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The First Expansion of Islam: Factors of Thrust and Containment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Gustav E. von Grunebaum
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Extract

Viewed from Mecca, its place of origin, or from Medina, its first capital, the expansion of Islam is impressive not least because it extended in every direction. There is one area of limited failure nearby, in the Ethiopian highlands across the Red Sea; otherwise a cohesive Islamic belt stretches with only minor interruptions or enclaves into India, Central Asia, past the Bosporus, throughout North and much of West Africa into the center and down the Eastern coast of the Black Continent—not to mention, apart from minor concentrations elsewhere, for example in the Western hemisphere, the solid blocks of Muslims in Indonesia, parts of China and the Southern Philippines.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 14 , Issue 53 , March 1966 , pp. 64 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © 1966 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 To use Kenneth Cragg's sensitive rendering in his Sandals at the Mosque (London, 1965), p. 36.

2 Tanbib al-ikhwan, trans. H. R. Palmer, "African Affairs" (Journal of the Royal African Society), XIII (1913-14), 407-414; XIV (1914-15), 53-59, at XIV, 53 (Section iii of Tanbih).

3 For the localization of Gurkuman cf. C. E. Dubler, Abu Hamid el Grenadino y su relación de viaje por tierras eurasiáticas (Madrid, 1953), pp. 232-233.

4 The sincretistic movements in seventeenth and eighteenth century India although affecting in large measure Muslims and Hindus who, in the last analysis, did share the same cultural background bear out, by their failure, the alienness of the fundamental outlook of the two religious groups; they have resulted in a keener prise de conscience of their spiritual individuality and hence have tended to accentuate separateness and antipathy.

5 It is perfectly true that most major traits of the early Middle Ages in the West, economically as well as culturally, were in evidence way before the Arab invasion. But this invasion made the Tyrrhenian Sea into a frontier and the southern (and eastern) coastlands of the Mediterranean into foreign country—in point of mores, language, culture, religion, style of public and private life. The underlying similarities would not have sufficed to make the visitor from Christendom feel at home. Marc Bloch suceeded in evoking the significance of the change brought about by the Muslim conquest in one brief and balanced page; cf. "Une Mise au point: les invasions," Mélanges historiques (Paris, 1963), I, 110-141, at pp. 122-123.

6 Cf. the article, rich in references, by T. Lewicki, "Il commercio arabo con la Russia e con i paesi slavi d'Occidente nei secoli IX-XI," Istituto Universitario orientale di Napoli, Annali, n.s., VIII (1958), 47-61.