The triumphant advance of Muslim armies across the inter-connecting landmass of Asia, Europe and Africa brought into the Islamic Empire large masses of people who were previously Christian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist or Hindu. Conversion to the new faith was slow. The conquering Muslims left the people of the territories alone as long as they paid the protective tax, jizya and did not interfere with...

Pivotal as Persia was in the political developments of Muslim Asia, its primary contribution was to preserve, reinvigorate and transmit the spiritual legacy of Islam through its language, art and architecture. While the Arabs provided the ideational foundation of the edifice of Islam, it was the Persians who adorned it with beauty and embellished it with spirituality. The primary medium for...

The Fatimid conquest of Egypt (969) was a defining moment in Islamic history. It destroyed any semblance of central authority in the Muslim world, provoked the reaction of the Turks as defenders of orthodox (Sunni) Islam, impelled the Omayyads in Spain to declare their own Caliphate, launched the powerful Murabitun revolution in western Africa, denied the Muslims their last chance to conquer...

The Battle of Plassey Contributed by Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, PhD “It is not too much to say that the destiny of Europe hinged upon the conquest of Bengal, wrote the historian Brook Adams in 1896. People who look at today’s impoverished Bangladesh cannot imagine that in the mid-18th century, it was the hub of the most prosperous region inAsia. The Nawab of Bengal, Siraj...