Bryn Barnard - The Genius of Islam. How Muslims Made the Modern World

BC
25751075	Classical Egypt
	Founding of Rome
490330	Classical Greece
circa 82	Birth of Jesus

AD
226651	Sassanid Persia
300800	Classical India
	Emperor Constantine converts to Christianity
	Fall of Rome, beginning of European Dark Ages

circa 570	Birth of Prophet Muhammad
	Prophet begins preaching Quran
618907	Tang Dynasty in China
	HijrahMuslims flee to Medina
	Muslims conquer Mecca

	Death of Prophet Muhammad
	Beginning of schism between Sunni and Shia
	Western Umayyad Dynasty founded in Crdoba
	Abbasid Dynasty founded in Baghdad
circa 764	House of Wisdom founded

1054	Western and Eastern Christianity split
12991922	Ottoman Empire
1341	Petrarch crowned poet laureate, beginning of the Renaissance

14001511	Melaka Sultanate
1453	Fall of Byzantine Empire
1492	Fall of last Muslim state in Spain
15261858	Mogul Dynasty rules India

17981801	Napoleon invades Egypt
1918	End of World War I
1923	Founding of the Republic of Turkey

1924	Mustafa Kemal Atatrk abolishes the caliphate

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2011 by Bryn Barnard
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barnard, Bryn.
The genius of Islam : how Muslims made the modern world / Bryn Barnard.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-449-81494-9Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-375-84072-2
1. IslamEssence, genius, natureJuvenile literature. 2. IslamHistoryJuvenile literature. I. Title.
BP163.B2684 2011 297.2dc22 2010012777

The illustrations in this book were created using oil on board, Adobe Illustrator,
and Adobe Photoshop.

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v3.1

slam is one of the worlds great religions, one of historys most important civilizations, and one of the foundational cultures of the West. During Islams first five hundred years, from the seventh through the twelfth centuries, this new religion created one of the most innovative and influential civilizations on earth, an essential bridge between antiquity and modernity. For many more centuries, the Islamic world remained a center of learning, wealth, luxury, and sophistication, envied and imitated by its neighbors. By the sixteenth century, when parts of the Islamic world had begun to be eclipsed by Western colonial nations in military, economic, and social power, Islam had left its mark on everything. The books we read, the music we play, the words we speak, the numbers we count, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the science we depend onall were shaped, at least in part, by Islam.

Allah is the Arabic word for God.

Islam was founded by Muhammad ibn Abdallah, an Arabian merchant who lived in the city of Mecca, located in modern Saudi Arabia. Today Mecca is the holiest city in the Muslim world. Then, it was a small trading center at the edge of two great warring empiresByzantium and Persia. Around AD 610, when he was forty years old, the Prophet Muhammad began to receive a series of overpowering revelations about the oneness of God and commandments to reform society: to make it more just, more charitable, more fair. Muslims believe these revelations came to Muhammad via the angel Gabriel. In 613, the Prophet Muhammad began preaching these ideas outside the