MEDIEVAL HISTORY NOTES: GRADE 7
BYZANTINE AND MUSLIM CIVILIZATIONS TECHBOOK SECTIONS 11 and 12
Section 1: THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE
I. Constantinople at a Crossroads
-At its height, the ancient Roman Empire controlled the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.
-It also ruled parts of northern Europe and the region we now call the Middle East.
-In the centuries after Rome’s power faded, these lands went through a tug of war. Two groups—the Christian Byzantines and the Muslim Arabs and Turks—developed powerful civilizations at this time.
-These two groups sometimes shared control and sometimes fought over the region.
-The emperor Constantine began his rule of the enormous Roman Empire in A.D. 306. His reign was marked by two important changes.
-First, Constantine became a Christian and stopped the persecution of Christians in the empire.
-Second, after twenty years of ruling from the city of Rome, Constantine decided to build a new imperial capital.
-Constantine chose Byzantium, an ancient city founded by the Greeks, at the eastern end of the empire.
-In A.D. 330, Byzantium was renamed Constantinople, “the city of Constantine.”
-By the early 500s, an estimated half a million people lived there. Although the name of their city had changed, the people who lived there were still called Byzantines.
-The emperors who followed Constantine continued to rule from Constantinople, in the eastern part of the empire.
-Over time, the Roman Empire split in two. The eastern half was by far the stronger. One reason for its strength was military. The Byzantines had the strongest army in the world.
-Another reason for the Byzantine’s strength was trade.
-Constantinople was built at a major crossroads of land and sea trade routes. It is located on the Bosporus.
-The Bosporus is a strait, or narrow passage, that links two bodies of water. It connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, which flows into the Mediterranean Sea.
-The Bosporus also links two continents, Europe and Asia.
-The diverse people, goods, and ideas that poured into Constantinople made it a major center of international trade. And over time, the Byzantine Empire grew rich.
-Meanwhile, by A.D. 350, the western Roman Empire was already in decline. Roman armies were having difficulty holding back invaders from Europe.
-Germanic groups were coming closer and closer to Rome itself.
-In 476. A Germanic leader ousted the Emperor. Historians call that event the fall of the Roman Empire.
II. The Age of Justinian
- As Rome was falling to invaders, strong fortifications and an excellent army protected Constantinople. But these were not the city’s only strengths.
- The early Byzantine Empire had many excellent rulers who were wise as well as popular. They encouraged education and made reforms to laws and government.
-One of the greatest Byzantine Emperors was Justinian, whose rule began in 527. Justinian was an energetic ruler who rarely gave up on a task until it was completed.
-He had been born into a poor family, and he listened to the ideas of all his subjects—whether they were wealthy nobles or poor peasants.
-One of Justinian’s most lasting contributions was a system of laws. When he became emperor, the empire was using a disorganized system of old Roman laws. Some laws even contradicted others.
-Justinian appointed a team to collect and summarize centuries of Roman laws. The result was Justinian’s Code, an organized collection and explanation of Roman laws for use by the Byzantine Empire.
-Eventually, this code became the basis for the legal systems of most modern European countries.
-In addition to preserving the principles of Roman law, Byzantine scholars also kept and copied the works of the ancient Greeks.
-At its peak, Byzantine civilization blended Greek, Roman, and Christian influences.
-Later, when the empire was in decline, scholars took the ancient manuscripts and their knowledge of the rich Byzantine culture to the newly powerful city-states of Italy.
-Theodora, empress of the Byzantine Empire, came from humble beginnings. Her father was a bear-keeper at Constantinople’s Hippodrome or circus.
-Theodora’s marriage to Justinian gave her great power. Theodora worked to improve women’s rights, and helped change divorce laws to protect women.
III. The Empire’s Later Years
-After Justinian’s death in 565, the Byzantine Empire began to decline. Later emperors had to fight wars against many neighboring enemies—including Persians and Turks to the east, Arabs in the south, and Germanic people to the north and west.
-The Byzantine Empire was shrinking in both size and power.
-As the Byzantines struggled to keep nearby enemies from invading Constantinople, religious and political arguments were weakening the empire from within.
-Although most Byzantines were Christians, they did not practice Christianity the same way as the people in Western Europe did.
-Byzantine Christians rejected the authority of the pope, the leader of the church in Rome. The Byzantine emperor had to approve the choice of the patriarch, or highest church official in Constantinople.
-Greek was the language of the Byzantine church, while Latin was the language of the Roman church. The two branches of Christianity began to grow apart.
-At that time, many Christians prayed to saints or holy people, represented by icons, or paintings of these people. In the 700s, a Byzantine emperor outlawed the use of icons, saying they violated God’s commandments.
-The pope disagreed and banished the emperor from the church.
-Byzantines felt the pope did not have the authority to banish the emperor from the church. These disputes led to a schism, or split, in the Christian church in 1054.
-Now there were two distinct forms of Christianity: the Roman Catholic Church if the west and the Eastern (Greek) Orthodox Church in the East.
-From about 900 until the mid-1000s, the Byzantine Empire experienced a final period of greatness. Trade increased and merchants came to Constantinople from as far away as Venice and Russia.
-As the economy grew in strength, so did the government. The long reign of Basil II—from 976 until 1025—was the most exceptional period of Byzantine history since the rule of Justinian.
-The empire regained some of the land it had lost. There was a burst of creativity in the arts.
-During the 1000s, however, Muslim peoples to the east were also gaining power. By the late 1100s, Turks had taken the inland areas of Asia Minor away from the weakening Byzantine Empire.
-The Byzantines were also threatened by Europeans. In 1171, disagreements over trade led to a war with Venice. And in the early 1200s, Constantinople was attacked by Christian crusaders.
-Western Christians ruled the city for 50 years.
-In 1261, the Byzantines regained their capital, but little was left of their empire.
-In 1453, a force of about 70,000 Turks surrounded Constantinople. They came by both sea and land, and they brought cannons to attack the city’s walls.
-The defending force, which numbered about 7,000, held out for two months. Then the Byzantine capital—which had been a defensive fortress for more than 1,000 years—finally fell.
-However, like Constantine before them, the new rulers would rebuild the city and make it an imperial capital.
-Renamed Istanbul, the city at the crossroads became a great center of Muslim culture and the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
Section 2: The Beginnings of Islam
I. Introduction
-The religion of Islam teaches that in about 610, the prophet Muhammad went into a cave in the Arabian mountains to pray.
-It is said that while Muhammad was inside the cave, he heard the voice of an angel. God told Muhammad through the angel that people had abandoned the true faith. Instead of worshipping only God, they were worshipping many false gods.
- According to Islamic teaching, Muhammad was frightened and unsure that he was worthy of such an important mission. But he obeyed.
-God continued to send Muhammad messages, which Muhammad shared with the people of the Arabian Peninsula.
-These teachings became a religion that brought great changes to the region. And in the centuries after Muhammad’s death, the new religion spread to many parts of the world.
II. The Arabian Peninsula
-In Muhammad’s time, as today, much of the Arabian Peninsula was covered by desert. Although surrounded by water, the peninsula has no major rivers and receives little rainfall.
-Trade with neighboring peoples supported the growth of towns along trade routes..
-And many groups of Bedouins made their homes among the shifting sand dunes of the desert. The Bedouins were nomads.
-The Arabian desert yielded little food for the Bedouins or for their herds of sheep, camels, and goats. Water was also scarce.
-To make their way across the desert, the Bedouin followed traditional routes from one oasis to another. These all-important oases provided plenty of water for the nomads and their animals.
-Because of their knowledge of the desert and its oases, the Bedouin also worked as guides for traders.
-The oases on the Arabian Peninsula became busy trading centers. One of the most important was Mecca.
-Precious goods traded along these routes included perfume and spices, incense, expensive cloth, elephant tusks, and gold.
III. The Prophet Muhammad
-Muhammad was born and grew up in the trading center of Mecca.. As a young man, Muhammad worked on caravans.
-Muhammad liked to walk in the mountains outside Mecca. Troubled by problems he saw in society, he liked to be alone to pray and think.
-When Muhammad was 40 years old, he first heard God speak to him through the angel in the cave. In time, a person who accepted the teachings of Muhammad came to be known as a Muslim, “a person who submits.”
-The religion of Muslims is called Islam.
-Muhammad preached that all people were brothers and sisters in a community established by God—but few people in Mecca listened. They thought Muhammad’s teachings threatened their old gods. People in Mecca also feared that Muhammad might gain political power.
-In 622, Muhammad and his followers were invited to Yathrib, a city north of Mecca. The people there regarded Muhammad as a prophet.
-This movement of early Muslims is known as the hijra, or “the migration.” The year of the hijra—622 in the calendar used in the United States—became year 1 on the Muslim calendar.
-After the hijra, the name of Yathrib was changed to Medina. This name means “city” and is short for “the city of the prophet.”
-Islam did not remain limited to Medina. By the time Muhammad died two years later, the new religion of Islam had spread all across the Arabian Peninsula.
-In Arabic, the word for God is Allah. Five times each day, Muslims are called to worship in this way. And five times a day, every faithful Muslim stops whatever he or she is doing to pray.
-Basic Muslim beliefs are expressed in the Five Pillars of Islam. These practices are the foundations of Islam.
-First is the Declaration of Faith. Muslims must regularly declare the belief that there is only one true God and Muhammad is God’s messenger.
-Prayer: Muslims must pray five times a day, facing in the direction of the holy city of Mecca.The muezzin calls Muslims to worship with the words, “There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet. This saying expresses the importance of the Muslim belief in one God.
-Almsgiving: Muslims must give alms or money that goes to the needy.
-Fasting: Muslims must fast during daylight hours in the month of Ramadan
-Pilgrimage: Muslims must make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least one time in their lives if they’re able.
-The holy book of Islam is called the Quran. It contains the rules of Islam.
-The Quran contains many kinds of writing, including stories, promises, warnings, and instructions.
-Muslims, like Jews and Christians, believe in one God. They regard Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses as important people in their religious history.
-Muhammad saw himself as the last prophet in a long line of prophets that included all these men. Muhammad felt respect for Jews and Christians, whom he called “people of the Book.”
- Before Islam, in most Arab societies, women were not regarded as equal to men, and female children were not valued. The Quran, however, taught that men and women were spiritually equal. It also gave women more rights under the law.
-In 656, Uthman, the leader of the Muslim community, was assassinated. His death split the Muslim world in two. Muslims disagreed over who should be their rightful leader. Over the next several decades, two main groups gradually emerged on opposite sides of the disagreement.
-The smaller group, called Shiites, argued that the ruler should be a man who was a direct descendent of Muhammad.
-The larger group, called Sunnis, argued that any truly religious Muslim man of Muhammad’s tribe could lead the community. Today, about 85% of Muslims are Sunnis.
Section 3: The Golden Age of Muslim Civilization
- I. The Spread of Islam
-Within 150 years after Muhammad’s death in 632, Islam spread west to North Africa, and into present-day Spain. It also spread north into Persia and east to the borders of northern India and China.
-Arab merchants traveled to many parts of Asia and North Africa and along the Mediterranean coast. Many of these traders were Muslims, and they helped spread their new religious beliefs.
-Arab armies also conquered neighboring regions. This was another way Islam spread.
-In 717, the Arabs attacked Constantinople, but they were unable to take the great fortress. Even so, most Christians, who lived along the eastern and southern Mediterranean converted to Islam in the 700s and 800s.
-By the 700s, Muslims had also crossed from North Africa into Spain. In 732, Arab forces were defeated by European soldiers at the Battle of Tours, in present-day France. The battle halted the Muslim advance into Christian Europe.
-In the centuries before Muhammad, Arab peoples had not been able to conquer neighboring regions. The strong Roman Empire made invasions of these lands nearly impossible.
-And the later Byzantine and Persian empires successfully blocked Arabs from advancing north.
-But after Muhammad’s death, the three empires that might have stopped the Arab expansion north and east were either defeated or weakened.
-Also, a shared religion now united Arab peoples into one community. And once they began to work together, the Muslims quickly grew powerful.
-Unlike Byzantine leaders of the time—who did not accept different religions—Muslims tolerated other faiths. Muslim rulers allowed Christians and Jews to practice their own religions and pursue their own business affairs.
-Non-Muslim citizens did have fewer rights than Muslims. They were forbidden to carry weapons and could not serve in the military. They also paid a special tax, which helped support the government.
- II. The Golden Age
-The golden age of Muslim culture from about 800 to 1100 was a brilliant period of history. Great advances were made in mathematics and science, and lasting works of literature and architecture were created.
- Under Muslim rulers called caliphs, an empire developed and grew rich. Its wealth came both from the many lands it controlled and from trade.
-Baghdad was the capital of the Muslim empire during the golden age. Like Constantinople, it was a natural center for trade.
-Harun ar-Rashid became caliph of Baghdad in 786. His rule was a time of prosperity.
-Harun did not use the riches of Baghdad just for his own pleasure. He was also a great patron or supporter of the arts.
-Arab scholars studied both Greek and Indian mathematics. They learned about the idea of zero from Indian scholars. And they borrowed the use of the so-called Arabic numerals that we use today from India too.
-The Muslim mathematician al-Khwarizme wrote a book explaining Indian arithmetic. He also made significant contributions to the development of algebra. The word algebra comes from the Arabic word “al-jabr.”
-These contributions enabled later scientists to make great discoveries in astronomy, physics, and chemistry.
-The famous Islamic scientist and philosopher Ibn Sina lived from 980 to 1037. Also known as Avicenna, he organized the medical knowledge of the Greeks and Arabs into the Canon of Medicine.
-Medicine: The Arabs were the first to organize separate pharmacies, which sold spices, herbs, and other medicines to the public.
-Mathematics: Arab mathematicians made important contributions to algebra.
-Machines: Water-driven machines fascinated Arab scientists.
-Muslim writers created many lasting works of literature. Poetry was particularly important in the Islamic world.
-One group of Muslims used poetry to teach their ideas and beliefs. This group, called the Sufis, were mystics who believed that they could draw close to God through prayer, fasting, and a simple life.
-Sufi missionaries also helped spread Islam to central Asia, India, and Africa south of the Sahara.