Islam Human Geography

Islam Human Geography

Islam is a religion in which specifically aims at human progress, and shows the proper way of it in a number of commands and prohibitions covering every avocation of human daily life, social life and politics as well as every prompting of individual mind and spirit. In essence, the Islamic culture is expressed in human geography, which bonds a relationship between the physical environment and the activities of humans in everyday life. Discussed below are 5 types of human geography that is expressed in the Islamic world.

Cultural Diffusion

For a thousand years after the death of Mohammed (570-632), the expansion of Islam formed one of civilization's greatest empires. By seventh century A.D., Muslims had spread from Arabia to Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo, Alexandria, and Isfahan. Between the lands they controlled and the regions with which they traded, Muslims were in contact with almost the entire known world. Their situation, between the eastern reaches of Europe and the central plains of Asia, allowed for an adaptation of knowledge from other cultures to bring self identity.

For instance, in Jerusalem, an architectural masterpiece built by Muslims speaks of the melting pot quality of the medieval Middle East. The Dome of the Rock is an octagonal-shaped building enclosing a domed, cylinder core. Not a mosque for public worship, the Dome of the Rock was built on the order of Abd al-Malik, the ninth Islamic Caliph, and completed in 691. The completion of the Dome of the Rock came at a time when the Muslims did not occupy the Christian region of the city. Instead, they limited themselves to the southeastern portion of Jerusalem where the remains of the old Jewish Temples, destroyed by the Babylonians and the Romans hundreds of years earlier, were located. As a way of letting their presence be known to the Christians, the Muslims constructed the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, where its impressive structure would be visible.

Islamic art is just one example in which Muslims coexisted with other religions. The establishment of libraries was a benefit of the Muslim import of paper making techniques from China. Islamic libraries contained hundreds of thousands of volumes and were far superior to their European counterparts, which at that time were mostly limited to monastic and university collections. The first known paper manuscript of the Quran was created