Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

2 • The Making of Islamic Scienceresponsible instead for the distortion of the message of Islam. It is,therefore, necessary to begin with a brief account of the emergence ofIslam in the seventh century in Makkah, a remote town in Arabia.The Emergence of IslamMakkah, where Muhammad, the future Prophet of Islam, was born,was not located on the crossroads of any major civilization of thetime. It was nevertheless a town of considerable importance owingto the presence of the Ka‘bah, a Sanctuary built there by Abrahamand his son Ishmael some 2500 years before the birth of Muhammadto Aminah on a Monday in the month of April, 571. Her husband,Abdullah, had died a few months before the birth of the child whilereturning home from Syria, where he had traveled with one of thetrade caravans that left Makkah twice a year—for Yemen in winterand for Syria in summer. Shortly after his birth, the child was takento the Ka‘bah and named Muhammad by his grandfather, AbdulMuttalib, a descendent of Abraham through his son Ishmael.At the age of forty, when Muhammad had been married to awealthy widow of Makkah for almost fifteen years, he received his firstrevelation while in retreat in a cave at the summit of the Mountainof Light, about five kilometers south of the ancient Sanctuary: Recite!Recite in the name of thy Sustainer Who created; Created Man from a clot ofblood; Recite—for thy Sustainer is the Most Bountiful—Who taught by thepen; taught Man what he knew not (Q. 96:1-5). This was the beginningof the descent of the QurāĀn—the Book which is at the heart of allthings Islamic.The revelation continued over the next twenty-three years,culminating a few days before the death of the Prophet in Madinah,an oasis on the caravan route to Syria, some four hundred kilometersnorth of Makkah and to where the Prophet had migrated inSeptember 622. This migration, called the Hijrah, marks thebeginning of the Islamic calendar as well as the establishment of thefirst Islamic state. At the time of the Prophet’s death in June 632 atthe age of sixty-three, this state had expanded to encompass all ofArabia, and an expedition was on its way to Syria, at the northernborder of the nascent state. Within a century of his death, Islam