The Precursors Of Islam (m8 3000 BCE–500 CE)

 

Adherence to Islam is a global phenomenon: Muslims predominate in some 30 to 40 countries,
from the Atlantic eastward to the Pacifi c and
along a belt that stretches across northern Africa into
Central Asia and south to the northern regions of the
Indian subcontinent. Although many in the West consider Arabs
and Muslims synonymous, Arabs account for fewer than
one-fi fth of all Muslims, more than half of whom live
east of Karachi, Pakistan. Despite the absence of
large-scale Islamic political entities,
the Islamic faith continues to expand, by some estimates faster than any other major religion. A very broad perspective is required to
explain the history of today’s Islamic world. This
approach must enlarge upon conventional political or
dynastic divisions to draw a comprehensive picture of the
stages by which successive Muslim communities,
throughout Islam’s 14 centuries, encountered and
incorporated new peoples so as to produce an
international religion and civilization.

In general, events referred to here are dated according to the Gregorian calendar, and eras are
designated BCE (before the Common Era or Christian Era)
and CE (Common Era or Christian Era), terms
which are equivalent to BC (before Christ) and AD (Latin: anno Domini). In some cases the Muslim reckoning of the
Islamic era is used, indicated by AH (Latin: anno Hegirae). The Islamic era
begins with the date of Muhammad’s emigration (Hijrah) to Medina, which corresponds to July 16, 622 CE, in the Gregorian calendar.

The term Islamic refers to Islam as a religion. The
term Islamicate refers to the
social and cultural complex that is historically associated with Islam
and the Muslims, even when found among non-Muslims. Islamdom refers to that complex of
societies in which the Muslims and their faith have been
prevalent and socially dominant.

The prehistory of Islamdom is the
history of central Afro-Eurasia from Hammurabi of Babylon to the Achaemenid Cyrus
II in Persia to Alexander the Great to the Sasanian emperor Nushirvan to
Muhammad in Arabia; or, in a
Muslim view, from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to Jesus to
Muhammad. The potential for Muslim empire building was established with the
rise of the earliest
civilizations in western Asia. It was refined with the
emergence and spread of what have been called the region’s
Axial Age religions—Abrahamic, centred on the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, and
Mazdean, focused on the
Iranian deity Ahura Mazda—and their later relative, Christianity. It was
facilitated by the expansion of trade from eastern Asia to the
Mediterranean and by the political changes thus effected. The
Muslims were heirs to the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Hebrews, even the Greeks
and Indians; the societies they created bridged time and space, from ancient
to modern and from east to west.

Islamic history / edited by Laura S.
Etheredge. Britannica Educational Publishing

(a
trademark of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.): New York.