CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE RISE OF ISLAM

Islam prevailed because it was the best social
and political order the times could offer..,It
was the broadest, freshest, and cleanest political
idea that had yet come into actual activity
in the world, and it offered better terms than any
other to the -mass of mankind.—H. G, WELLS

The transition from the Ancient World to the Modem is
difficult to express in definite chronological terms. But the
line, however arbitrary, must be drawn somewhere. In the
history of Europe the capture of Constantinople by the Turks
(1453) is taken as a clear turning point. In the history of
India, the commencement of Mughal rule (1526) is consider-
ed by some as a suitable stage from which to begin our
'modern' period. However, both these happenings in the
history of the World had their beginnings in the Rise of
Islam, which therefore may be taken, for all practical pur-
poses, as the * watershed' which divides the two streams in
World History. Geographically, the home of Islam affords
a corridor between Europe and Asia; while culturally also
it shares the characteristics of more than one civilisation.
Though Arabia played no direct part in the history of hu-
manity so far traced by us, that peninsula was the reservoir
from which the various branches of the Semitic race, the
Babylonians, the Israelites, the Phoenicians, etc., 'moved out
and vitally affected the course of human history. Arabia