Ismail Kamdar – History of the Muslim World
AI: Summary ©
The history of the European Empire during the golden age includes rise of umcented empires and decline of modernity due to factors like war, colonization, and economic factors. The rise ofNetty, a movement aiming to empower Muslims, is also highlighted. The political history of the US, including the Capital and President, is also discussed, along with the need for military revival among Muslims and the history of the US, including the need for scientific advancements in political history.AI: Transcript ©
Okay. Thank you all for coming tonight. We
we're doing a topic that I wanted to
do for a very long time.
Some of you know that history is my
area of specialty.
It's a field that I'm very passionate about.
Some of you have done my online history
course. 30 videos covering
1,400
years' worth of history in 30 hours.
Today, we're going to attempt something a bit
more challenging.
Right? What I normally do in 30 hours,
we're gonna try and give you 1 hour.
So
this is a very
quick snapshot
of
1,400
years' worth of history
in Malawi.
I actually don't know if I can do
it, but I'm gonna try.
There's a lot to cover.
And
I chose this topic because
history,
I think, is the one area of Islamic
studies where
we do not have enough information in our
local curriculums.
Right? Our local is, history focuses mainly on
the story of the prophets, the sira,
and at most of.
And that's understandable because that's the most important
part of our history. That is actually the
Islamic history.
What we're looking at today is not the
Islamic history. It's the political history of the
Muslim world. It's what happened after that. What
happened for the next 1,400
years?
Right? And so before we jump into it,
I wanna clarify a few important principles and
theories
that will guide your understanding
history.
When they first jump into it, it can
be depressing. It can be shocking, but a
lot of things
bad things happen in our history.
Right? It's not all
happy
events. It's not all good. It's up and
down, up and down, just like life.
Right? In our lives, we have ups and
downs. We have good times and bad times.
Our history is the same. Every generation had
ups and downs.
So the number one principle to guide whatever
we're going to go through today
is that our religion is divine, our history
is human.
The Quran, the sunnah, this is divine. This
is our source of religion.
This is where we take our
our knowledge from, but our history is human.
You'll find the majority of Muslims to live
in our history are not. They are not.
They're just the average person with the average
life to have really bad about it.
Number 2, we live in a bubble of
modernity, which clouds our judgment of history. A
lot of the problems people have with history
is not really a problem with history where
they're living in a very unique point in
history. Right? Like, some people are shocked when
they learn that Muslims conquered other lands. Right?
They're like, why are Muslims conquering? We're supposed
to be the religion of peace.
Relaxed conquest is part of every empire. Right?
Including the Muslim empire. It's going to happen.
So it's it's our bubble of modernity that
makes us look at these things like there's
something strange about them. But within the context
of history, it's quite normal, whether we're talking
about conquests or some of the other things
that happened in history. And and
conquests or some of the other things that
happened in history. At the end of the
day, our history is very human. Good things
happen, bad things happen. Well, boring things happen.
You know, the average person in history had
a very boring life. That's why we don't
have write about them in the history books.
You know? They don't we only really like
about the bad things that happen.
Think about in our own life. Right?
When you have a good month
and everything goes your way, you don't really
need to write about in your journal or
diary.
But when you have a day where everything
goes wrong, you can fill 20 pages about
it. Our history is the same. Sometimes you're
talking about as Alipha in a 20 year
reign and nothing goes wrong, and his biography
is like 2 paragraphs. He wrote for 20
years, and there was
the
we have 50 pages describing those 2 years.
So
history is a mixed bag. It's gonna be
good. There's gonna be bad. And
one more point to clarify before we jump
into actual history,
a lot of people approach history with a
wrong theory in mind. Many of us, because
of the liberal environment that we grow up
in and study in, we have absorbed the
the liberal myths of our history. The main
myth about history that we have absorbed is
the theory of progress.
Right? The theory of progress is the idea
that humans are getting better in every way
with each passing year. Right? That we are
morally superior to the people who came before
us. This is the theory of progress
that liberalism is built upon. Right? This is
why they say things like, it's 2024. Why
do you still believe that? It's 2024. How
can you still have that belief?
This theory
is fundamentally
opposed to the teachings of Islam.
Why?
Because we believe
that the best generation is who? Which generation
is the best?
I'm to be good people,
but the further away you get from the
time of Rasulullah
the more morally corrupt society becomes.
Right? So the theory of progress is completely
a myth in the Islamic worldview.
Rather, we believe the best of times in
terms of morality, in terms of faith, in
terms of piety, is the 1st generation of
Muslims.
And the further away we get from that,
the closer we get to kiyama, the worse
humanity
gets. Right? And this is why we don't
try to liberalize the need,
because we know that what would save the
later generations is what saved the earlier generations.
So this theory contradicts
a fundamental of our religion.
Instead, I want to ask you
look at history to 2 other theories.
The first theory is why I just mentioned
the theory of spiritual decline, which means that
human piety peed during the prophet
and
every generation after that is not as pious
collectively.
2 evidences for this, the hadith,
right, that the best of generations
is my generation, then the one after them,
then the one after them. Right? So the
prophet tells us that it there's a downward
slope in terms of piety.
2nd rule of the Surah, where
Allah subhanahu wa'ala
describes the people of Jannah, he puts them
into 2 groups, the pious and the average
Muslim. With the pious, he says,
Many of the early Muslims were pious. In
the end of time, it will be very
few. When it comes to the average Muslim,
Allah
after describing Jannah for them, he says,
There'll be many in the early generations, and
they will still be many in the later
generations.
What these these two verses of the Quran
are predicting
is that over time,
Muslims will get more in number but less
in piety,
which we observe.
Right? So this is the theory of spiritual
decline taken from this hadith and this verse
of the Quran. The other theory I want
you to keep in mind as we go
through the ups and downs of history is
the theory of cycles of power. This theory
was initially,
made popular by Ibn Khaldun,
is that every empire goes through a rise,
a peak, and eventually a decline, and this
includes Muslim empires. Muslim empires are not immune
to this, and we see this happening over
and over again in our history. So when
we look at history, we need to understand
2 things.
The time of the prophet's god forbid, is
the golden age in terms of piety.
After that, we have a variety of empires.
Every empire has their golden age. The golden
age is not necessarily a golden age of
piety, but a golden age
of prosperity in terms of being the wealthiest,
most powerful empire in the world, but in
every empire also rises and falls.
Right? So now let's try and go over
1,400
years of history in 45 minutes.
Right? Starting with the time of Rasulullah
I'm not gonna go to the seerah. You
all should be familiar with it. We'll do
that. It'll take us another 60 hours. But
we know Rasulullah
comes about at a time when there's 2
major empires,
the Roman Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire.
Arabia is basically a bunch of tribes and
villages. There's no real civilization there. There's no
real structure or,
community there in the in in the sense
of what the Romans and the Persians were.
Rasulullah is born into Mandate to Imbakkah.
21,
years of being a prophet. And he,
is the age of 62 at the time
when he passes away,
and
he leaves behind his abba to continue his
mission. Right? This part of history, we all
know. We taught this in school. We taught
this in madrasa. This is the most important
aspect of history, the sera. If you don't
know the sera, buy a book, download a
podcast, attend the class. This is the most
important part of history to study because this
is where you take your religion from. You
take your religion from the life of Rasulullah
salallahu alayhi wa sama and his aaba, not
necessarily those who come after them.
So after Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, we
have the period known today as the time
of the khulafa of Rasihin,
the rightly guided khanifas.
Obviously, when they were alive, they didn't call
themselves the rightly guided khanifas. They all just
trying their best. Right? And these are
the 5 great Sababa. We'll rule at the
beginning. This difference of opinion on the right
of guidance on 2, 3, 4, or 5.
I'm listing 5 according to the hadith that
the writing guidance will last for 30 years,
and, really, these 5 make up exactly 30
years. Right? So this is the period of
piety and the golden age spirituality for the
ummah. This is when you have the best
of the best living. Right? You have Abu
Bakr, Omar, Osman, Ali, Hassan. But even besides
them, you have Abu Bayla ibn Jarrah. You
have Khalid ibn Walid. You have the ummah
at its best at this time. Abu Bakr
is the first khalifa who rules for 2
years. There is a war against the apostates.
There is a war against the false prophets.
The jihad of expansion begins. They conquer parts
of the Persian Empire, parts of the Roman
Empire. And one of the most important things
that Abu Bakr Raja Ambu started was the
compilation of the Quran.
Abu Bakr Raja Ambu passes away within 2
years. Omar Raja Ambu becomes the.
From all of these reigns, the most important
to study is that of Omar Rajilahu.
Right? He rules for 10 years, and a
lot of important things happened in these 10
years that shaped our understanding of Islam and
our understanding of history.
One of the main things that happened at
this time is that there are this is
one of 2 points in our history where
the Muslim empire grows the fastest.
Right? There are two points in history where
the empire expands the fastest, the time of
Umar and the time of Walid ibn Abdul
Malik. So in the time of Omar, the
Persians are defeated.
The superpower of the world, the Persians, are
completely wiped out, and all of those lands
in Iraq, Iran, and all those surrounding lands
become part of the Muslim world, and they
become Muslim lands. So the Muslims have defeated
a superpower and taken over all of their
lands. Likewise, from the Romans, they conquered Syria,
Palestine, Egypt, and a variety of other lands
as well. That whole area that we today
call the Middle East
becomes Muslim
lands during the time of
life in Madinah. There's lots of beautiful stories
about his reign and amazing things that he
did. Eventually, he is murdered in Madinah,
and Osman radiyaanhu becomes the khanifa for about
12 years. In the first half, the conquest
continue. The Muslims fought their first navy. They
start going over the ocean. They start fighting
countries across the ocean,
and the second half of his reign is
a time of political
unrest.
So a lot of new people convert to
Islam in faraway lands, and rumors spread in
those red lands, negative rumors about Usman Rami
Lawwah.
People believing the rumors, they get riled up.
Rioting begins. Looting begins. They get to Madinah.
They sack the house of Usman Rademu in
the month of Zuhija, and they murdered him
in his home while he's fasting in the
month of Zuhija.
And
this causes
massive turmoil across the Muslim world because this
is the first time in history that a
Muslim ruler, a pious Muslim ruler, is killed
by Muslims.
So this plunges the Ummah into civil
war. Right? The death of Osman plunges the
Ummah into civil war. He passes away. He
is murdered.
Ali Raja Ambu becomes a Khalifa, but not
everybody accepts him as Khalifa, and the ummah
ends up being split. So we have now
a period of civil war. Ali Iradiah will
first fight some of the Sahaba.
His army, some of the Sahaba's army over,
some political issues, and then there's a massive
war between him and Mahawiya Radilah over the
hillafat. And Ali Radilah is murdered by some
extremist, the Khawarij,
and his son, Hassan, comes into power. Hassan,
wanting nothing to do with all of his
politics and civil war and fighting to Muslims,
after 6 months, he gives up the illafat.
He hands it over to and
the rightly guided error is over, and the
obeyed error begins. Just a couple of notes
here.
The rightly guided era is the most important
part of our history to study after the
time of the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam.
If you have not studied it, please make
time to study it. Right? Number 2, when
discussing the differences between the sahaba, even the
civil wars between them, it is important that
we maintain the other and respect for all
of the Sahaba. Right? And you do not
vilify them or curse them or or talk
bad about them. You do it in a
respectful way. It was a heated time. Everybody
felt they were right. Everyone felt they were
right writing for a just cause, and things
happen. It's just the human nature. You see
the human side of the sahaba in times
like this.
So Muawiyah becomes the Khalifa, He had a
20 year reign of peace and justice, which
is really,
one of the best reigns,
of the later era. But in his reign,
the the Ummah transports,
a lot of people find this transformation to
be negative.
I don't consider it negative or positive. I
consider it necessary.
Right? That Muawiyah Barghiad notices that
there's a lot of infighting.
Furthermore,
the 3 Khalipas before he were assassinated.
So it makes sense that he made some
changes. Right? He gets bodyguards. Every haditha after
this for the rest of our our history
had bodyguards.
When you think about it realistically, 3 people
before you assassinated, it's realistic you wanna get
bodyguards. You can start living in a in
a palace. You're gonna start protecting yourself.
Right? So it's the time of Mu'awiya that
really preceded the transformation
of the Tilafat into a monarchy between empire,
a empire side monarchy very similar to the
Romans.
So basically, they
they murder some of the political
ideas of the Romans and the Persians, and
the Muslims now become this empire.
And, yes, in terms of piety, the Khalifa
of Washington era is better,
but
I don't think the Ummah would have survived
and grown to the power that he did
in the later times if he never really
became the type of empire.
Just to just to survive all the wars
that were to come with the Romans and
with the, later on, the Mongols and the
Crusades, the Crusaders,
it needed the
stability of how a monarchy ran. So
it was
it is a very contested part of our
history. Whether the monarchy system is good or
bad. I'm of the opinion that it is
neutral. It is just a political necessary of
that time and something that was needed,
to maintain the stability of the empire.
So we have the 1st monarchy. Now from
this point onwards, our history is
empires. It's monarchies.
It's kingships.
For the rest of our history, right to
World War 1. For
1300 years, our history is empires. Each empire
has a rise. It has a peak. It
has a golden age. It has a form.
The first empire is the Umayyads.
The Umayyads,
are a branch of the Quraysh,
they essentially rule the Ummah for about 90
years. It's a very short empire, but the
little bit of a crop was there towards
the end. We'll come to you in a
bit. They rule for about 90 years, and
during this time,
the Muslims really become a superpower.
This is really a vertical if you think
about it.
Islam starts in the desert of Arabia, in
small towns and villages,
And within 80 years, it is a superpower.
It is literally one of the mightiest empires
in the entire world. Right? So the Umayyads,
particularly Abdul Malik ibn Marwan,
he turns it into a proper empire. He
comes up with the idea of having an
official language, having a flag, having their own
currency. So before this, Muslims used Roman currency
and Persian currency. In the time of Abdul
Malik, they started to develop their own currencies.
Alright? So it really becomes an empire at
this time. The * has its own
flag. It has the official Arabic language being
Arabic. It has
a a tax system. It has an official
army. It has borders with the other empires.
It has peace treaty to other empires. It
has it on currency.
It's now really a global superpower.
And
this brings in a period of, for the
first time in Muslim history,
real material success.
The ummah becomes especially the government, it may
have become wealthy overnight,
and the ummah has not experienced this before.
So for many of the Umayyads, the this
world proves to be too much of a
test for them, and they end up indulging
in a very lavish lifestyle that upsets the
ulama and the pious Muslims.
Right? Because they can imagine if you lived
during this time. You lived through the time
of Umar and Osman and Ali, and then
a few decades later, your kalipa
is a wealthy man who drinks alcohol.
Right? It's it's a huge shift,
and this is this led to rebellions.
This is why the empire never lost very
young. People rebelled against him. Other political parties
rose up and gave a popular support, particularly
the Abbasids,
who then
stage a coup to take over the empire.
They massacre Umayyads, and the Abbasid empire begins.
So just to pause here again and take
some notes on this,
The
Right?
In my opinion, there's not much difference between
the Umayyads and the Abbasids.
Their style of leadership is very similar.
The Abbasids made a lot of false promises
to come into power. A lot of false
promises. Right? They're very much like the politicians
of today.
That they promised, they'll put someone from the
prophet's family, Sharan, and then Abu Hayasek, and
they'll
bring back the leader, Ullama, to position the
power. All this talk, once they come into
power, they're exactly the same as the Umayyads.
Really, the style of leadership is almost the
same. So
I don't really buy into this whole idea
that the Umayyads were evil and the Abbasids
were good. They were both human. Right? They
were both human. They had their good and
their bad qualities.
One of the omegas that stands out is
Omar Ibn Abdel Aziz. I've written an entire
book about his life, 300 page book about
his life. I highly recommend reading about the
life of Omar Ibn
Omar Ibn Abdul Aziz. He was the most
highest of the Umayyad rulers
and the one who did the most good
for this Ummah, so his biography is worth
studying in details.
So we
say the he was one of your major
rulers.
Remember I mentioned that during two reigns, the
Muslims conquered a lot of lands. First was
Umar, and the second is Walid. In the
time of Walid, the Muslims conquer all of
North Africa,
parts of India,
Saburghand, and most importantly, Spain.
They can't they conquer Spain. So now a
part of Europe becomes Islamic.
Right? Spain becomes a Muslim land and will
remain so for 700 years. So when the
Abbasids
massacre the Umayyads,
a story takes place that barely sounds like
something out of a movie. Right? A very
young, a male prince manages to escape, goes
on the run, goes into hiding, spikes hunting
down. He literally swims across an ocean. He
he disappears for a few years living under
false names. He finds his way into Europe,
and the people of Europe are still
loyal to the Omegas because they are the
ones who liberated them from from the Christian
rulers. And he establishes a second Omegasan Empire
in Spain,
So the Abbasid and Umayyads are now 2
separate empires at the same time, and that
empire lasts for another 300 years.
So some people think the Omayyads lasted for
90 years. In reality, they go on for
another 300 years in Spain where they have
their open age.
And, again, another part about history at this
point,
A lot of people think
that we have 1 khalifa until World War
1. It's a complete matter. We
only had 1 Khalifa until
the coup by the Abbasids.
Once the Abbasids took over, you have the
Umayyads in Spain. You have the Abbasids in
Baghdad,
umrah now grows too big for 1 person
to handle, for 1 family to handle. It
just grows too big and starts to cut
out.
Before I continue, I just want to make
a note here. A lot of people
don't understand how the empire works in terms
of sharia.
So here's an important note. The sharia
or the law of the land
was not handled by the government.
This is very important.
This is why the law of the land
remained the same
during the time of the Khulafa, Rashidim, the
Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Ottomans. The law of
the land remained the same.
The law of the land under Islam was
actually handled by the Ulema.
Right? So when the Umayyads came into power,
basically, you end up with 2 separate power
structures.
You have the
empires,
they handle jihad, They handle protecting the borders.
They handle taxes. They handle administration.
Right? That's the role of the Khalifa and
his governors. They are handling all of that.
The actual making of the laws or rather
interpreting of the Quran and Sunnah because Allah's
come from the Quran and Sunnah, the interpretation
of the law and the
applying of the law and the enforcing of
the law is done by the ulama,
the fuqaha, the muftis, and most importantly, the
polis.
That's why even, for example, when the Abbasids
take over, the law of the land doesn't
change at all. It's still Sharia.
Right? Ottoman's takeover. It's still Sharia.
They're all stays the same because they had
a separate strategy. It's not like today where
the government controls everything.
Under Sharia, the government barely controls anything.
Right? Really, under sharia, there's actually a lot
more freedom and a lot more levels of
power than decentralized
power.
Tribal chiefs have a level of power. Heads
of the household have a level of power.
Ulaguar have a level of power. It's decentralized
power. The Khalifa basically handles
politics, which is jihad,
protecting the borders, administration,
and collecting and distributing the taxes, right, which
includes the zakat.
So the law remains the same.
Okay.
We have half an hour, and we've got
3 more empires to vote. So let's see
how quickly we can do this.
The Abbasids come into power,
and they are the empire that last the
longest.
Between 300,
between 600 to 800 years, depending on how
you define the end of the Abbasid empire.
Because, historically, there's two points that's called the
end of the Abbasid empire.
Trial. Point number 1 that most of us
know, the Mongols invade, they destroy Baghdad, and
that's the end of the Abbasid alphat. And
Hilakkad. And for many people, that's the end
of the philippo, but they did the last
oration rulers.
What many people don't know is that there
was a sort of Abbasid ruler after that
in Egypt for another 200 years until the
Ottomans defeated him. That's why the difference of
opinion of when the Abbasid
entered.
So the Abbasids coming to power, they have
the same cycle. They rise, they have a
golden age, and then they have a decline,
and then they enter.
But the golden age of the Abbasid empire
is important.
It coincides with the golden age of Spain.
Because at this point in time, the Muslims
become
the most powerful empire in the world for
300 years.
For a 300 year period, the most powerful
people in the world are Abbasid Baghdad
and
in terms of education,
in terms of research, in terms of science,
in terms of all these things, the Muslim
become the world leaders. The rest of the
world goes to the Muslim lands to study.
They become the dominant power of the world.
They influence the world, and their influence is
still valid today throughout the world. Many of
the things we have today are built upon
the discoveries made during that time. Many of
the policies we have today are built upon
policies that they invented. Muslims invented a university
system. They invented the idea of medical colleges
that you can't be a doctor, love a
degree. They invented many things that we take
for granted today during this golden age. So
this is a very important part of our
history, the Abbasid golden age.
When the Muslims are wealthy, they have freedom,
they have power, they have access to resources,
and really,
we see the Muslims becoming world leaders in
every field. Like, almost every field you study,
if you go back to that point in
time, the main people developing those fields at
that point in time are Muslims. Muslims develop
invent algebra during this time.
So they can solve inheritance problems that. That's
what we were invented
for. And
many other inventions as well. However,
the Abbasids are only powerful for about 300
years.
After that,
we have what I consider the weakest part
of our history in terms
Ummah
Think of it like what the king of
England is like today.
Right? The king of England today is technically
the king of many countries.
So I mentioned the story of the great
Spain. He established a separate separate empire. His
descendants ruled over Spain for 300 years. This
is the introduction
of knowledge
and civilization to Europe.
Before this, Europe is in the dark ages.
It's a backwards land full of barbarian type
of people.
Right? It's really not considered worth going to
the it's not considered worth investing
in. Muslims come to Spain, they set up
schools, they set up university, they bring in
technology,
and the rest of Europe learn Arabic, go
to their universities, learn from them, take it
back to their lands. So for example, during
this period, a philosopher comes about in Spain
known as Ibn Rush.
Ibn Rush philosophy
influences the Europeans that leads to the renaissance
and leads to the development of modern philosophy.
Right? There is a very immediate impact
on Islam and from Islam upon the European
world trade dispute.
However,
no empire lasts forever. The Muslims of Spain,
just like every other empire, they arise, they
have 300 years of golden age, and then
they have the decline. And the decline of
Islamic Spain
was the first major shock in our history.
But this is the first time in our
history where the Muslims lose an entire country
back to a non Muslims.
Right? This is like
and spreading Islam, but they don't ever really
lose any major territory for 700 years. And
then suddenly, what happens
is that Spain
becomes divided. Muslims are fighting over power. And
for, like, for a few 100 years, there's
a civil war between the Muslim Christians, each
of these small kingdoms in Spain. And then
the crusades take place, and the crusaders inspire
in Spain something called the reconquesta.
Reconquesta, to reconquer the land. The Christians
reconquer Spain while the Muslims are fighting each
other, and they wipe out Islam from Spain
completely to such an extent that most Muslims
today don't even know that Spain was ever
Islamic.
Right? Many Muslims, they only have no clue
that for several 100 years, this was a
Muslim land and that this was really it
was such a beautiful Muslim land that people
used to call it Jannah Muwat.
That's how beautiful and well developed it was.
So this was, like, the first major shock
in our history
that you could lose an entire land and
never get it back. It's gone. It's no
longer a Muslim land. Right? Spain is reconfigured.
The Muslims and Jews are either exiled or
massacred.
Interesting note,
Judaism survived because of the Muslims.
Right? Under Islam,
Jews and Christian had complete freedom of religion
to such an extent that they could even
enforce their own Torah and,
Really, Islam protected
Judaism
from falling apart and going extinct because the
Christians were always trying to kill them.
So while the Spanish Empire is falling apart,
the same thing happens to the Abbasids.
Right? The Abbasid leader doesn't have any real
power. He becomes
a figurehead. He becomes a you know, somebody
who people say, oh, he's a he's a
Khalifa. I'm just the what people will do
in that time is
Right? So for about 300 years, they're just
a lip service to the Abbasid Khalifa.
And really during this time, when you study
this point in history, you almost never study
the alibahs themselves because they're just
useless people who feel like glory of power.
You study people like Salaabuddin Yubi
and
You have the Umayyads in Spain. You have
the Fatimids in Egypt. You have other people
popping up as well. And then you have
other small kingdoms claiming to be following the,
Abbasids, and then 2 major events happen that
completely devastate the Abbasid empire.
It's the end of the Abbasid empire. Right?
The first is the Crusades.
So the Crusades is basically
Europe waking up. It's the Europeans realizing
that
they also can have power, and they also
can, you know,
conquer lands. And Muslims don't really have that
border guarded because they didn't really consider the
Europeans to be a threat up to that
point in 2:35 to the Byzantiums and others.
And so they had that border open so
that Europeans can go for pilgrimages to Jerusalem
because it's a holy land for Christians and
Jews as well,
They enter the Muslim lands. They massacre the
Muslims,
specifically
Jerusalem,
Palestine. They take over that land. They're ruling
for 90 years.
There's no Islam allowed in that land at
all for the 90 year period. This is
one of the most tragic and violent genocides
that happened in the history of Islam.
90 years later, a military general by the
name of Saladin defeats them and takes back
Jerusalem.
And in a few years later, something even
worse happens,
the Mongol invasion.
So, again, just like no one was expecting
a attack from the west, from the
from the Crusaders,
they weren't expecting any attack from the east
either because to the east were the Mongols.
The Mongols were just
scattered nomadic tribes. They didn't really have a
civilization
or an army or a desire to conquer
anyone. And then one guy amongst them decides
to unite everyone by name of Jameez Khan.
Right? Or how do you call him Kangnis
Khan? It's Jameez Khan. He unites everyone, and
he says, let's conquer.
And
Mongols
were so barbaric and violent and unstoppable
that the Muslims of that time believed that
they were Yajun and Hajun and that the
world was ending. When you read books written
at that time, people were literally writing like
the world is ending. Like, it's over. That's
it. Kiyama is here. You know how people
do they think that, you know, Kiyama is
here and
And it's really some Muslims' faults.
They were willing to have peace with the
Muslims when the Muslims insulted one of their
leaders, and they just go on a rampage
and start killing everyone,
and then they reach Baghdad. If
we had time to go over what was
Baghdad,
Baghdad,
for the first half of our history,
was the greatest
city in the world.
Right?
Those kids here who play Assassin's Creed and
you've seen the newest ones build around what
Baghdad was like during the golden age. You
can actually walk around and see what the
city was like. It was the most beautiful
and well developed
city in the world at that time. It
also was considered, you know, untouchable.
Yet, the Mongols come in, and they completely
destroy the city. They destroy the Abbasid empire.
This is the end of the Philafat.
Right? For those who believe that the filafat
has to be from the Quraysh, this is
the end of the filafat.
Right? Because what comes after this is non
Quraysh.
And so
the Ummah enters
a stage where there's no Khalifa.
And when people think it's the end of
the world and where the Muslims are divided
into many small little countries that war with
each other.
Sounds familiar.
Right? Very similar period to what we're going
through today.
What we're going through today
happened
about 600 to 800 years ago. When the
Khalafat was abolished, the Muslims were split into
many, many empires,
and there was no real political unity or
power. And everyone's fighting everyone, and people thought
the world was ending. But the world didn't
get
new empires rose once again. And so we
now have,
specifically,
4 major empires come about. The many smaller
ones, the 4 major empires come about in
this period. 1st are the Mamluks.
The Mamluks are interesting because Mamluk literally means
slaves.
Right? The Mamluks are the slaves of the
Abbasids. They have an Abbasid, but they're the
ones who actually rule in. And they are
able to defeat the Mongols. They become the
first people to defeat the Mongols, so they
maintain control of Jerusalem, Mecca, Medina,
Syria, Egypt, basically, you know, the heart of
Islam. They maintain control of that part of
the world, and,
they
become the sultanate or the Muslim kingdom in
that part of the world.
But,
they call they had some kind of legitimacy
because they had a legitimacy, because they had
a Abbasid figurehead with them, and they called
him the Khalifa.
Right?
At the same time, some of the Shia
in Persia, they also gather and fight up
against the Mongols, and they form their own
empire called the Safavid Empire that also last
for a very,
long time.
At the same time, what's most amazing to
me
is that some of the Mongols convert to
Islam.
Some of the Mongols who conquer the Muslim
world
convert to Islam, and from their descendants come
new Muslim empires. One that's most relevant to
us and that we really need to study
is the Mughal Empire.
The Mughal Empire basically Mongol
descendants who were Muslims
that ruled over India in what became India's
golden age.
Right? India, under the Muslim rulers, was the
wealthiest
country in the world.
That's why the British wanted to colonize. They
wanted that wealth. Right? It's not the India
we see today.
It's very important that we study the history
of the Mughals,
the Mughal Empire because it's a forgotten part
of our history that directly affects many of
us. It's how we got to where we
are. Right? So the Mughal Empire are the
descendants of the Mongols that rule over India.
India goes through a golden age under the
Mughal Empire.
The most important
of the empires that arise at that time
is the Ottoman Empire.
So what is the Ottoman Empire? And that's
the last empire we will discuss before we
finish off.
Basically, a group of nomadic Turks
realized that they need to form some cities
because they're being attacked on both sides. They
have the Crusaders on one side. They have
the Mongols on the other side. They can't
keep moving from city to city. Right? Those
of you who watch or those smart cities,
you know what I'm talking about. By the
way, the cities are mostly fictional, but some
aspects of it is true. Right? So, basically,
they form a few town densities, and they
become like a small little kingdom
that's fighting off the crusaded and the mortals.
But here's the point I want us to
think about and want us to to to
realize.
The the Ottomans start up in a small
kingdom of just a few towns,
And within 300
years,
they become the mightiest empire in the world
and in filahat.
Today, we think that for the falafel to
be restored, you know, there's gonna be some
magic thing where there's a falafel over the
whole Muslim world.
But after the downfall of the Abbasid of
Bilafu, they do 300 years for another empire
to rise up to that level.
Right? And realistically, that's gonna happen again. It's
also gonna take about 200 to 300 years.
It's not likely that you're gonna see it
in your lifetime.
Right? But many people want everything to happen
quickly. That's not how history happens.
So 2 things the Ottomans do that really
establish their power in this world.
Number 1, they conquer Constantinople.
Constantinople
was the capital of the Byzantine Empire.
It was considered
unconquerable.
It was the capital of the Byzantines for
a 1000 years, and the prophet
had prophesized
that one day Muslims will conquer that land.
And over 800 years later,
the Ottomans conquer Constantinople.
The The Byzantine
Empire is no more.
And Constantinople today, what do we know,
Istanbul
was the capital of the Roman Empire for
a 1000 years. So this now becomes the
capital of the Ottoman Empire for the next
600 years.
This becomes the heartland of Islam for the
next 600 years.
Constantinople
becomes Istanbul becomes the most important city in
the Muslim world. And then
feeling confident from the conquest of Constantinople,
the Ottoman sort of turn on a Muslim,
the co rulers, even with many empires at
the same time. And they fight the Mamluks,
and they take over Jerusalem and Mecca and
Barinah from the Mamluks.
Why is this important?
This is important because now
the Ottomans rule
Constantinople,
the center of Rome,
sultan,
the Caesar of Rome, and the Khalifa of
the Muslim world, and the custodian of the
holy lands, because they were only 1.
Right? And they become the most powerful
empire in the world.
Imagine that 300 years before this, Muslims thought
the world was ending.
It happened multiple times, and at least it
can happen again. Right? And I'm very confident
it could happen again when another empire rises,
maybe in our lifetime or in the next
generation or 2. So they become this massive
empire spread across Europe, Asia, and Africa. A
lot of the Balkans, a lot of what
used to be Russia and used to be
part of the Ottoman Empire. That's why there's
many Muslims living there.
Rarely, they become the size of what used
to be 50,
20, right, or 50 countries
with 25,000,000
people.
At the height
of Ottoman power, there were 25,000,000
people living in the empire.
1 of the tragedies of our history curriculum,
most of us don't know anything about the
Ottoman Empire. And the more I study it,
the more I'm amazed by the systems they
developed and the
ultimate golden age. The
an Ottoman golden age.
The Ottomans are the dominant superpower on Earth.
I forgot to mention. One of the things
that made the Ottomans more powerful at that
time is that they weaponized gunpowder.
They're known as the gunpowder kingdom.
So they developed canons and guns. That's how
they were able to conquer Constantinople.
The enemy, the fighting men would bow on
arrows and swords, and they were using muskets
and cannons.
Right? So, again, the Muslims are even the
most technologically
developed empire of that time.
So many of us may be wondering,
so how the how in the world did
we get to this?
Right? The mighty Amasis, Muslims of Spain, the
Mughals, the Ottomans.
And today, we are at the bottom of
the bottom. I didn't know,
real countries grew up to no way to
stop a genocide from happening, no real political
power. How did we get to where we
are? That will be the final part of
today's presentation.
The Ottomans, like every other empire, go to
a decline.
And their decline is it's dealing with several
major factors at the same
time. Number 1 is colonization and the rise
of the European powers.
So
many people think that the Ottomans were going
downhill and the Europeans were going uphill.
In reality, the Ottomans sort of stagnated
and the Europeans overtook them. Right? Because the
Europeans, at this point, go through the Renaissance.
They have developed, they go to colonization. They
conquer many different lands, including many Muslim lands.
Egypt, India become part of the British Empire.
The Dutch conquered Indonesia and Malaysia.
And, you know, many of the Muslim lands
are now becoming colonized.
So this weakens the Muslim world.
Right? Colonization
weakens the Muslim world. At the same time,
the the the Ottomans have to fight wars
on multiple fronts.
The war that affects them the most financially
is with Russia.
Russia
fights the Ottomans for 300
years
over Constantinople because
Russia before
modernity
was a
religious Christian empire,
and they
wanted the Constantinople
back. They considered it part of their Christian
heritage.
So for 300 years, there is a war
between Russia and the Ottomans. That's where many
of these lands that are today part of
Russia,
there are Muslim people in it. They're those
used to be Ottoman lands. Right? So this
really cripples the Ottoman Empire financially in this
war. At the same time, they're finding other
wars.
Nationalism starts to happen. Rebellion takes place. Many
people are unaware of this. They think Saudi
Arabia is a once off thing. They think
that they are a once off thing. They
think that they are a once off thing.
They are a once off thing. They are
a once off thing. They are a once
off thing. They are a once off thing.
They are a once off thing. They are
a once off thing
Many people aren't aware of this. They think
Saudi Arabia is a one stop thing. Saudi
Arabia is actually the 3rd Saudi kingdom.
It's actually the 3rd Saudi kingdom. Twice before
that, the Saudis took over Ottoman territories
and declared their own kingdom, and the Ottomans
had to fight them and take the lands
back. Right? So there's an ongoing war between
the Saudis and the Ottomans for about 300
years as well. At the same time, the
British are trying to get rid of the
Filavans.
The British are doing everything because they see
the Ottomans as their main enemy,
right, their main obstacle to colonization,
to taking over the world. And so there's
a lot of spies in the Ottoman Empire.
There's a lot of strategies to destabilize it
from the inside.
Really, the Ottomans are finding too many wars
on too many different fronts at the same
time, including internally,
and
the economic
factors lead to a period of decline already.
At one point, the the modern empire was
bankrupt.
And in 1800, they tried to salvage the
empire. They tried to develop new systems of
education, new systems of economics, new policies, a
new leadership style, a new army. They basically
tried to modernize the pilafat.
Many of us wonder what a modern falafel
will look like. If you look at the
falafel of the 1800,
you can see the Ottomans making an attempt
to modernize the Filaford to work within the
New World.
I don't really agree with everything they did,
but at least they tried to do something,
at least they tried to make it work
with every all the changes that were happening
in the world.
And
this new,
this new version of the Ottomans, which was
now a modern type of empire, it never
really stood a chance because
while all of these developments are taking place
and while they are coming up with a
new policy, the new systems,
an event happens.
Many people don't know this, but this event
is one of the most important events in
Muslim history.
World War 1.
Right? Again, if we think of World War
1, we think this is British history. This
is Russian history. This is Austrian history. This
is German history.
No. This is after the Mongol invasion and
the fall of Spain, this is the most
important tragic event in our history
because the Ottomans get dragged into World War
1.
Right?
Basically,
all of the superpowers of the world is
split into two sides.
The allied powers, Russia,
UK, USA, France, and the Central Powers,
Germany, Hungary, and the Ottomans, and a few
others.
And long story short, the Central Powers lose
the war.
British and the French literally conquered the Muslim
world.
100 years ago, the British and the French
conquered the Muslim world.
And they split it up into all these
small countries we see today.
And they divided it in such a way
that none of these countries have the resources
to be completely independent.
And they have to depend on them for
something.
And they set in place policies to ensure
that if Allah never rises again,
Muslims never grow as powerful as the Ottomans
again.
There are many other things that take place
at this time as well, the rise of
Zionism.
Right? The Zionism
rises up during this time as well. So
the Zionists,
they come about during the late years of
the Ottomans, and they want Palestine.
They really, really want Palestine.
And
Sultan Abdul Hamid, the last great Ottoman ruler,
he tells him as long as we're around,
we're not getting this land. This is Ottoman
land. This is Muslim land. You can live
there,
war in World War 1. They allied with
the British, and they
made a deal with the British that if
if you defeat the Ottomans, you're giving us
an land.
But some of the Arabs also betray the
Ottomans,
and they make the same deal with the
British, that they're giving us that land. So
the British defeat the Ottomans. They take over
that land. The Arabs and the Zionists both
want it. And meanwhile, there's people living there
as indigenous to the land, the Palestinians.
Right? What is today? Jordan is literally supposed
to Palestine. It was just a way of
compromising for the Arabs that they promised and
led to.
And so the mess we are in today
is a result of World War 1. We
are still living in the aftermath of World
War 1.
Many people don't know this because in World
War 1,
the Ottoman Pilaford is abolished
in 1924,
exactly 100 years ago. Right? The Ottoman Pilafar
is abolished. It should be exactly 1 in
100 years without a pillar of an empire.
Right?
What followed
is the division of the Muslim world into
many empires,
into many kingdoms.
And
all of these many kingdoms don't really have
that much power. They don't really have that
much natural resources.
First of all, the Muslim world is bombarded
with forced secularism and liberalism.
And the most, obvious example being Turkey.
Turkey, if you know what happened to Turkey
after World War 1 for the next 30
or 40 years,
secularism was forced on the people.
People's beard were literally ripped off. Their hijab
was ripped off their head. They go through
enforced secularism.
They basically
because over the past 50 years,
all over the world,
we have seen a revival of Islam.
Really, over the past 50 years, Islam has
been on the rise again.
Just like it was on the rise in
the beginning. Just like it was on the
rise
The Muslim world has been on a rise
again in the past for 3 years despite
everything
that the enemies of Islam have done to
make sure that Muslims
give up their religion
and never grow powerful
again. One of the most ironic things that
has led to the rise of Islam again
is that when they took over the Muslim
lands and made these economies poor and made
destabilized these lands, lots of Muslims migrated
to their lands.
Islam is now spreading
globally
at a rate that they cannot understand.
They tried to force atheism. They tried to
force liberalism. They tried to force secularization.
Yet Islam is spreading so fast that by
the 90 by 2050, maybe the largest religion
in the world.
It's already the 2nd largest.
And not only is Islam growing in terms
of numbers, but, spiritually,
they are more practicing Muslims in the world
today than they were 50 years
ago, especially if they were 80 years 70
or 80 years
ago. Intellectually,
we have far more access to Islamic knowledge
and far more Islamic resources today than we
had even 30 years ago.
Most of us here know this 30 years
ago, we didn't have access to the resources
we have today. You can study anything about
Islam to get a touch of Abakina, and
people are doing so.
Right? You have seen an intellectual rise of
Islam. We now have a level of scholarship
that was, you know, unthinkable for a long
period of time that we have intellectual Muslim
scholars all over the world,
at least 4 or 5 Muslim countries are
doing well economically,
and they may be more in the next
10 or 20 years as they start to
work together, as they start to help each
other, as they start to develop new ways
of growing, that now there are actual Muslim
countries that are one of the most economically
prosperous in the world and have good places
to live, that where, you know, life is
good again. And, inshallah, more Muslim countries would
be like that.
So I say
and this is my conclusion.
My conclusion
is that many people have a negative
doom and gloom attitude towards history.
Come, and then only everything's gonna come right.
I don't really believe we're living in the
end times. Only Allah knows what's going on.
Where Islam is on the rise
intellectually,
spiritually, and economically.
What comes next?
The political revival of Islam, the revival of
Sharia, the revival of Allahu'at.
I believe that a new Muslim global power
will arise within the next 200
war.
Allah knows how long that will go on
before the end of the world. But
I don't believe in this doom and gloom
attitude that the world is overworked, yama is
closed, let's just do nothing, let's wait for
the party. I don't agree with that
wait for the money. I don't agree with
that attitude.
I think we can all contribute to the
rise of Islam and the revival of Islam
in our own way. Whether it's intellectually,
whether it's economically,
whether it's spiritually, we all can play a
role in seeing Islam rise up again one
more time just like we did so many
times. Our history is a history of every
time they pushed us down, we got back
up. May take a 100 years, but it
kept happening.
And, inshallah, it would happen again within our
lifetime. With that,
we come to the end of our presentation.
We're able to do it in exactly 1
hour.
So, yeah, that's 1400
years of political history in one hour. If
you want to learn about it in more
details, I have a online course where it
teaches across 30 hours going into a lot
of details of each empire.
Very popular online course, over 2,000 students.
Highly recommend if you want to learn more
details, okay, with the online course.
And I highly, highly recommend that we, as
a community,
we start studying our use of GNA.
Introduce it to school curriculum, introduce it to
models and curriculums,
read books on these topics, discuss it as
families.
We need to reconnect with our past. There
are so many amazing things about past that
we just completely questions, I'll take now. And,
if there's any questions, I'll take now. And,
if there's any questions,
If there's any questions, I'll take now. And,
if not, it goes up. By the way,
my new book is out,
25 Keys to a Happy Life of the
Quran of Sunnah. It's my latest book.
It's normally 250, but today, it's available 200
to pay if I want it.
And then revises civilization?
Or is it some there's not necessarily,
a one to one relationship between military,
So the way nations rise will change from
time to time, place to place. There's no
one model of an authorized. Right?
I think the spiritual aspect is important to
get Allah's help on the Muslim.
Right? But, obviously, the intellectual and economical aspects
are just as important.
But just going back a little bit,
what we saw on the other side of
history over the past 100 years was the
rise of modernity, the rise of western powers,
the rise of, the liberal world order. And
what we've seen over the past 10 years
is the decline of the entire system,
And the decline of that system is gonna
lead to the right of something new,
which could be a new Muslim empire as
one of those new things that pop up.
Because we are now living in what many,
even what many non Muslim professors call postmodernity.
They call it postmodernity
because the younger generation,
even many of the non Muslims, the younger
generation,
have lost faith in modernity.
They see modernity as the previous century.
They're actually
skeptical about modernity. They're skeptical about capitalism. They're
skeptical about feminism. They're skeptical about,
of democracy. They're skeptical about, you know, the
giving a little quote religion.
People are very skeptical even about things like
education and medicine. And you you now have
rights of skeptics in every field.
So that means something news will come out.
Right? This is actually a void being smart
and firm,
where you and we don't know how it
will happen. Really,
one of the roles of the intellectual of
our time is to figure out the way
forward. There is no road map.
There
faults.
The Turks have been through, and they're being
attacked from both sides by the Mongol and
the Crusaders, and it looked like there was
no way out there, and they became my
nearby. Right? Only everyone knows how it's gonna
play out.
And this is completely harm, actually. I believe
the nation state model is harm
because we are dividing Muslims
in a way that creates animosity
and in a way that hinders that freedom
that the Sharia wanted us to have, the
freedom to the many way the Muslim world.
So one of the major changes that will
have to happen eventually is to let go
of the nation state model or find some
new model part of where you have an
nation state model, but it's
open borders and a lack of national agent.
I don't know how it would happen.
And, also, the other,
But, yeah, there there is no one way
forward.
We we are seeing Islam rising anyways, and
I don't know what's next.
That
this presentation
is a political history.
Why the political history is happening? There's the
history of Abu Hanifa and the Abu Ghafi
and the Abu Ghafi and the
when we study political history, it's very dark.
Right? Politics is all bad news. But you
actually look at the life of the average
person on the ground.
Life was good for the average person, and
it didn't really change months from 1 year
prior to the next. We have separate history.
You can study the history of the ulama.
Right? And you will find
a very strong spiritual history throughout all of
these generations.
The history of the ODI is the same
thing. Right? So
one of the points I mentioned earlier is
when when the empire grew too big and
became a monarchy system, the ulama became a
separate type of
power from the
rulers. They became a separate type of power.
The ulama, for example, the bodies in the
Ottoman Empire,
So they were a separate power structure, and
they have their own history.
And that history is a bit more
more nicer.
Right? They did more stories of of spirituality,
of piety, of nice things happening.
It's just when you study politics, it's more
studying all of these things. Right?
Right just so we can benefit from their
life stories.
Right?
And the righteous is not only most of
them avoid politics.
You consider politics to be something that is
gonna get involved with.
So, yes, there's all the other types of
history happening at the same time,
and we could do that some other time.
So one of the points you mentioned,
during that point in time, in the past
8 months, they'd be telling me, I now
understand why jihad and religion power. And a
lot of people who became very pacifist during
that point in time, and in the past
8 months, they'd be telling me, I now
understand why jihad is
I always thought I thought this was never
a thought history. I said, history, if you
study, you realize the way this world is,
it's conquer or be conquered. That's the way
of the world.
And, really, we have to get back that
one as a woman.
And
the victory is not going to really come
voluntarily until
Muslim develop strong armies and they're able to
fight back and they're able,
to
take back the region. Now you said what
we are doing right now is still the
aftermath of World War 1. We haven't moved
from that phase yet.
And,
yeah, that that that's exactly what's going on
in Israel and Palestine at the moment.
It's that work. So you're very let's see.
What you mentioned is is exactly that, that
we need
a military revival amongst the Muslims.
That would be necessary,
They just that's how powerless these countries are.
So, yes, redeveloping a proper Muslim army is
necessary. And this is why we need to
move away from that pacifist understanding of Islam
where jihad is just jihad of the now
saying, you know, there's no conquest in our
religion, and, you know, there's a hippie idea
of
So the government didn't have power over the
law. Yes. They had they had the basically,
when they came to the law, people would
take their frontwards of the,
and they would take if they had the
form, they go to a party, a judge,
or whatever the court the party was the.
Right? Or whatever the party decides they will
do.
Right? So in Islamic law see, to to
to way we used to in modernity,
we have government laws,
and we have
Islamic law. Right? And sometimes they clash. Islam
historically, the Muslims
had the sharia, which the ulama interpreted and
ulama taught and ulama tried to buy.
And they are unsure that the sharia is
silent about,
like
things like, taxes
and,
things like,
property ownership in certain areas
and traffic laws, things like that,
those things the government handled.
Right? So for example, the Ottoman Empire had
the Sharia, and it had followed, the
Sharia and.
The Sharia
was handling halal and haram, wajib,
judging between people, marriage, divorce, business, all of
that were handled by sharia. That was handled
by the sheikhul Islam, the parties, the judges,
the.
The canon law was more to do with
taxes,
more to do with
traffic laws, more to do with education
laws, things that the Sharia is silent for.
Right? And that was handled by the government,
but what happens later on is they actually
they bring the whole army to help them
with that as well. Right? Because
the one of the things throughout our history,
you know, one interesting point throughout our history
is that the Khalifa
is always trying to prove that he's a
legitimate Khalifa
because everyone's every Khalifa every empire came into
power Jew, defeating another Muslim empire.
So
The way they do it is by letting
sharia be the law of the land.
If they interfere with sharia people who rebel
against him, If they're trying to change, the
Sharia people will rebel against them, and the
ulama will lead the rebellion against them. Right?
So they wouldn't touch it. They wouldn't go
near it. They'd say, this is your world.
You do all of our you're the experts.
You handle it. We focus now with it.
Right? Because they knew any attempt to mess
with the Sharia
would cause rebels or were gonna rebellion, right,
and cause people to turn against them. So
that's why they didn't really interfere with that.
But they did make laws on secondary issues
that Islam doesn't talk about. Like, Islam doesn't
tell you what traffic laws should be. So
it's perfectly fine for them who that you
make traffic laws
It's more like when the Khalifa does something
that seems to be changing to sharia,
then they would step up. So one good
example of this in early history, Manhattan and
Sahaba,
tyrant governor who because people, you know, eat
salah, the goodpah is after the salah. Right?
So when this tyrant was giving the heat,
khutbah, people used to go away. They don't
want to listen to you to speak. So
he flipped it around, and he started giving
the khutbah before the salah. The old man
stood up and to the side. He said,
Isafida, you cannot change the religion. Right?
So it didn't take a step, and that's
why you'll find many of the biographies of
our scholars, there is this point where they
are martyred or they are in jail because
they were very vocal when they were trying
to change our laws.
Excellent questions today.
I think we can close off now
unless there are any other important questions.
I do discuss the,
what do you call it? The the scientific
developments as well. So I have, like, 2
hours going to all the science and wisdom
development, what key sciences are. But 90% of
the course of political history, and then I
do 3 hours of the history of the
mud hops because I think that's a part
of our history that's very much understood,
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