were weakened both internally and externally by costly wars, especially against Persia , the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russia and Austria-Hungary. There was a long succession of sultans who were not as good as the generation of Mehmed II, Selim I and Suleyman 1. The scientific advantage the Ottomans had over the other European countries also diminished. While the Ottomans were stagnating in a stalemate with their European and Asian neighbor countries, the European development went into overdrive. Eventually, after a defeat at the Battle of Vienna, in 1683, it was clear the Ottoman Empire was no longer the sole superpower in Europe. In 1699, for the first time in its history the Ottomans acknowledged that the Austrian empire could sign a treaty with the Ottomans on equal terms, and actually lost a large territory which had been in Ottoman possession for two centuries. Through a series of reforms, the empire continued to be one of the major political powers of Europe.

The Empire was founded by Osman I. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire was among the world's most powerful political entities and the countries of Europe felt threatened by its steady advance through the Balkans. From 1517 onwards, the Ottoman Sultan was also the Caliph of Islam, and the Ottoman Empire was from 1517 until 1922 (or 1924) synonymous with the Caliphate, the Islamic State. In 1453, after the Ottomans captured Constantinople (modern Istanbul) from the Byzantine Empire, it became the Ottoman capital. Following World War I, during which most of its territories were captured by the Allies, Ottoman elites established modern Turkey  during the Turkish War of Independence.

Abbasid was the dynastic name generally given to the caliphs  of Baghdad, the second of the two great Sunni dynasties of the Muslim that overthrew the Umayyid caliphs.It seized power in 750, when it finally defeated the Umayyads in battle, and flourished for two centuries, but slowly went into decline with the rise to power of the Turkish army they had created, the Mamluks. Their claim to power was finally ended in 1258 for broader historical context, see 1250s and 13th century. When Hulagu Khan, the Mongol  general, sacked Baghdad .While they continued to claim authority in religious matters from their base in Egypt, their dynasty was ended.

» Learning Under The Abbasid Dynasty

The reigns of Harun al-Rashid  ( 786  - 809 ) and his successors fostered an age of great intellectual achievement. In large part this was the result of the schismatic forces that had undermined the Umayyad  regime, which relied on the assertion of the superiority of Arab culture as part of its claim to legitimacy, and the Abbasids' welcoming of support from non-Arab Muslims.

A number of medieval thinkers and scientists living under Islamic rule, many of them non-Muslims or heretical Muslims, played a role in transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic knowledge to the Christian West.They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe.In addition the period saw the recovery of much of the Alexandrian mathematical, geometric and astronomical knowledge, such as that of Euclides  and Claudius Ptolemy, and these recovered mathematical methods were later enhanced and developed by other Islamic scholars, notably by Al-Biruni, and Abu Nasr Mansur, who are thought to have first derived the Cosine rule and applied it to spherical geometry.

Three speculative thinkers,the Persians al-Kindi,al-Farabi, and Avicenna, combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam

» The end of the Caliphate

Hulagu Khan  sacked Baghdad on ( February 10 , 1258 ), causing great loss of life. Al-Musta'sim, the last reigning Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad was then executed on February 20, 1258. The Abbasids still maintained a feeble show of authority, confined to religious matters, in Egypt under the Mamluks, but the dynasty finally disappeared with Motawakkil III, who was carried away as a prisoner to Constantinople by Selim 1.

» Abbasid Caliphs of Baghdad

The battle of Uhud was a reprisal against the Muslims following the battle of Badr. Some of the leading members of Quraysh such as Abu Jahl, Utbah, Shaiba, Walid, Umayya bin Khalaf, and Hanzala bin Abu Sufyan, had been killed in the battle of Badr. After the death of Abu Jahl, leadership of the Makkans had passed on to his compeer, Abu Sufyan, who was the chief of the clan of Banu Umayya. There was profound sorrow in Makkah at the loss of so many chiefs but Abu Sufyan had forbidden the bereaved families to cry and to lament their losses. Tears, he knew, could wash away malevolence from the hearts. But time and tears, he asserted, would not be allowed to heal the wounds received by the Meccan aristocracy at Badr. He himself had taken an oath that he would remain a stranger to every pleasure until he had paid the Muslims back in their own coin. He and the other leaders of the Quraysh spent a whole year of feverish activity in which they equipped and trained a new army. 

One year after the battle of Badr, the new army of the idolaters of Makkah was ready to take the field against the Muslims. In March 625 Abu Sufyan left Makkah at the head of three thousand seasoned warriors. Most of them were foot soldiers but they were supported by a strong contingent of cavalry. Also accompanying the army, was a band of warlike women. Their duty was to wage "psychological warfare" against the Muslims by reading poetry and by singing amatory songs to spur the courage and the will-to-fight of the soldiers. They knew that nothing held such terror for the Arabs as the jibes of women for cowardice, and they also knew that nothing was so efficacious to turn them into utterly reckless fighters as the promise of physical love. These amazons included the wives of Abu Sufyan and Amr bin Aas. The Muslims advanced with 700 men against 3000 warriors from Mecca . Moreover, while the Muslims could muster only one hundred men with coats of chain-mail, and no horses, Quraish and their allies included 700 men in armor and 200 horsemen. Wishing to cover their rear in view of their small numbers, the Muslims posted themselves at the foot of Mt. Uhad. Their right flank and rear were covered by the mountains, but their left flank lay in open ground and was thus exposed to a charge by the enemy cavalry. To guard against this, Muhammed peace be upon him posted fifty archers on this flank, with orders on no account to leave their post, from which they could protect the Muslim left wing from the Quraish horse.  The Meccans drew up their line facing the Muslims in such a way that the latter, with their backs to Uhad, were facing Medina , while the Quraish line confronted them with Medina in its rear, thereby interposing between the Muslims and the town.  Quraysh had brought a number of women with them, riding in camel-litters. These now, as the two lines drew towards one another, proceeded to rouse the enthusiasm of the Meccans, beating upon tambourines, reciting martial poetry and letting down their long hair.  The battle of Uhud began just as the battle of Badr had begun, with a Makkan warrior advancing from his lines and challenging the Muslims to single combat.  The muslim army has lost this battle because their platoon of archers who were deployed on to the strategic position at Mount Uhud has left their position despite the clear orders from their commander in chief  to stick their positions till the time they have got an orders to get ease.