Mr. Walker
World History 9ABC
September 15, 2014
The Reasons Of Why Islam Spread So Quickly
The main reasons of Islam spread so quickly in the 7th and 8th century are because of the Muslims were unified together at the time, and some nearby empires, such as Byzantine became weaker as a result of war and diseases, and also Muslims showed religious tolerance to the non-Muslim people. After Muhammad died in 632, Abu Bakr became the first caliph means the rightly guided. For the next two years, he applied the jihad in order to pacify the revolt in the Islam world. However, during the process of jihad, Abu Bakr and the next three elected caliphs -Umar, Uthman, and Ali expanded the territory to the east to the Indus River and to the west through North Africa to Spain. That’s how Islam began to spread.
The Muslims were unified together because they had to achieve a particular religious aim. Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman historian said that in 380 CE before the rise of Islam the Arab people were called Saracens. The Romans looked down at them and even said that their living style was like the Nomadic people. During that time, the Saracens didn’t have any of the government institutions and even had no specific place to live (Document 1). However, this point of view had been totally changed when Islam started to rise. Moreover, the Qur’an stated that people who have submitted to the God should listen to what the God commanded you to do, and you will go to the Paradise when you died. The God commanded the Muslims to battle with the unbelievers, and he promised he would protect them and won all of the battles (Document 4). Thus, the sentences of God gave them courage to fight with others. For example, in 711, when the Muslims were going to fight Spain, the Arab ambassador said that once they were looked down by people around them, but now if they won the battle, no one would looked down them and also if they died, they would go to Paradise because they