EXPANSION OF ISLAM.

The top 4 religions of the world are 

1. Christianity with 2.38 billion followers, 

2. Islam with 1.91 billion followers, 

3. Hinduism with 1.16 billion followers 

4. Buddhism with 507 million followers. 

While Christianity spread with the Roman Empire, Islam spread with the Caliphate. 

Prophet Mohammed was born in 570 AD in the Quraish tribe of Arabia. He died in 632 AD. 

When he died he left no successors to him, but his tribe the Quraish elected his close follower and relation Abu Bakr as the 1st Caliph. Caliphs were both the religious and political heads of the Muslims. 

Then Omar, Uthman and Ali followed in his succession.  All these four Caliphs were related to Mohammed through marriage. 

Some of Mohammed’s followers felt that Ali, the son in law of Mohammed should be the first Caliph.

As Abu Bakr was elected, there was schism in Islam and those who supported Ali’s candidature had a slightly different philosophy and are known as Shias and the rest are Sunnis. 

These 4 Caliphs were together called the Rashidun Caliphs and the Caliphate as the Rashidun Caliphate. It prevailed between 632 AD to 661 AD, a period of just 29 years. 

Under Mohammed the Muslim state contained the entire Arabian peninsula. The Muslim state expanded during the Rashidun Caliphate from Arabia to Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Iran and Armenia. 

These areas were conquered by the Caliphate from the Sassanid Empire of Iran. 

The Rashidun’s ran a theocratic empire which was later secularized by the Omayyad Caliphs who succeeded them. 

Till the time of Omayyad’s the Caliphs were elected if only by a few people. From the Omayyad’s they became a dynasty of succession. 

They Omayyad's had their capital at Damascus and had 14 Caliphs before the Abbasids succeeded them in 750 AD and had their capital at Baghdad. 

The Abbasids had 38 Caliphs and the Abbasid dynasty fell to the Mongols in 1258 AD. 

The Omayyad’s expanded the Caliphate to Transoxiana (parts of the Asian republics of Soviet Union), Sindh, North West Africa (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia) and also Spain. 

At its greatest extent the Omayyad Caliphate covered an area of 11,100,000 Km which is a large empire.

After the Abbasids, there were titular Caliphs at Cairo under the Mamluks (a dynasty instituted by a slave soldier of the Muslim armies of the Caliphs) from 1258 AD to 1517 AD when the last Mamluk Caliph was captured by the Ottoman Sultan Selim I. 

The Ottoman Sultans then used the title of Caliph and held it till the Republic of Turkey was established in 1924. 

Thus the Caliphate lasted for 1292 years after Mohammed’s death in 632 AD.