A page from an early Qur'an written on parchment in ink and gold
Folio from a Qur'an Manuscript, second half 8th century
Marked Mecca

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The rise of Islam

The Prophet Muhammad began to receive what Muslims believe are revelations from God in Mecca in about 610. Within a century of his death, Muslim rule stretched from Spain to Central Asia.

Date
AD 610 to 750VII · After the empires
Place
Mecca · Medina · Damascus · JerusalemThe Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia
Laid out as
A beliefA faith or a way of thinking, from its central idea outwards to its practice and its spread.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IMecca and the revelation
  2. IIThe hijra to Medina
  3. IIIThe Qur’an
  4. IVThe first caliphs
  5. VThe Umayyads and Damascus
  6. VIThe Dome of the Rock

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Muhammad
  • Khadija
  • Abu Bakr
  • Ali ibn Abi Talib
  • Aisha
  • Abd al-Malik

Objects

  • The Birmingham Qur’an leaves
  • The Dome of the Rock
  • Umayyad coins

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

AD 610 to AD 750. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?