2020/04/16 by Chiara Formichi · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Eurasian Exchange Networks #Historical and Linguistic Studies #Islamic Studies and History #Islam #Expansive #Ancient history #CONQUEST #Mysticism #Geography #Empire #South asia #Politics #History #Archaeology #Political science #Law
paper · doi:10.1017/9781316226803.004
openalex publication_date 2020/04/16 · openalex created_date 2021/08/02 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Islam travelled across the Asian expanse along land and maritime routes, as Muslims engaged in trade, proselytism, and conquest. While the territory and influence of Islamic political authority expanded, collapsed, and reached further once again, between the seventh and sixteenth centuries the realities and attributes of any given Islamic society varied greatly. This chapter provides a bird's-eye view of the expansive movement of Muslims out of Arabia and into Asia, as Islam crossed the Oxus/Amu Darya river (Uzbekistan), following two main paths. First was the military expansion of the Arab Muslim Empire, which reached its territorial apogee under the Abbasid, spreading as far as Transoxiana and Northwest India. Second was the movement of pilgrims, scholars, soldiers, and mystics – whose identities melted one into the other – across continental and maritime Asia, along the centuries-old Silk Road and the Indian Ocean networks. These trajectories allow us to see Asia as a historically cohesive space of Islamized interaction, where Muslims imagined themselves as part of a religious community, the umma .