Muslim Conquests - Expansion Theme, and Context

If Islamic studies, movements of culture in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, were not part of your schooling, go to this site for a map of the reach of early Islam - and ask why we teach as though the West is the compass point. Go to Historical Maps Overview, at Map, the Muslim World 814AD. Look at the size of Baghdad.

The roll of the Muslim territorial and religious expansion.

In no time at all, within 10 years, within a century, of the death of the Prophet in 621 AD. In that short span, the new religion had established itself firmly throughout and beyond the Arab lands of origin, and was still going, the rule then moving from the Arabs to include the Turks, and the Ottoman Empire taking over for centuries beating at Europe's doors. Europe, paying others to buffer for them (the Venetians hiring others in the Balkans, so Venice could be uninterrupted in its Empire building, for example), kept up its own religious arguments and internal and external persecutions, geneologies on thrones competing, but was there more that aided the Muslim expansion. This is not to downplay the commitment to belief that drove the movement, but to set it in a context.

Here, the Alhambra Palace, the Fountain of the Lions, at Grenada, Spain.

Black Death. Combined with local violence. Spain, Romania, the Balkans, accounts of battles against the Turks, the reign of Caliphs, what made Eastern and Central Europe so vulnerable. The role of disease and violence in history. The weakening that results, combined with lack of commitment to a relatively fixed belief system. There were differences persisting, and emerging conflicts between cultural social and religious justice-economic systems.

Here: A new book. It seems that the Black Death had a role in religious conquests as well as in other economic, social areas. Look at the speed and efficiency of the Muslim conquests after the death of the Prophet Mohammed.

To be read: "The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In," by Hugh Kennedy, Middleast Correspondent, The Economist, Da Cap Press 2007, see International Herald Tribune, at ://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/04/arts/idbriefs5H.php; Steve Goddard's HistoryWire at ://www.historywire.com/2008/01/book-alert-th-1.html. Highlights from the NYT review by Max Rodenbeck:

1. Chronology provided: Unity and focus of Islam's faith, one text, virtually immediately upon the death of the Prophet Mohammed. Compare to Christianity 10-100 years after the death of Jesus, where people were still arguing over what should be in the Bible or not, "canonized" - see ://gbgm-umc.org/UMW/bible/cea.stm; in the fourth century or so; and still are discussing what happened there; and an additioal current topic - how do later writings relate, see ://www.jefflindsay.com/BOMIntro.shtml.

• 632 AD: death of the Prophet Mohammed

• By 647 AD: followers had "erased" Persia, decimated Byzantium's power, extended an empire's reach "as vast as that of Rome at its height.

• By 732 AD: Muslim armies had reached China to the East, extended 5000 miles to the West, and "had charged across Spain to clash with the Merovingian princes of what is now France."

2. Scope

Military; one faith, uprooting local religions (Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism); severing of "1000 year old links" that had bound south and north Mediterranean areas; linguistic - Arabic supplanted Latin and Greek as main conduit, "repository of human knowledge."

3. Factors primarily identified include:

Timing. "Exploitation of weakness." Plague had reduced populations in Near East and Mediterranean. "Political Turmoil" left Byzantium and Persia profoundly weakened. Areas were unprepared to counter the Muslim attacks.

Christianity was fractured - many Egyptians and Syrians sided with the Arabs against the Byzantines. Byzantines had tried to use force to convert. Muslims were more lenient, in many areas, allowing other worship, without onerous conditions (in many areas, not all). However, resistance could also be met with destruction in others.

4. Double fronts. Arab strength at outset, Turkish strength later in pushes through Balkans, East Indies, Spain. Then, stability of borders, after further upheavals several centuries later, once Spain was reconquered, and Turkish Muslims pushed back from Balkans, East Indies.

Mainly used in the book = texts, rather than archeological evidence, but we are not sure quite what that means. Waiting for the book at the library.

Plague -Plague Columns - Marian Columns - Mary the Protector

In Eastern and Central Europe, supplications against recurrence of Plague, and gratitude for deliverance, take the form of Marian Columns in many towns, or Plague Columns. In the Czech Republic, there was a particularly virulent epidemic in about 1680, that led to many towns constructing in about 1715 these Plague or Marian, Columns. Here, at Kutna Hora, in the Czech Republic, see Mary at the top with her crown of stars, and the piles of shapes beneath, leading up like so many agonizing buboes, to where she finally rests. See Czech Republic Road Ways. Read about this town in the Czech Republic that lists its Marian Column. //www.zamekvranov.cz/screen.php?str=pamatky_obce_vranov&jazyk=en. Or, see its extreme form - almost ugly in its representation of lump-like pustules, at Olomuc, CZ. Do your own Images search for Olomouc Marian Column.

How did Mary arise to this position, as somehow a safety source from death? No direct answer, but some religious groups give roundabout ones: www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Annodomini/THEME_11/EN/theme11-7. It looks like when it comes down to absolute devastation, a goddess figure works better. Theologians among us?


How humans react to unfathomable disaster. There are many fountains and other kinds of memorials to the era of the Black Death, and how people tried to expiate whatever forces were bringing it on again and again. There were at least three forms of it.

This fountain showing death, disease and suffering from the Plague I believe was in Oberammergau, Germany, or perhaps Garmisch.

A familiar memorial and way to keep the Plague from coming again is the pledge to act a play out in Oberammergau, Germany, every ten years. The next will be in 2010. See www.neuschwanstein-country.net/hotels/Oberammergau/en-oberam. Other sources:
www3.iath.virginia.edu/osheim/intro.

The Plague affected politics, culture, religion, society. See also "The Black Death, Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe" by Robert S. Gottfried, The Free Press, 1983.

One site focuses on the specific outbreak 1347-1350, and focuses on the rat infestation and rats as carriers of the fleas that passed on the Plague, see www.insecta-inspecta.com/fleas/bdeath/.

Climate change - attention, out there - can also be dispositive in how a disease spreads. Other sources say it was not just the rodent infection. That combined with climate change 1050-1347, to extreme cold and wet; then add the movements west of the Huns and others from the East, carrying Plague from where Plague seems to have originated in conditions there, and the carrying of it from port to port. Then, a period of respite, perhaps 8-10 years, maybe more, and it came again. The sick rats died, the survivors began to reproduce again, the infection was still being fostered by the climate and other conditions, and it began again. And again.

Over a hundred years. 1350-1500. Enormous and repetitive depopulation. Overall perhaps a third of the European population died. In each bout, maybe 10% here, 30% there, 50% somewhere else, and then it all began again in differing proportions. And smallpox, measles.

But many modern medicine and religious and literature ideas began with coping with Plague, as did great social and economic change. Bubonic Plague. The Plague. The Black Death.

For more general info, see www.themiddleages.net/plague.