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...

Civilizations collide when the transcendental values that govern them are used to define identity. During the Crusades, the Christian belief that God was immanent in the person of Jesus Christ collided with the Islamic vision that God is transcendent. For the Christian world all that was holy and venerable was embodied in the Cross of the Holy Sepulcher on which Jesus is believed to have been...

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), the final messenger in a long line of prophets sent by Allah according to Islamic belief, was born in the year 570 CE in the city of Mecca, in present-day Saudi Arabia. His life is a testament to piety, humility, and leadership and serves as an exemplar for Muslims worldwide. Early Life and Revelation Muhammad (pbuh) was born into the Quraysh tribe, a powerful...

The Qur’an bestows upon humankind the keys to the heavens and the earth (“Do you not see that God has made subject to thee all that is between the heavens and the earth”, Qur’an, 31:20). In the golden age of their history, Muslims used these keys to unlock the secrets of nature and they created a civilization that was the marvel of the world. Then, they overreached...

A divided Islamic world offered feeble resistance to the Crusaders who consolidated their hold on the eastern Mediterranean and imposed their fiefdoms on the region. The Seljuks, preoccupied with defending their eastern flank against the Afghan Ghaznavids, had thinned out their western defenses. The pagan Turkish tribes across the Amu Darya on the northeastern frontiers were a constant menace....