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The Byzantine Empire: The Rise Of Islam

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While the Byzantine Empire tried to get back some territories which were conquered by the Germans in the 600’s; a man named Muhammad, who was considered a smart, charismatic and honest person, became the leader of a new religion, the Islam. He aimed to profess God’s message and, until the day of his dead, he convinced people to join him. His believes were based in that there is only one God, that if people doesn’t believe, they must die and, that Christians and Jews should not interact with Muslims. After Muhammad died in 632, some things changed for the Muslims, nothing stayed the same as when Muhammad was alive. Nowadays, 1400 years later, his religion has become the second most powerful religion in the world, and its number of followers …show more content…

The aim of this essay is to compare the political, social, cultural and some religious variations between the mid-7th century and the 11th century in Egypt and in all the Muslim-ruled world.

The Egyptians passed from being under the power of Heraclius, the Byzantine’s emperor, to be under the power of Umar ibn Al-Khattab, the Caliph of the Muslims. Since that moment, Islam ruled the zone, but through the years, the things started changing. In the Muslim-ruled world in 640’s, there was not yet a fight for the control of Islam, being just one Caliph: Umar ibn Al-Khattab. This Caliph was known to care about the wellbeing of the poor’s and underprivilege people. During his reign, the Muslim territory encompassed 13 provinces: Mecca, Medina, Basra, Kufa, Jazira, Syria, Aylya, Ramlah, Upper Egypt, Lower Egypt, Khorasan, Azerbaijan and Fars; now known as the territories of Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iran. Those territories were under the control of Rashidum Caliphate, represented by Umar. It was a democratic system, because Muslims chose the Caliphs based on their morality and their relationship with Ala. On the other side, on the 1000’s, the …show more content…

In order to analyze this section, we need to talk about the economic development of the first Muslims, that produced the Muslim social classes. Because the lands of Egypt were very fertile, the economy of the Muslim world enhanced leaded by the agriculture sector. The owners of the land were, together with the religious authorities and the military sector, the powerful population of the Arab world of the 7th century. This changed through time, and in the 11th century, the Hawala was establish, an early informal transfer system that facilitated the financial transactions of that time. On the other hand, there was only one currency for all the Muslim world, the Dinar. This advantages make of the traders and bankers the powerful people of the Arab world. Another big change was the role of women, in Christianity women had some freedom over themselves even though they depended on men, however, when Muslims conquered Egypt, the power of women over themselves was reduced. Even though it seemed that they care about women and in the Quran and in the Hadith were some rules about that, women were treated worst. Finally, we have to talk about the tensions between Islam. After Muhammad’s dead in 632, there was a dispute about who should succeed him. The Muslims split in two: the Shiites and the Sunnis. The Shiites support that the successor of Muhammad should be a relative from him, while

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