Contextualization--Islam | World History | Khan Academy

Here is a passage from the Scottish philosopher and writer, even a little bit of mathematics historian Thomas Carlyle. He wrote this in "On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History," and this is in reference to his view on Muhammad and the spread of Islam.

"A poor shepherd people," he's referring to the Arabs before Muhammad, "roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world." A hero prophet was sent down to them with a word they could believe. See, the unnoticed becomes the world notable; the small has grown world great. Within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Granada on this hand, at Delhi on that. He's speaking of how, within a hundred years of Muhammad's death, the Muslim empire has spread from what would eventually be southern Spain all the way to northern India.

These Arabs, the man Muhammad, and that one century—is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark on a world of what seemed black, unnoticeable sand? But lo, the sand proves explosive powder—blazes heaven high from Delhi to Granada. I said the great man was always as lightning out of heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.

Thomas Carlyle is known as one of the proponents of the great man view of history—that history is nothing but the story of a series of great men who changed the direction in which humanity travels. So, what we're going to do in this video is think about whether it really is all about a great man, or were there other things that were in the context of the time and space in which these things occur.

This is what the world looked like in the year 600. Muhammad starts spreading his revelations in 610. So, you can see on this map, there are two major powers: the Byzantines, which is the Eastern Roman Empire—the vestiges of the Roman Empire—and you also have the Sassanid Persian Empire. The Byzantines are a Christian empire, and the Sassanids are Zoroastrian.

Muhammad is from the Quraish tribe, which is in charge of Mecca, considered a pilgrimage site for the various tribes of Arabia. But you can see that Arabia is fragmented, and this doesn't even do justice to how fragmented it was. But if you fast forward 200 years, you see a major change. In fact, you wouldn't even have to go all the way to 800; even by the early 8th century, you see that Islam has spread from the Iberian Peninsula all the way to the Indus.

Most of this, as mentioned, happens within 100 years after Muhammad's death. But let's ask our central question: why did Islam emerge so rapidly, where and when it did? There's no clear right or wrong answer here; it's all going to be conjecture, but that's what's fun about history. We can think about what we think we know and then we can debate and think about are there some patterns here that we see over and over in history.

Well, what's the context? So we know for a fact that Arabia was fragmented, that the law of the land in Arabia was tribal and tribal justice. This is the world that Muhammad grew up in, with various tribes often worshiping different gods. We also know at this time that Muhammad had exposure to other religions, some of which had penetrated the various tribes of Arabia. Most notably, you have Christianity, and Muhammad's wife's cousin was in fact a Christian. You also have Judaism, these two clearly being related religions, Christianity coming out of a Jewish tradition.

We also know that the two great empires here, the Byzantines and Persian empires, are in constant conflict. In fact, the Arabs and many in the Middle East are the pawns in that conflict. So you have the Byzantines versus the Persians, with the possibility that those living in their lands might not have been happy with either. There's also the sense that we're at the very beginning of a long decline for the Byzantine Empire.

So one thesis could be that Muhammad was able to bring many of the ideas of Christianity and Judaism. These ideas helped to unify a fragmented Arab people, and not only did it unify them, but it gave them the energy that you can have through religious zeal. That energy is what allowed them to not only unify in Arabia—they're able to unify most of Arabia by the time of Muhammad's death—but within a hundred years of his death, they're able to take over the entire Sassanid Empire and make major inroads into the Byzantine Empire.

So one argument might be—and I encourage you to argue with me—that they were unified; they had this missionary zeal which perhaps was only seen in Christianity before Islam. They were able to take advantage of conflict and discontent between the Byzantines and Persians in order to spread. Now, another question is: do we see any patterns here? Are there any other examples in history of this happening?

Well, the most comparable religion is Christianity, which is today larger than Islam. But in Christianity, you have a long period between Jesus, who is the central figure of Christianity and the underlying spiritual figure, and when Christianity really spreads. That really starts with Constantine, roughly 300 years after the time of Jesus.

What's interesting about the example in this video, the example of Islam, is that Muhammad plays a little bit of both of these roles. He is a spiritual figure; he has revelations, but he is also the founder of an empire. He also governs; he is also a military and political figure. And so, perhaps for the first time in history on this scale, you have the combination of religious zeal, of spiritual belief, of faith combined with governance, combined with the desire to create an empire.

In terms of empire, the only thing that might be comparable in terms of the vastness and the speed in which it happens is the Mongol Empire. The Mongols are an example of people who are fragmented initially, tribal, unified by Genghis Khan, and through that unification were able to spread incredibly rapidly and take on some long historic and possibly declining empires.

So I'll leave you there. It's a fascinating question that historians debate to this day: Islam started awfully fast and spread awfully fast. Why did this happen? Was it some unique characteristics of Muhammad? Was it some unique characteristics of the religion? Or, as Thomas Carlyle alludes to, maybe this whole region was just waiting for something like this—something to unify the tribes of Arabia and take on the decaying Byzantine and Sassanid empires.