Empires
&
Dynasties

At almost exactly the same time as Saint Columba was arriving on Iona,

bringing Christianity to what we now think of as Scotland,

far away in Makkah,

in the Year of the Elephant,

a child called Muhammad was born.

40 years later, in a cave near to Makkah,

he heard the first words of what we now know as the Qur'an,

and the world changed.

Over the next 23 years, his Message united the warring tribes of Arabia,

and after he died his message and way of life quickly spread.

In ten years, under the leadership of Umar, it was carried north

into Syria, Jerusalem and Palestine,

east into Iraq and Persia,

and to much of Egypt in the west.

Under Uthman Islam spread actoss North Africa,

and for the first time muslims formed their own navy,

but when he was murdered it led to civil war amongst the muslims,

and after the murder of Ali, the muslim umma was no longer run by the Messenger's close companions,

the reins of power were taken over by a clan that had mostly been his bitter opponents,

and the Umayyads ruled over the Ummah for the next 90 years.

Under the Umayyads, the expansion continued,

with Islam crossing from Morocco into Spain in the west

and travelling as far as China in the east,

where a muslim army fought and won a battle with the T'ang dynasty.

Never had an empire grown at such speed.

But everyone was not happy to be under Umayyad rule,

and they were finally overthrown in a quite ruthless way by the next clan to hold power, the Abbasids,

who moved the capital city from Damascus to Baghdad.

The Abbasid dynasty was a time of great prosperity, magnificent buildings and great learning,

but much of the empire over which they ruled was divided into areas with their own dynasties in power,

sometimes claiming the Caliphate for themselves.

So there were the Fatimids in Egypt,

the last of the Umayyads in Spain,

the Almoravids and Almohads in North Africa,

and the Ghaznavids who spread Islam across northern India.

But all this division left the empire open to attack from Christians in the west,

until an army of nomads from Central Asia, the Seljuk Turks, swept in to take control,

and formed an alliance with the Abbasids to help them face the Crusades.

This allowed the founder of a new Ayyubid dynasty in Egypt,

the famous Salah-ud-Din,

to recapture Jerusalem and Palestine.

Meanwhile at about the same time in Scotland,

another famous name was taking power,

as Macbeth took the kingdom from Duncan of the House of Dunkeld.

But by the time of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce,

the world of Islam was facing another great threat,

as the Mongol armies fought their way down from the north,

eventually conquering Baghdad,

where it is said that they formed great heaps of the heads of the hundreds of thousands that they killed.

The Mongol advance was only halted by the Mamluks of Egypt,

the warrior slaves who had just taken charge in a new kind of sultanate

that was not passed from father to son.

But having conquered the heartlands of the muslim empire,

the Mongols themselves were overcome in a very different way,

not by an army but by Islam itself,

as within a few years Sufi teachings affected the Mongol Khans,

who converted and became muslim themselves.

And soon their power was in turn taken over by Turkish people

who followed them down from Central Asia

who also became muslim and who then were the spearhead of a new muslim expansion.

By the time that Henry VIII was on the throne,

the Ottoman Turks had taken Greece and Bosnia,

and all the lands around the Black Sea,

the empire of Suleiman the Magnificent was one of the world's greatest powers,

though about to be divided by the Mughal empire of Akbar

spreading through the Indian sub-continent,

and the Shi'a Safavids in Persia.

But the Industrial Revolution in Europe was about to change things completely,

as all around the world they took military control of muslim lands,

and the muslims have never recovered.

But despite their loss of earthly power, Islam still remains in the hearts and minds of the muslim people.

They may have little control over the world, but the words of the Qur'an remain,

and the Way of Life that the Messenger taught is still lived by muslims today,

whoever is charging them taxes.