Contextualizing Framework III: 750-1000

Contextualizing Framework III: 750-1000

“The Consolidation of Islam" from 750-1000 often is revered as the Golden Age of Islam, especially in the Abbasid empire’s capital city, Baghdad. The empire expanded dramatically, and a great learning occurred when the city attracted the world’s brightest scholars, translating philosophy, science, medicine, and more from Greece, India, China, Persia, creating a rich culture. However, this time was also marked by religious and political entrenchment and subsequent fracturing. The caliphate system morphed from yearning revolution to autocracy. This created disputes among the government’s legitimacy, fueled further by tensions in religious identity. Out of this emerged the Sufi Mystic, Sunni traditionalist, and Shi’ite sects.

Jonathan Berkey

The Formation of Islam

Cambridge University Press

750-1000

Berkey, Jonathan. The formation of Islam: Religion and society in the Near East, 600-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.