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In pre-Islamic times, Arabia was a vast desert and desert land, but full of gold reserves, inhabited by pagan Arabs, who were nomads grouped into tribes, extracted gold from mines and traded camel caravans among themselves.
In a cave, a merchant named Muhammad , [58] meditating, had a revelation. An angel appeared in front of him and said, "Read . " The prophet was very scared of what had happened to him (he could not read or write) and returned home and told his wife the strange story. Muhammad began to preach, first in the family and among acquaintances, then to the general public. At first he is ignored by most people, and then ridiculed. However, he managed to attract more and more converts to his new religion.
His sermons were written in the Qur'an . As the number of followers increased, Muhammad had become a threat to the leaders of his society and was persecuted along with those who followed him. He was forced to leave his hometown of Mecca and go with a group of devout Muslims to the city of Yatrib ( Medina ) in 622 , where he was invited by two rival tribes, who had agreed to recognize him as a prophet and expected him to to arbitrate their disputes. The flight was called Hejiraand marked the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Muhammad becomes the leader of the city and soon Medina becomes the capital of the first Islamic state. Medina was attacked by its stronger neighbors in Mecca, but Muhammad managed to win some important battles, ensuring the security of his state. It continues to expand and eventually Muhammad conquers Mecca without bloodshed in 630., driving out the Jews there, destroying the pagan idols around the Kaaba, and proclaiming the Kaaba as the Main Altar of Islam and the common Qibla (direction of prayer) of all Muslims around the world. He also built a mosque around the Kaaba, Al-Masjid al-Haram (Holy Mosque), currently the largest mosque in the world. At his death, the entire Arabian Peninsula was united for the first time in history, in the new Islamic state, but the religious split of the Shiites from the Shunite majority takes place. The two branches of the same religion will be in a continuous rivalry throughout history. Succeeded by the "four righteous caliphs", there is a very rapid spread of Islam. The Muslims dominated the entire region of the former Sassanid Empire(Iraq and Iran), expanding to Central and Western Asia, conquering and occupying Byzantine territories such as Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa and Spain, reaching the south of France, forming empires: the Umayyad Caliphate that practiced Sunnism, followed by the Abbasid Caliphate who practiced Shiism (later Sunni). Constantinople was invaded in two stages, but without success. Cities like Cordoba or Baghdadthey became cultural and scientific centers, where libraries were built in which scholars took over the texts of the ancient Greeks, developing branches of medicine, engineering, astronomy and mathematics, creating algebra and Arabic numerals that we use today. Abbas Ibn Firnas, an engineer, physicist and poet from Cordoba, made a glider with which he tried to fly. Islam opens a new chapter in human history. The use of gold deposits in Arabia to unite Arab tribes and form armies of warriors who will lead the Jihad(The Holy War against the Unbelievers) led to the spread of the new religion in the Middle East and North Africa. The Arabs were also professional traders, dominating the Mediterranean basin and opening new routes to the Far East, but also to northern Europe. [59] In the 8th century, during the Abbasid dynasty, the rule of Harun al-Rashid marked the beginning of a prosperous period for the caliphate and its capital, Baghdad.. He became famous in medieval history for giving the Frankish emperor Charlemagne a white elephant. The French traded wood, furs, swords and slaves in exchange for silks, spices and precious metals from the Arabs. In the ninth century, the Islamic empire disintegrated into divided rival caliphates in the Córdoba Caliphate (Spain) and the Fatimid Caliphate (Egypt).
