The Growth of Islam Once Muhammad began to spread the Muslim faith, several “rightly guided Caliphs” began to actively encourage the spread of Islam in the 600’s.

The Muslim armies were mostly Arab. They took Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Persia, and Egypt. Muslim traders took the religious message into Africa.

In the Muslim faith, there is a duty to actively spread Islam. How might this cause problems?

“Between two types of men who seek to create inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no alternative but force. It seems that all societies rest on the death of men.” - Francis Bacon

See page 280. Islam spread from the Arabian peninsula north into Persia and West into Africa. Can you see where the roadblock was for their expansion? Halt you Muslims!

The Muslim armies even took over Spain! But success caused problems. Many leaders fought against one another for control of the Muslim empire.

By the 1100’s (the time of the Crusades), the Muslim states had an advanced knowledge of Chemistry, Medicine, Astronomy, Geography, Math, History, and Philosophy. So why didn’t they emerge from the Middle Ages first?

The battle over control of the Medieval world will be centered on Jerusalem, which was under Muslim control in 1100.

The Eastern Slavs Living in what we now call Russia, the slavs traded and worked with the Byzantines until they were conquered by the Mongols in 1240 AD.

The Eastern Slavs lived on the steppe (grassland plains) north of the Black Sea. Most of them were farmers.

From 860 to 1100, the Slavs were allied with (or ruled by) the Vikings of Scandinavia. The Viking Rurik was a great ruler. I get down with my bad self!

Rurik’s successor, Oleg, enlarged the village of Kiev to a great trading city. After this success, the Slavs began raiding the Byzantine empire. Their alliances had shifted once the Vikings took control.

Later, Prince Vladimir was so impressed with the Hagia Sophia that he converted to Christianity (along with his empire.)

Most of the Slavic empire was taken over by the Mongols in 1240, but Alexander Nevsky stopped them at the Neva River.

I got’cher Mongol right here buddy!

Much later, after Constantinople fell to the Turks, Moscow stood alone as the center of the Eastern Orthodox Church. This “Third Rome” was a true empire with much of the religious heritage of Rome.