“Under Umar, the caliphate expanded to include many regions of the world such as the lands of the former Byzantine and Sassanian empires in Asia Minor, Persia and Central Asia.”
Yeah, how exactly did that “expansion” occur? In reality, beyond the pseudo-academic whitewash and fantasy below, the caliphates always behaved much like the Islamic State, because they were all working from the same playbook. Find out the true, bloody history of the caliphates from Islamic sources in The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS.
Also, AP says “This story was supplied by The Conversation for AP customers. The Associated Press does not guarantee the content.” But would it ever run a view that dissented from this one? Not on your life.
“What is a caliph? The Islamic State tries to boost its legitimacy by hijacking a historic institution,” by Ken Chitwood, Associated Press, November 13, 2019:
(THE CONVERSATION) Just days after the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Oct. 27, the Islamic State named Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi as the new “caliph.”
In 2014, IS conquered vast swaths of Iraq and Syria and declared itself to be the “caliphate.”
Defined and applied in different ways over the centuries, the fundamental idea behind the caliphate is the just ordering of society according to the will of God.
The Islamic State’s caliphate was never widely recognized among the global Muslim community and no longer has significant territory. But the Islamic State still uses the history of the caliphate to push their claims.
As a scholar of global Islam, every time I teach my “Introduction to Islam” class, questions about the caliphate come up, in part because of IS’s claims….
The second and third caliphs were Umar and Uthman. Under Umar, the caliphate expanded to include many regions of the world such as the lands of the former Byzantine and Sassanian empires in Asia Minor, Persia and Central Asia. Uthman is credited with compiling the Quran….
The Abbasid dynasty descended from Muhammad’s uncle, Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttalib, and succeeded the Umayyads.
These two caliphates oversaw the continuing expansion of the empire. Under them architecture, the arts and sciences flourished.
For example, the “Dome of the Rock,” a shrine in the Old City of Jerusalem, was built under an Umayyad caliph as a monument to the rising supremacy of their empire…..