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Discover in-depth articles about Islamic history. Explore stories, events and figures that have shaped the world.
The jahiliyya period is the era before the revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. The term "jahiliyya" literally means "ignorance" and ref...
The origin of the House (also known as the Ka'bah) is inseparably connected to the origin of the Arabised Arabs. To understand this, we tell the story...
How did the other religions end up on the Arabian Peninsula? Judaism The Jews migrated from Palestine to Arabia in two phases. In the first phase, K...
The Arabian Peninsula is enclosed by the Red Sea and Sinai to the west, the Arabian Gulf to the east, the Arabian Sea to the south, and Al-Sham and pa...
If Ibrahim ﵇ and Ismail ﵇ built the Ka'bah and taught the people about Islam and tawhid, how is it that by the time the Prophet ﷺ began proclaiming Is...
The Prophet ﷺ and his Companions ﵃ stood up against the mighty Quraysh, the rulers of Makkah and the Hijaz (the western part of the Arabian Peninsula)...
The market of Ukaz (سوق عكاظ) was one of the most important markets in the jahiliyya era (the period of ignorance before Islam). It was located near T...
In the article The People of the Book we discussed how the Abyssinians returned to Yemen in the year 525 in retaliation against the injustice of Dhu N...
The Birth in Makkah The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born in Makkah on a Monday morning on the 9th day of Rabi al-Awwal, the Year of the Elephant, correspo...
The Sacrilegious War (Harb al-Fijar) When he was twenty years old, a great war broke out between the Quraysh and Banu Kinanah on one side and Qais 'A...
The Renovation of the Ka'bah When the Prophet ﷺ was thirty-five years old, the Quraysh had begun the renovation of the Ka'bah. It was a low structure...
In the first days of Islam, when the revelation was still fresh and the number of Muslims could be counted on one hand, the house of Khadijah ﵂ served...
When the Prophet ﷺ was commanded, he began inviting people to Islam. Some believed in him, others expressed their disbelief, until everyone in Makkah ...
The Prophet ﷺ would regularly go to the cave of Hira to engage in contemplation. The Prophet ﷺ, with his pure character in the midst of an impure envi...
During the cultivation phase, the Quraysh were aware of the da'wah of the Prophet ﷺ, but paid little attention to it. The message posed no threat at t...
A number of the prominent men of Quraysh visited Abu Talib and said: O Abu Talib! Your nephew curses our gods, criticises our way of life, mocks our ...
At the beginning of the 4th year of the Prophetic Mission and for a period of several months, the Quraysh limited their intimidation to ridiculing and...
The persecution of the Muslims in Makkah intensified as the message of Islam gained more ground. Despite the protection that figures like Hamza and 'U...
The Quraysh had tried everything: they had slandered the Muslims, expelled them from their homes and even tortured them. Despite all this, two great h...
One day, the Prophet ﷺ was sitting on a hill near Safa when Abu Jahl happened to pass by and began to insult him ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ remained silent and ...
After the failed attempts at compromise and the offer of Quraysh to the Prophet ﷺ, and the steadfast pledge of Banu Hashim and Banu Al-Muttalib to pro...
After the passing of Abu Talib and Khadijah ﵂, the two pillars of support in the life of the Prophet ﷺ, the da'wah found itself in its darkest hour. T...
After the loss of his protectors, the Prophet ﷺ began actively performing talab al-nusra (طلب النصرة). That is, he ﷺ sought physical support. His firs...
After the loss of Abu Talib and Khadijah ﵂ in the Year of Sorrow, the Prophet ﷺ now stood alone in Makkah. Without tribal protection and without his m...
Just six months after Banu Hashim and Banu Al-Muttalib had left the valley of Abu Talib following three years of starvation and isolation, the Prophet...
After the First Pledge of 'Aqabah, in which twelve men from Madinah pledged their loyalty to the Prophet ﷺ, a crucial next step was needed. How was th...
After three years of trials, the loss of Abu Talib and Khadijah ﵂, the humiliation in At-Ta'if and months of searching for support among the Arab trib...
The work of Mus'ab ibn 'Umair ﵁ in Madinah had borne fruits that no one had dared to dream of. In less than a year, this lone envoy of the Prophet ﷺ h...
With the Second Pledge of Aqaba, the path to Madinah had been opened. The Ansar had pledged their blood and their honor to the protection of the Proph...
While one Muslim after another left Makkah heading for Madinah, panic grew among the leaders of the Quraysh. What had begun as a handful of departures...
After the joyful arrival in Madinah and the warm welcome by the Ansar, the Prophet ﷺ faced an immense challenge: building an entirely new society from...
After the dramatic Hijrah journey from Makkah, the stay in the cave of Thawr, the pursuit by Suraqah, and the stay in Quba, the Prophet ﷺ was finally ...
After three nights in the Cave of Thawr, protected by Allah ﷻ, the Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr ﵁ left their hiding place. The Quraysh had largely given up ...
When the Prophet ﷺ made the Hijrah to Madinah, the city was inhabited by several distinct groups. The Aws and Khazraj together became known as the Ans...
Because of his jealousy and his "lost" kingship, Ibn Salul responded positively to the message from the polytheists. Abdurahman ibn Ka'b narrated that...
The victory at Badr had put the Muslims on the map. Madinah was no longer a small city-state struggling to defend its own existence; it was now a powe...
What was most striking about the victory was that it was precisely the leaders and prominent figures who had been killed or taken prisoner. Of the Mus...
Previously we discussed the expedition at Dhil 'Ushayrah, where a caravan led by Abu Sufyan heading to Al-Shaam had narrowly escaped. That caravan was...
After Uhud the situation of the Muslims was precarious. Seventy of their best had fallen. The Prophet ﷺ himself had been wounded. The hypocrites under...
The Battle of Uhud was no surprise. It was the inevitable consequence of what had happened at Badr. The Quraysh had lost their best men: their leaders...
Of all the trials that struck the early Islamic community, Al-Khandaq was the most existential. Not because the fighting was the bloodiest, but becaus...
The peace of Hudaybiyya was not an end point. It was a breathing space, and the Prophet ﷺ used it with a precision that only became fully visible in h...
The peace of Hudaybiyya had given the Islamic state something no military victory could buy: time and space to look outward. As long as the threat of ...
There are moments in the Seerah where the outward events and their true meaning lie so far apart that only time makes the difference visible. Hudaybiy...
The words the Prophet ﷺ spoke while the dust of Al-Khandaq was still settling were short and unmistakable: from now on the Muslims would march on thei...
There are conquests that go down in history as bloody turning points: cities that burned, peoples enslaved, and victors establishing their power throu...
Mu'tah was no battle of the kind the Muslims had fought before. At Badr, Uhud and Al-Khandaq, the community of Madinah had stood against the tribes of...
There are expeditions in the Seerah that are remembered for what happened during the fighting. Tabuk is remembered for what happened before the fighti...
Makkah had fallen without any fighting worth the name. Ten thousand men had taken a city that for twenty years had been the heart of the opposition to...
In the tenth year after the Hijrah the Prophet ﷺ announced that he would perform the Hajj. The word spread across the Arabian Peninsula and people str...
Before Gao became Gao, there was Kukiya, a name that is quietly passed over in most popular history books and yet is indispensable, for without Kukiya...
Before there were kings, before there were trade routes, before the first Islamic scholar heard of the Niger bend, there was a river. And before that ...
There is a moment in history when a region ceases to exist only for itself and becomes part of something larger, and for West Africa that moment was g...
Behind every great empire stands a people, and behind Wagadou, ancient Ghana, the first great power of West Africa, stand the Soninke. But who were th...
The First Encounter with Islam > Islam entered West Africa without a conquering army or a missionary's banner, on the back of a camel, in a saddlebag...
Beneath the sun of the western Sahara lie slabs of rock salt in the ground like forgotten letters of a dried-up sea, and for centuries it was precisel...
The Intensification of the Trans-Saharan Trade Routes > What for centuries had been a footpath now became a highway. And along this highway traveled ...
Islamic Takrur > On the Senegal River, where fishing nets hang heavier than anywhere else, one king spoke a word no one in West Africa had spoken bef...
Two towns, six miles apart, one of which had a mosque on every corner while the other had a sacred grove around the throne, together nonetheless forme...
To understand what the Almoravids were, we must picture a place that in the eleventh-century world barely appeared on the map: somewhere in the wester...
The Sosso Period > Not every page in the history of Islam is a flowering. Sometimes a setback comes. And in the twelfth century, on the ruins of Ghan...
Mali under Sundiata Keita: The Lion and the Child Who Could Not Walk > A prince who shuffled across the earth on hands and knees before he would shar...
The Formation of the Mali Empire > Mali did not import Islam but wove it into what already stood, and grew into a civilisation that spanned three riv...
The Battle of Kirina: Where an Empire Rose Out of the Earth > One field, one day, one arrow. And the West African map was redrawn for the next three ...
The Silence After Sundiata: An Empire Searches for Its Direction > A hero dies, and an empire must learn to live without him. Between 1255 and the ri...
The Sublime King: How Musa Became Mansa > Ibn Kathir calls him al-malik al-ashraf, the sublime king. But before he earned that name for himself, some...
The Year Cairo Lost Its Gold > July 1324. A caravan enters Cairo. Twelve years later, Egyptian merchants are still complaining about the inflation. T...
What a Mansa Builds After He Returns > A Hajj is a moment. A legacy is a generation. Between 1325 and his death around 1337, Mansa Musa built an infr...
How an Empire Slowly Loses Itself > A death is rarely enough to bring an empire down. What killed Mali was not a single blow, but a slow convergence ...
Sunni Ali Ber: The Warrior, the Heretic, the Founder > He built an empire that would last a century and a half, and he did it in a way that the schol...
The Rise of Songhay: From Vassal State to Regional Power While Mali slowly collapsed under its own weight, an empire came to life at the eastern bend...
The Takeover of Askia Muhammad > In the same year that Granada fell and Columbus set course, on the Niger a king was deposed who in the name of Islam...
Askia Muhammad the Great: The Full Islamic State Model > Where Mansa Musa laid the foundations, Askia Muhammad completed the building. For thirty-fiv...
The Jurist from Tlemcen: Muhammad al-Maghili and the Law for Black Rulers > In the last years of the fifteenth century, a Maghrebi jurist leaves his ...
The Neighbours of Songhay: Hausaland, Aïr and Bornu > Songhay was the largest empire of its age, but it was never the only one. East of the Niger ben...
The Decline of Songhay: Patricide on the Niger > What Askia had built up in thirty-five years, his sons began to demolish in one generation. And on t...
Tondibi and the Death Blow: The End of the First West African Era > On an afternoon in March 1591 a Songhay army of forty thousand men stood facing f...
The Ocean That Devoured Names: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade And The West African Muslims Who Disappeared Into It > Between 1501 and 1867, twelve an...
The Eastern Slave Trade: Misconceptions and Truths > Long before the first European ship carried an African captive across the Atlantic, caravans of ...
The Muslims Among The Enslaved: Three Names Against Oblivion > No one counted them, and no one can now, but among the ten million Africans who surviv...
The Shaykh From Degel: Usman dan Fodio ﵀ and the Long Road to Gudu > He was born in a village that today almost no one can still point out on a map. ...
The Flag at Gudu: The Fulani Jihad and the Price of an Islamic State > On 21 February 1804 a green flag is raised in a village on the north-western f...
A City Out of the Drought: The Establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate (1809–1817) > Alkalawa was still smouldering, and Usman dan Fodio ﵀ did somethin...
The Brother Who Stopped at Kano: Abdullahi dan Fodio and the Conscience of the Jihad > He was the man who wrote the legal handbooks, recited the qasi...
The Sultan Who Wrote: Muhammad Bello and the Administrative Consolidation of Sokoto > His father had lit the fire and his uncle had drafted the laws;...
Hamdullahi: The Caliphate of Seventeen Years and Forty Scholars > In 1818 a lean Fulani cleric from the marshes of Massina raises his staff and decla...
Omar ibn Said ﵀: The Man Who Wrote Arabic on the Wall > Fayetteville, North Carolina, 1810. A prisoner of about forty picks up a piece of charcoal fr...
What Was Lost, What Remains > Sapelo Island, Georgia, in the 1920s. An old woman recites something in Arabic for her granddaughter. Then she switches...
The Caliphate at Its Zenith: How Sokoto Looked Around 1850 > Half a century after its founding, the Sokoto Caliphate stretched from the Niger Bend to...
The Saber and the Rosary: The Jihad of Umar Tall ﵀ and the Rending of the Tariqas > Between 1852 and 1864, a Toucouleur scholar with a Tijani wird in...
The Last Hijra: How Sokoto, Kano and the Whole Western Sudan Fell in Seven Years > Between 1893 and 1903 the last Islamic states of West Africa fall ...
His full name is: Abu Bakr ʿAbdullah ibn Abi Quhafah ʿUthman ibn ʿAmir ibn ʿAmr ibn Kaʿb ibn Saʿd ibn Taym ibn Murrah ibn Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy ibn Ghalib a...
The plain that waited Between the desert of the Hijaz and the palm oases of Bahrain, in a long band of sand plains and low rock ridges, lies al-Yamam...
The decision to march out Medina in the first months of the caliphate of Abu Bakr ﵁ was a city holding its breath. The expedition of Usama ibn Zayd ﵁...
The Stillness of a Great Storm When the army of Usama ﵁ had departed from Medina for the Roman frontier and the prayers over the Messenger of Allah ﷺ...
An Army on the Threshold of a Changed World Three miles north of Medina, in a camp called al-Jurf, an army of several thousand men stood ready to mar...
A Minbar, a Day After the Stillness The morning after the Saqifah broke over Medina as though the city itself were breathing out a long-held breath. ...
The Afternoon the World Fell Still It was Monday, the twelfth of Rabīʿ al-Awwal in the eleventh year of the Hijra. The sun stood high over Medina, a ...
The Battle of the Chains (Dhāt al-Salāsil) In Safar of the twelfth year, Khalid ibn al-Walid ﵁ crossed the south-eastern frontier and met the first P...
A Caliph Who Owned Nothing When one seeks the image that captures the entire caliphate of Abu Bakr ﵁ in a single scene, one finds it not on a battlef...
The threshold of the peninsula In the twelfth year after the Hijra, when the Ridda had died down and the tribes of Najd, Bahrain, Oman, Hadramawt, an...
Four quarters of the heavens, one answer Whoever, in the twelfth year after the Hijra, had unrolled a map of the Arabian Peninsula and taken Medina a...
The wound that would not dry Medina in the first weeks after the Battle of al-Yamamah was a city in two tempos. Outside the mosque, in the streets an...
The man behind the Khilafah We have now followed him into his death, and we have followed him into his succession. We have seen him die at the Fajr p...
The first khutbah of ʿUmar ﵁ and the title Amir al-Muʾminin The minbar ascended once more In the previous article we followed the Tuesday on which A...
The bayʿah of ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ A Tuesday in Jumada al-Akhirah It was a Tuesday in Medina, eight days before the end of the month of Jumada al-...
A Year Before Death It should have been an ordinary meal. A dish, a few guests, a date-powder of the season, a thin sauce of goat-fat and herbs. In t...
A Caliph on the Road to ʿArafat It was Dhul-Hijjah of the year 12 after the Hijra, and the caravans gathered once more around Medina. The Ridda was b...
The Northwestern Gate Whoever stood in Medina in the twelfth year after the Hijra and let his gaze travel across the horizon saw three principal dire...
Further Conquests under ʿUmar ﵁ — Sham, Iraq and the Years Between The Year-Table as Backbone Whoever wishes to see the history of the caliphate of ...
Governance, Justice and Humility under ʿUmar ﵁ The Man Who Prayed for Gentleness on the Minbar Whoever wishes to grasp the image of ʿUmar ibn al-Kha...
The Battle of al-Qadisiyyah A plain on the edge of two worlds Between the Euphrates and the desert edge of Najd, south of what would later be called...
The Battle of Yarmuk The riverbed in which an empire was lost South of the Sea of Tiberias, on the border of what is today called Syria and Jordan, ...
The Institution of the Hijri Calendar: The Counsel of ʿAli ﵁ and the Starting Point of a New Reckoning of Time In the month of Rabīʿ al-Awwal of the ...
The Fall of Madāʾin Kisra: the First Jumʿah in the Hall of Khosrau In the sixteenth year after the Hijra, which in the Gregorian reckoning correspond...
The Expansion of the Two Sanctuaries under ʿUmar ﵁ Two Walls That Had to Carry More People In the year 17 after the Hijra, the Gregorian year 638, t...
The Founding of Kufa and Basra: Garrison Cities for a New Geography Between the fourteenth and the seventeenth year after the Hijra, which in the Gre...
The Fall of Jerusalem and the Umariyya Treaty: the Khalifah ﵁ at the Gate of the Holy City In the sixteenth year after the Hijra, shortly after Saʿd ...
The Year of Ash and the Plague of Amwas A Year in Which the Heaven Was Silent In the eighteenth year of the Hijra, which in the Gregorian chronology...
A Promise from Tabuk When ʿUmar ﵁ in the twentieth year of the Hijra took a decision that would forever change the composition of the Hijaz, he did s...
The Establishment of the Diwan Muharram, the Twentieth Year of the Hijra In Muharram of the twentieth year of the Hijra, which in the Gregorian reck...
The Conquest of Egypt The Twentieth Year In the twentieth and twenty-first years of the Hijra, which in the Gregorian reckoning falls in the years 6...
Nahawand, the Opening of Openings The Twenty-First Year In the twenty-first year of the Hijra, which in the Gregorian reckoning corresponds to the y...
--- slug: jaar-neusbloedingen title: The year of the nosebleeds and the first khutbah arabicName: عام الرعاف language: en eventDate: 644-01-01 wordCou...
--- slug: bayah-uthman title: The bayʿah of ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ arabicName: بيعة عثمان بن عفان language: en eventDate: 644-06-01 wordCountTarget: 350...
The Question That Wanted No Heir In the three full days between the attack of Abu Luʾluʾah and his death, ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ had a question to an...
A Dream of a Cock In the last weeks of his life, in the month of Dhul-Hijjah of the twenty-third year of the Hijra, ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ dreamed a ...
The Last Hajj of ʿUmar ﵁ A Caliph Who Had Led Every Hajj Himself After writing the letter to Abu Musa al-Ashʿari ﵁ and after establishing the diwan ...
--- slug: bestuur-en-gouverneurs title: Administration and governors under ʿUthman ﵁ arabicName: ولاة عثمان language: en eventDate: 645-01-01 wordCoun...
--- slug: uitbreiding-moskeeen title: The Expansion of the Masjid al-Haram and the Masjid an-Nabawi arabicName: توسعة المسجدين language: en eventDate:...
The battle of Sbeitla and the conquest of Ifriqiya under ʿUthman ﵁ A land beyond the desert of Barqa In the same year of the Hijra in which, in the ...
The conquest of Cyprus and the first Islamic fleet under ʿUthman ﵁ An island in a sea that no Muslim had yet seen In the twenty-seventh year of the ...
The continuation of the conquests in the east under ʿUthman ﵁ Four years in which the horizon shifted once more In the years 28 to 31 of the Hijra, ...
The Burning of the Divergent Codices The Moment After the Uniting When, in the previous article, we paused at the official Mushaf of ʿUthman ﵁, we p...
Prosperity and criticism The year in which the treasuries overflowed In the year 30 of the Hijra, which corresponds in the Gregorian reckoning to 65...
The compilation of the Qur'an The moment on the northern front It was not in Medina that the history of the official Mushaf of ʿUthman ﵁ began. It b...
The Banishment of Abu Dharr ﵁ to Rabadha In the year 32 of the Hijra, in a poor hamlet on the edge of the Hijaz, there died a man whom the Prophet ﷺ ...
The turning point after six quiet years In the preceding articles we followed the Caliphate of ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ from his bayʿah in Muharram of th...
The battle of Dhat al-Sawari The question that ʿUmar ﵁ did not wish to ask Before we come to this battle on the Lycian coast, we must go back to a l...
The Battle of the Camel On a day in Jumada al-Akhirah of the year 36, two armies of Muslims stood facing one another outside the gates of Basra. The ...
Conflict with Talha ﵁, Zubayr ﵁ and Aisha ﵂ Two months after the bayʿah, Talha ﵁ and Zubayr ﵁ requested of ʿAli ﵁ leave to go to Mecca for the ʿumrah...
First Administration and the Replacement of Governors The day after the bayʿah, ʿAli ﵁ took decisions that immediately laid bare the dividing lines. ...
The Pledge of Allegiance to ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁ Five days after the martyrdom of ʿUthman ﵁, Medina once again stood without a khalifah. On the eveni...
On the threshold of the breaking-in In the preceding article we followed ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan ﵁ in his encirclement. We followed the three ways out tha...
From political conflict to a besieged house In the preceding article we followed the build-up of the fitna as az-Zuhri ﵀ and Saʿid ibn al-Musayyab ﵀ ...
The Martyrdom of ʿAmmar ibn Yasir ﵁ at Siffin On a hot day in Safar of the year 37, on the plain along the Euphrates, upstream to the west of Raqqa, ...
The Battle of Siffin On the plain along the right bank of the Euphrates, upstream to the west of Raqqa, in Safar of the year 37 two armies of Muslims...
Negotiations with Muʿawiya ﵁ Between Kufa and Damascus, in the winter of 36–37, couriers rode with letters and delegations, in a final series of atte...
The Move of the Capital to Kufa In Rabiʿ al-Akhir of the year 36, ʿAli ﵁ left Medina for the last time as khalifah. After the Battle of the Camel he ...
The Loss of Egypt and the Death of Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr ﵁ While ʿAli ﵁ in Kufa strove in vain to move his army to a renewed campaign against Sham, M...
The Battle of Nahrawan In a one-sided confrontation to the east of the Tigris, the Khawarij lost in a few hours almost their entire army. Among the f...
The rise of the Khawarij After Siffin, a group walked out of the camp of ʿAli ﵁ and built its rejection of the arbitration into a theology of its own...
The Arbitration and the First Fitna Months after the battle of Siffin the two arbiters met at Dumat al-Jandal. What began as a religious procedure ac...
The Last Years and Governance In the two years still granted to him, ʿAli ﵁ held his office in Kufa, exercised judgement in the Masjid al-Aʿzam, dict...
Martyrdom and Legacy In Ramadan of the year 40, ʿAli ibn Abi Talib ﵁ stepped out of his house for the fajr prayer in the Masjid al-Aʿzam of Kufa. At ...
