- [David] Hi Eman. - [Eman] Hi David. - [David] So what we're
gonna do in this video is talk about the
cultural spread of Islam. Where are we and when are we right now? - [Eman] So we are around
the early seventh century, - [David] Okay - [Eman] And here we see
the Byzantine empire, which, at the time was still
a continuation of Rome, so this is like the eastern roman empire, - [David] Right. - [Eman] and it's an aging
empire and we also have Sassanid Persia which
started in the third century and is still continuing into this period. - [David] Right, so
we've got on the timeline it's going beyond our start point here. - [Eman] Yep. So these are two very
powerful empires who often are in tension with one another. As you can see they neighbor each other. And around this time they're involved in some
pretty powerful struggles here. - [David] Right. So in 628 it
leads to a lot of instability within Sassanid Persia. - [Eman] Certainly, and in some
ways as well the Byzantines are weakened by how many resources they've exhausted in these tensions. So around this time, a
new religion emerges. Muhammad is born in
Arabia, and pretty soon during his lifetime and
immediately after his lifetime, the religion of Islam spreads rapidly through Islamic conquests,
which Saul talked about in an earlier video. - [David] I mean, just to
give you an impression, Muhammad died in the year 633? - [Eman] Yes. - [David] So by 750, this is what the state of the Islamic
world looked like. - [Eman] They took over most
of Persia and a large part of the Byzantine empire, as we can see and then even beyond,
it goes further east, further west, all the way over to Spain. And this happens really really quickly, but it's not the case that Islamic culture necessarily takes in all of
these areas that quickly. So it takes a little bit
longer for that to really take hold, and it also takes hold in areas far beyond this empire as well. So certainly the presence
of Islamic or Muslim rulers in these areas certainly did affect the culture of these places. But what's more important
is sort of the ways in which Islam slowly integrated with some of these cultures. And that happened through
trade, through missionaries, and also through pilgramage
routes that happened, emanating out from Mecca. And these religious ideas weren't static. As they moved through different areas and as they moved
through different routes, they changed and they
started to take the shape of the local culture and
the local flavor as well. - [David] So let me pull
up some trade routes. These were the active
trade routes of the period. And you can see this is a
continuation of the silk road. It goes all the way from Rome to China. This is Xian, which was
then known as Chang'an. This is the imperial capital of at least ten different Chinese dynasties. There's also a very large mosque here. - [Eman] So here we have
the great mosque at Xian, and what's really
interesting about this mosque is that it really fuses a lot of Islamic and Chinese ideas. So for example, it still
sort of has the structure of an imperial building, and the way that the courtyards are set up. - [David] Sure. - [Eman] But instead of
following sort of the rules of Feng Shui, it is oriented towards Mecca, which is the direction in which
Muslims look when they pray. But it still has a very Chinese character. - [David] Right. - [Eman] And this makes sense
because these trade routes basically had to go
through the Islamic empire. And so as people traveled, so did ideas. And those ideas transformed along the way. - [David] What's next on
our whistle stop tour, Eman? - [Eman] Let's look at
the mosque in Djenne. - [David] Okay. So Djenne
is in what is today, Mali, just south of Timbuktu or
Tombuktu as it's called today. So it was a great center
of Islamic learning. And in Djenne is the site
of the world's largest mud brick building, the
grand mosque of Djenne. Let me pull it up. It's a really incredible building that gets a lot of
elements of Malian culture. So this is the grand mosque of Djenne, this is a mud brick building. We have an article about
this on Khan Academy in the art history section. What's really cool to me about
the grand mosque of Djenne is the way that is
incorporates Malian traditions into Islamic tradition. So you can see on top of these spires, some of these spires are
minarets, from which issue the call to prayer. You can't see them as detailed, but there are little
ostrich eggs on top of - [Eman] Ostrich eggs? - [David] Yeah, in Mali,
ostrich eggs represent purity and fertility. And so even within the
constraints of building a religious building,
there's still expressions of local culture. - [Eman] Yeah, and it's
really interesting how that spread through trade, but
it also spread another way, which is through pilgramage,
through missionaries, through preachers, and that also took on the local traditions in interesting ways. So let's go to southern, to South India. - [David] Okay. - [Eman] Near Kerala. - [David] So this is the
Cheraman Juma mosque. This is supposed to be one of the earliest mosques in history. It's construction dates to about 630. - [Eman] Yep, 629 to be precise. - [David] Thank you. - [Eman] This was actually
during the life of the prophet, and it's quite far from Mecca, so it's really fascinating
how quickly it traveled there. But it traveled with a preacher and as you can see, this is a
very distinctly Indian mosque. Another way that Islam
traveled through preachers was through Sufis. So let's talk about
Sufis for just a minute. - [David] Sure. - [Eman] Sufis were like a
mystical devotional practice, and we see many iterations of Sufism in all different sects of Islam. But they were particularly successful at spreading Islam for a few reasons. One of them was that they
adapted the teachings to local traditions. And another reason was
that they built lodges and places of worship along the way. And these sometimes function
like community centers and monasteries. So let's have a look at a couple of them. - [David] Sure. - [Eman] Let's look at
some North African ones. - [David] So this is a Ribat in Tunisia. - [Eman] Yes, so a Ribat
is kind of like a hostel, you have travelers staying there. Early on in their history, there were soldiers that stayed there. Over time, they sort of took on a monastery culture for Sufis. We also have something called a Zawiya. So here is an example of one. And similarly this was
a place of learning, it was a place of worship. People often lived there for a long time, so they sort of have
this monastic tradition that created a permanent
presence for Islam along these routes. And this was really really
integral in the spread of Islam. And it's not just in North
Africa, but even farther east, you see different iterations of that. So once you get into former
Persian territory and in Indian territory you have
something called a Hanka. So here's an example from Kashmir. This is called the Shah Hamdan mosque. And it's a fourteenth century mosque. And this is a commemorative building, it commemorates an important Sufi leader. But again, you see some
of the local flavor here. You see that there's some
intricate wood carvings, which is really, - [David] Very Kashmir-y - [Eman] Very Kashmir-y, certainly. And similarly this was a place of worship but also a place where
people passed through and interacted and learned. So it was a site of spreading
Islamic tradition as well. - [David] So that was about, sorry I should have said, that
was about here in Srinagar. - [Eman] Yes, about there. - [David] Yeah and so, in this
way Islam was also spread. - [Eman] Certainly. Let's have a look at sort of the bounds of the Islamic empire. - [David] Sure. - [Eman] And where we see
some of these instances of new Islamic traditions were no longer in the heart of the Islamic empire. We're beyond that. And that's because Islam was
carried in many different ways. And as we can see it ended up with some really really diverse iterations of Islam.
