7.1 Europe and Islam

According to the biographies of Prophet Muhammad, It is emphasized by almost all Muslim historians that Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) during his lifetime sent letters to all the kings of the infidels - Chosroes in Persia, Caesar in Byzantium, the Negus in ‎Ethiopia - summoning them to embrace the new faith and submit to its rule and law.‎ He began to lead the Muslim armies to defend the newly Muslim community In the Arabian Peninsula and after he passed out, his companions began to spread Islam and communicate its universal message to all mankind. This of course involved fighting against those infidels who saw Islam as arising empire threatening their existence. After a period of internal trials and a period of political turmoil following the death of the third Caliph Uthman bin Afan, The Umayad dynasty was established and the Muslims began to expand their empire to the East and the West.

The major battlefield was in Europe. The first ‎barriers to be overcome in the advance of Islam from its Arabian birthplace into the ‎neighboring lands were the two rival empires of Persia and Byzantium, which controlled ‎the region which we now call the Middle East. The Persian barrier was overthrown, and the ‎Persian Empire with all its dependencies was incorporated in the new Islamic state - ‎including its capital city and its ruling elite, whose subjection and subsequent adherence to ‎Islam brought incalculable gains. The Byzantine barrier was weakened and ‎pushed back but remained standing on a new line, roughly equivalent to the southern and ‎eastern borders of Anatolia.‎

For the purpose of this study, we shall briefly discuss three ways in which Islam was expanded into Europe:

7.1 Europe and Islam

The Western Frontier

Under Al-Walid (Al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik an Umayyad caliph who ruled from 705 – 710), a new stage of Islamic conquests began. He re-conquered parts of Egypt from the Byzantine Empire and moved on into Carthage and across to the west of North Africa. Muslim armies under Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and began to conquer Spain using North African Berber armies. Spain was the farthest extent of Islamic control of Europe (they were stopped at the Battle of Tours). The Muslim rule of these territories in the west known as Al-Andalus (also known as Moorish Iberia what are today Spain, Portugal, and France) lasted about seven centuries until it fell around 1492.

The Central Frontier

The long struggle for Spain and Portugal and the earlier struggle for southern Italy had ended in Christian victory and Muslim expulsion. Meanwhile a new and enormous Muslim counterattack was gathering force, this time not in the west but in the east, not from the Arabs but from a new Islamic power, the Turks. Already in the eleventh century Turkish armies and migrating Turkish tribesmen had won the greater part of Anatolia from the Byzantines, transforming what had once been Greek and Christian into a Turkish and Muslim land. The Turks created one of the greatest and most enduring of the Islamic empires. In 1352 a Turkish force, brought over - like the first Arabs in Spain - as allies of a Christian contender for power, occupied the fortress of Tzympe, north of Gallipoli on the European shore of the Dardanelles. A century later, masters of the whole Balkan Peninsula, they were ready to mount the final attack which added Constantinople, as copestone, to their...

7.1 Europe and Islam

...new imperial structure in Europe and Asia. From their new capital in Istanbul, the Ottoman sultans launched a series of further expeditions, which brought them to the plains of Hungary and twice, in 1529 and again in 1683, to the walls of Vienna. For a century and a half, the Turkish armies, operating from their bases in Buda and Belgrade, offered a nearer and greater threat to the heart of Europe than had ever come from the Saracens in Spain.

The Eastern Frontier

In the east, Islamic armies under Muhammad bin Qasim made it as far as ‎the Indus Valley. Under Al-Walid, the caliphate empire stretched from ‎Spain to India. In south-eastern Europe, Muslim Turks conquered and gradually colonized Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), eventually replacing the indigenous Hellenized people ruled by the Greek Byzantine empire. Their forces spilled over into the Balkans and ruled much of that part of Europe until the early 20th century, when the Turks lost most of their European possessions. Muslim communities made up of Turks and Islamized Slavs, Romanians, Albanians and Greeks emerged; some still living there today. In the 10th century, some communities in what is now Russia's Tartarstan converted to Islam, eventually establishing a powerful state that fell to Russian Orthodox power in the 16th century. Finally, the last Islamic wave coincides by and large with post-1945 process of decolonization, which led many migrants from former European colonies and overseas territories in Africa and Asia to immigrate to Europe (primarily but not exclusively their former colonial masters). In addition, large number of Turks (and Kurds) emigrated from Turkey to Germany and to a lesser extent France. At present, only one European country (other than Turkey which has a small region in Europe) has a (nominal) Muslim majority, namely Albania. Proportionately, Bosnia-...

7.1 Europe and Islam

...Herzegovina has the second largest Muslim population. Russia has the largest indigenous Muslim population (around 15 per cent out of 145 million). France has the largest immigrant nominally Muslim population with about 10 per cent (out of 60 million). All these figures should be taken with a grain of salt. Many Muslims are non-practicing (especially in the Balkans and in France). Many are cultural Muslims and agnostic or atheist in terms of belief and practice. Other Muslims are actually indigenous Europeans who converted to Islam (because of marriage or out of belief).

Southeastern Europe

Muslim Arabs fought the Byzantine Empire soon after the establishment of Islam. The then Christian Syrian, Armenian, Egyptian and North African provinces of the Byzantine Empire were overrun, soon after, Constantinople was besieged twice, once in a long blockade between 674 and 678, and once again between 717 and 718. However, the Byzantines successfully defended Constantinople and were able to re-establish control over much of Anatolia. This blocked further expansion of the Arab Caliphate towards Eastern Europe.

The Arab armies also conquered much of the Caucasus from the Turkic Khazars during the Khazar–Arab Wars, but the instability of the Umayyad Caliphate made a permanent occupation impossible. The Arab armies withdrew and Khazar independence was re-asserted. This also prevented Islamic expansion into Eastern Europe for some time.

In 824 CE, Byzantine Crete fell to Arabs, who established an emirate on the island (see Al-Hakam I).

7.1 Europe and Islam

The Golden Horde began its conquest of present day Russia and Ukraine in the 13th century. Despite the fact that they were not Muslim at the time, the western Mongols adopted Islam as their state religion in the early 14th century. More than half of the European portion of Russia and Ukraine, were under suzerainty of Muslim Turks from the 13th to the 15th century.