Arabia is the cradle of Islam and the homeland of the Arabs, who spread that faith in a wide belt around the globe that extends from Central Asia to Western Europe. Because Islam's roots are in Arabia, that peninsula has claims on the attention of the historian of Islam both as a religion and as a world civilization—that of Medieval Islam. Although the history of Arabia before Islam is important, there is no doubt that the rise of Islam within the peninsula's confines imparted new significance to the history of the region. Because of its history in preIslamic times, the significance of the peninsula remains, relatively speaking, marginal, but has been relieved of that marginality by the fact that it became the birthplace of Islam.