Islamic 1200–1450
Politically fragmented, culturally vibrant. Islam spread mainly via trade networks and Turkic migrations, creating major frontiers of encounter in India and Iberia.
Core geography & vectors
- Span: Spain/Morocco, Middle East/Egypt, North India.
- Expansion c. 1000–1500 driven by merchants/missionaries (to Southeast Asia, Central Asia, sub-Saharan Africa) and Turkic warriors (to Anatolia, Balkans, India).
Heartland politics
- Abbasid Caliphate (Baghdad): retains theoretical authority by 1200 but real power slips to regional rulers.
- Turkic transformation
- Enter as slave soldiers, then seize power (Seljuk Turks, 11th–12th)
- Adopt title sultan (not Turkic kaghan), signals Islamic legitimacy
- 10th to 14th: broad conversion to Islam among Turkic groups
- Mongols sack Baghdad (1258) formal end of Abbasid rule.
- Ottoman Empire
- Founded by Turkic warriors in Anatolia.
- 1453: take Constantinople; mid-15th control most of Anatolia, push into the Balkans (large Christian populations).
- 16th: expand across Middle East, Egypt, coastal North Africa, Black Sea rim, Eastern Europe.
- Significance: vast, long-lasting, multiethnic, sophisticated; rulers style themselves sultan + caliph.
- Military/administration
- Janissaries (from 14th): paid, uniformed standing army; later use muskets/hand cannons.
- Devshirme: levy Christian boys train as civil/ military elites; ceiling: grand vizier.
India
- Conquest & state: Turkic invasions from 1000; Sultanate of Delhi (1206) institutionalizes rule.
- Conversion pattern
- Never majority: 20–25% overall (by 1200s/after); clusters in Punjab, Sind, Bengal.
- Drivers: spiritual appeal, egalitarian ethos (attractive to low-caste/untouchables and disillusioned Buddhists) and tax relief (jizya), and Sufi mediation.
- Core Hindu heartland remains resilient; many Hindus serve within Muslim political/military structures.
- Southern exception: Vijayanagar Empire (1336–1646)
- Nearly all South India; capital ~500000; hybrid architecture; regular Hindu–Muslim commercial/military interaction (Muslim merchants; Muslim mercenaries).
Spain (al-Andalus)
- High point (900s–c.1000)
- Córdoba among world’s largest/most splendid; Europe’s most prosperous agriculture.
- Cross-faith elite sociability; by 1000 perhaps ~75% population converted to Islam.
- ʿAbd al-Rahman III (912–961): freedom of worship; open path to bureaucracy.
- Turn to intolerance
- Late 10th: tolerance narrows; polity fragments; wars with northern Christian kingdoms; ( 981–1002) persecutes Christians.
- Reconquista
- 1492: Granada falls to Ferdinand & Isabella; Islam outlawed in many areas; forced conversion/exile; expulsion of ~200,000 Jews; early 1600s: even converts (Moriscos) expelled.
- Enduring legacy: one-way transmission of Arabic/Greco learning (philosophy, math, medicine, optics, astronomy, botany) to Latin Christendom; Islamic Spain survives mainly as memory.