Arabs are proud and a confident race. They are enterprising and had perfected trade and their love for poetry and art unmatched by any other civilisations.
The Arab conquest of the ancient world in the 7th and 8th centuries saw them launched as an imperial system with rapidity unmatched in history. In a matter of a century they held sway from the border of France to Central Asia, Spain, North Africa, The Byzantine territory and the Persian Empire.
The new realm embraced a great diversity of regions and people. Arab conquerors were able to hold their subjects lands together. They then let the local rule their territory.
The Arab empire of the first conquests was transformed into the Muslim world of the middle Ages. As the Arab monopoly of power declined, people became rulers of their own segments of a multiracial Muslim world.
It was within the Muslim setting that a new culture, as a result of Arab conquest, was created. Arabs did not impose their culture by invasion (not the same as what Western civilisation did to the East during the European colonialism). Arabs came with impressive military strength with a simple desert culture and tradition.
The development of distinctive Islamic culture reached full stride at the time that Arab leadership of the empire began to wane. First the conquerors were absorbed with consolidating their rule (establishing new state, maintaining public order, strengthening the military and collection of taxes).
Arab elite tended to live apart from their subjects in garrison cities. When the conquest settled into an accepted and permanent order and its monopoly of power given way to broader rules, did the new culture develop?
During the Abbasid dynasty of 750, convert Muslims and client peoples moved from the fringes of the new society to the centre bringing with them their heritage, culture and civilisation. In this way outstanding achievement of Muslim culture appeared. Arab literature reached its peak; the great code of Canon Law was formulated; philosophy, science and medicine were given new dimension and content. Muslim civilisation – rich, sophisticated, varied symbolised societies of the Islamic world and took its place among the great cultural achievements of human history. Arab conquest brought with it constructive forces that set the stage for a civilisation to emerge (unlike other Mongol conquest which left ruins and destruction).
The Arabs explained that their conquest was in the path of God, which meant a new social order was to be established. The empire that resulted from invasion was conceived as permanent and self-perpetuating.
The vision of empire created the need of setting for new social and cultural order. The new world state paved the way for the emergence for an imperial culture. Within this new empire of diverse cultures of ancient world were shaken out of their regionalism and forced into new and fruited interaction.
Once Arab conquerors relaxed their conquest, they sat as pupils at the feet of the people they subdued and proved to be very acquisitive. Arab classical works were translated into Arabic, impressive buildings inspired by classical designs were built, and Arab scholarship in grammar and literature influenced by Greek patterns began to flourish. At the same time, the diverse people absorbed one another’s cultures; barriers to travel through the empire were broken down so people can travel. Contacts with Arabs produced Muslim converts; intermarriages and the emerging Islamic order became multicultural and intercultural.
Islam
Arab conquerors brought with them the faith of Islam. And Islam was a decisive factor in the process of cultural creation. Many invaders such as the Mongols ruled but then they were absorbed by the culture they conquered.
The Arab conquest was Islamic as well as military which meant when a territory has been conquered, it became part of (Dar Al-Islam), a society under Muslim rule in which Muslims could practice their faith without hindrance. This did not mean that all the subject people became Muslims. However, it meant the Islamic way was to be accepted institutions, state and society.
Islam vision of God, man and society was definitive and rested upon divine authority.
The Language
The language of conquering tribesmen of the desert seemed both alien and primitive. Arabs had a tradition of oral poetry; their grammar was yet to be explored. The vocabulary of Arabic reflected simple and limited experience of the desert. Yet Arabic overcame these handicaps and quickly became the dominant language of culture and scholarship in the rising Muslim world. Those who did business with the Arabs learnt Arabic. The Qur’an, source of all belief and piety was in Arabic and could not be translated into other tongues. Prayers were in Arabic and the fact that God had chosen Arabic as the language of revelation made the study of its grammar a religious necessity.
Arabic displayed a remarkable potential as a medium of sophisticated and complex communication. It had strongly marked structure of Semitic languages, in which the parts of speech are closely and clearly related. It could create new words out of existing verbal forms and its ability to compress shades of meaning into a single dramatic expression made it a vivid and exact language.
Arabic is the new state over arched local languages and literature to create a new and universal intellectual realm where Persian philosophers, Arab theologians, Jewish and Christian physicians and Indian mathematicians could speak a common language and have a sense of sharing in a common intellectual order.
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