A History of Islamic Societies

The inner spaces of the Muslim World

Although much of this book is about the history of Muslim states and empires, regions that lay outside of the boundaries and authority of individual states or empires are essential to understanding the political and cultural geography of the Islamic world. These regions are the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the great inner deserts of Central Asia and the African Sahara. The oceans, steppes, and deserts both isolated regions from one another and allowed them to be linked together by travelers, traders, missionaries, and conquerors. Each of these regions cultivated cultural and religious practices and social networks that crossed political borders. The cross-regional connections help explain the diffusion of Islam from the seventh to the eighteenth century. They were arenas of religio-cultural transmission. From the sixteenth century, however, they also became arenas for the growing power of European states and their subsequent commercial and colonial domination of both the inner spaces and the regional territories of the Muslim world.

The Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean

The Mediterranean – from Spain in the northwest and Morocco in the southwest to Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt in the east – was first integrated under the rule of the Roman Empire and Hellenistic culture. With the creation of a second capital at Constantinople and the fall of Rome to “barbarian” invaders, the region began to fragment. The late Roman or Byzantine Empire continued to rule over the Balkans, Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt, but independent states were formed by Gothic and Celtic peoples in the former Western European provinces of the Roman Empire and in parts of North Africa. The region was further divided by religious differences among Christians.