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Islam : Empire of Faith
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Between the fall of Rome and the European voyages of discovery, few events were more significant than the rise of Islam. Within a few
centuries, the Islamic empires blossomed, projecting their power from Africa to the east Indies, and from Spain to India. Inspired by
the words of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), and led by caliphs and sultans, this political and religious expansion remains unequaled in speed,
geographic size and endurance. Islam: Empire Of Faith is narrated my Academy Award - winning actor Ben Kingsley.
The
three-hour program tells the spectacular story of the great sweep of Islamic power and faith during its first 1,000 years - from the birth
of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) to the peak of the Ottoman Empire under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. Historical re-enactments
and a remarkable exposition of Islamic art, artifacts and architecture are combined with interviews of scholars from around the world to
recount the rise and importance of early Islamic civilization. Increasingly, scholars and historians are recognizing the profound impact
that Islamic civilization has had on Western culture and the course of world history.
Watch sample clips of this documentary - click on a picture to
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Dome of the Rock -
In 685AD
the Umayyad Khalif, 'Abdul Malik ibn Marwan, commenced work on the
Dome of the Rock. Essentially unchanged for more than thirteen
centuries, the Dome of the Rock remains one of the world's most
beautiful and enduring architectural treasures. The gold dome
stretches 20 meters across the Noble Rock, rising to an apex more
than 35 meters above it. The Qur'anic verse 'Ya Sin' is inscribed
across the top in the dazzling tile work commissioned in the 16th
century by Suleiman the Magnificent. |
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 The Mosque of Ibn Tulun
- In Cairo, commissioned by the Abbasid governor of the city in 879, represents the standard type of congregational mosque used in early Islamic times, in which the roof is carried by many single supports. The hypostyle plan, the open space surrounding the mosque, the piers and plaster decoration, and the spiral minaret copy the style perfected at the Abbasid capital of Samara in Iraq, but the square proportion is an adaptation to local taste. |
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 The
Great Mosque of Damascus - Built by
the sixth
Umayyad caliph
al-Walid I between 709 and 715 - he demolished the church and
constructed a mosque along the southern wall of the Roman temenos.
Using thousands of craftsmen of Coptic, Persian, Indian and Greek
origin, the construction took ten years to complete and included a
prayer hall, a vast courtyard and hundreds of rooms for visiting
pilgrims. The triple ailed prayer hall, roughly 160 meters long, was
covered with a tiled wooden roof and supported on reused columns
taken from Roman temples in the region as well as the Church of Mary
at Antioch (a similar practice yielded columns for the mosque of
Kairouan in Tunisia). |
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The Oxford
Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, 4 Vol. Buy it from Amazon.com now
The West knows little
of the world's second-largest religion, too often hearing only of
the terrorists who try to exploit it for political ends. Muslims
are found in all parts of the world, many of them far from the
religion's origins in the Middle East. (Indonesia has the world's
largest Muslim population.) This new encyclopedia is worldwide in
scope, treating every part of the globe where Muslims are found,
and focuses on the last 200 years. Editor Esposito, a faculty
member in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University,
has recruited more than 450 distinguished contributors from the
fields of art history, religion, science, anthropology, political
science, and other disciplines. Some of them are originally from
the Islamic world but teaching at universities in the U.S. and
Europe; others are at institutions in 30 countries ranging from
King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia to the Indonesian
Institute for the Sciences.
The 750 entries include regional overviews (Islam in Europe, Islam
in the Americas) and articles on specific countries (including the
predominantly Muslim states of the former Soviet Union). There is
coverage of the major branches of Islam, of Islamic sects, and of
such related faiths as Druze, Bah'ai, and Nation of Islam. The
diversity of Islamic religious belief and practice is discussed in
such articles as Circumcision, Funerary Rites, and Pillars of
Islam. But because Islam pervades all aspects of believers' lives,
there are also entries on politics, law, economics, science and
medicine, and the arts. The lengthy article Cassettes, for
example, describes the impact of this technology on the politics
of the Islamic world.
Communism and Islam
discusses the philosophical differences between these two belief
systems and the places in the world where they have led to
conflict. There are entries for specific organizations and
movements (Ba'th Parties, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas) and on the
relationship of Islam to other religions (Christianity and Islam).
Muslim views on such social issues as Family Planning and
Surrogate Motherhood are examined. There are biographies of people
from 24 nations, ranging from Muhammad to Malcolm X. Coverage
seems current; for example, Balkan States refers to the "gruesome
combat that began in the spring of 1992."
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