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We look, in this unit at the successors to Muhammad.
His unexpected death in 632 threw his community
into total disarray, chaos,
confusion and turmoil. The difficulty it had in simply surviving
speaks volumes about the absence
of a fully formed religious identity or at least the inability
of that identity to claim the allegiance of many of those who had joined the faith.
Many points of tension surfaced,
but probably no set of issues proved so contentious
to Muslim posterity
or so critical to subsequent definitions of what it meant to be a
Muslim
than that surrounding the question of leadership
after the Prophet's death. Historians are fairly certain
that Mohammed had not made any arrangements
or at least finalized them for the organization and leadership
of the community before he died; and there are dozens of separate traditions
which suggested that the Prophet intended one person
or another person to succeed him. But
as others have pointed out, there very number,
let alone their inconsistency, demonstrate that in fact
he had not made or at least he hadn't
publicly revealed any decision concerning this critical
question. This week you're going to have an
overview what happened to the Islam faith
following the Prophet's death, with some basic information about the Caliphate.
The Caliphate has traditionally been divided into three different periods:
first the so-called "Rightly Guided Caliphs"
from Muhammad's death in 632 until 661.
These were all companions of Muhammad. The Sunni sect of
Islam recognizes this phase, but not
the Shiite Islam sect. The second period
is referred to as the Umayyad Empire, and it was from 661
until about 750. This was followed by the
Abbasid Empire from 750 until 1258.
During this time in the last period,
Islam not only created a huge Arab Kingdom,
but spread its influence to other parts of the Middle
East and Europe. The very last era
was also known as islam's Golden Age and was the
flowering of Islamic civilization in all respects,
but was ultimately fragmented by the Mongol conquests,.
Remember to post to the discussion forum this week
and submit your final response paper due at the
end off the unit.