Islamic Golden Age

Sharia is the Islamic legal tradition, which has a legacy from the time before Islam, still practiced to some degree in Islamic countries. Fiqh is the theory of Islamic law. Its main sources are the Quran and the Hadiths (records attributed to or allegedly approved by Muhammad). Already the Abbasid Caliphate hired professional judges, Qadi.

Slavery had been practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia and remained throughout the Islamic Golden Age. The social status of enslaved people varied through the ages; in some Islamic societies, such as the Mamluks, they could have a career in military or civil service.

Scholars in the Islamic World were inspired by the knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans and took it further, and by translating numerous Greek and Roman books on all kinds of subjects, they preserved some knowledge during centuries when it was lost in Christian Europe.

Islamic scholars were forerunners in mathematics, importing the decimal system from India, and inventing algebra (al-jabr means "assembling parts") and other mathematical methods used in modern times.

The Arabic language remains a lingua franca across much of the Middle East, North Africa and parts of the Sahel, with Classical Arabic surviving for religious studies. The Maltese language is believed to be descended from a dialect of Arabic formerly spoken in Sicily. The Portuguese and Spanish languages contain a large number of loan words from Arabic, mostly starting with "al": alfinete (pin), almofada (pillow), almofariz (pestle) and so on .

A few famous scholars of the time were:

• al-Khwārizmī (c. 780-c. 850), probably from Khiva, from whose terms we get the English words algebra and algorithm, and who introduced decimal arithmetic and "Arabic" numerals (originally from India) to the Islamic world.
• Avicenna (Arabic: ibn Sīnā, c. 980-1037), from a village near Bukhara, a brilliant doctor and philosopher. One of his medical texts was used in Europe as late as 1650.
• Omar Khayyam, from Nishapur, primarily a mathematician and astronomer, but he also wrote on philosophy, mechanics, geography and mineralogy and is best known in the West for his poetry.
• Maimonedes (c. 1135-1204), who was born in Córdoba, fled persecution of Jews there for the (then) more tolerant Muslim regions, and eventually became Court Physician to Saladin in Egypt.

Maimonedes, who was also a very influential rabbi, was one of many Jews and Christians who along with Muslims contributed to the greatness of the Islamic civilization.

The Golden Age lasted until 1258 when Baghdad was captured and destroyed by the Mongols.

• 🌍 Baghdad. Founded by the Abbasids in 762, was one of the world's foremost centers of learning and scientific progress for almost 500 years. 
• 🌍 Damascus. Home to the Great Umayyad Mosque, the first monumental Muslim temple, which started out as a local deity's shrine rebuilt as a Roman temple of Jupiter, which became a church dedicated to St. John the Baptist housing his relics (to this day, they're still there, inside a gilded marble shrine). Its overhaul into the monumental building we see today, from 706 to 715, is reported to have employed 200 skilled Byzantine craftsmen, architects, stonemasons and mosaicists, sent by emperor Justinian II at the personal request of Umayyad caliph al-Walid. 
• 🌍 Aleppo. Syria's second largest city is also a historic city, being one of the oldest continually-inhabited cities in the world. Highlights dating back to the caliphates include the Great Mosque of Aleppo, Al-Madina Souq and the Great Synagogue. 
• 🌍 Humeima. Former Nabatean trading post and home of the Abbasid Caliphate, which has seen the birth of figures like As-Saffah, Al-Mansur and Al-Mahdi. 
• 🌍 Mecca. The home town of Muhammad, is the primary destination for Hajis. 
• 🌍 Medina. The then primarily Jewish city of Yathrib that gave refuge to Muhammad and his followers after the Hijra (flight from Mecca). It is the second holiest city for Muslims. 
• 🌍 Jerusalem. The city was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate from the Byzantine Empire in 638, and the centuries-long ban on Jews entering the city that had been imposed by the Romans was lifted following the conquest. Contains the Al Aqsa Mosque (8th century) and Dome of the Rock (7th century), which are built on the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary). Muslims believe that this is the location from which Muhammad ascended to Heaven, and it is considered the third holiest site in Islam. As this site is also the holiest site in Judaism (Jews call it the Temple Mount), there have been tensions between Muslims and Jews here. 

• Larnaca, or rather the bank of the local salt lake west of the town in Cyprus, is the site of Hala Sultan Tekke, an Ottoman-built shrine at the cemetery of Umm Haram, Muhammad's wet nurse, who died here during a siege in the 7th century. Some denominations consider this to be one of the holiest Islamic sites.
• Tetovo, North Macedonia, is the site of the "Painted Mosque" (Šarena Džamija), a rather small Ottoman-era mosque that is atypically decorated with extremely bright and colorful paintings.
• 🌍 Istanbul. 
• 🌍 Bursa. 
• 🌍 Konya. 
• 🌍 Edirne. 

• 🌍 Cairo. A crucial destination in this context, contains many dozens of religious and secular buildings from this period, most notably the Al-Azhar University, an institution of Islamic learning founded in the 970s and one of the world's oldest universities, standing proudly next to the Khan el-Kalili bazaar, another must-see. 
• 🌍 Fez. is home to the University of al-Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 as a mosque and functioning until 1963 as a madrasa - an institution of Islamic learning - with a distinguished history and reputation. 

• 🌍 Bukhara. 
• 🌍 Samarkand. 
• 🌍 Turkestan. 

• 🌍 Córdoba. Former capital of Al-Andalus, contains several important relics of that time, especially La Mezquita de Córdoba, a beautiful, large mosque built on the site of a Visigothic church and subsequently converted into a church after the reconquista of Spain. (updated Dec 2020)
• 🌍 Granada. the site of the splendid Alhambra fortress/palace complex and other relics of its Moorish past, and it also has a mosque in Moorish style that was built in 2003 to serve a new Muslim community, hundreds of years after the last member of the previous Muslim community was expelled. (updated Dec 2020)
• 🌍 Toledo. a former Roman fortress city, perched atop a dramatic bend of the Tagus River, was a Visigothic royal seat as well, and features Spain's most important cathedral, in Gothic style. The former synagogue, a Moorish-style building which was used by the Jewish community prior to their expulsion during the Spanish Inquisition, also survives. 
• 🌍 Sevilla. The site where the Catedral de Sevilla now stands was once the site of the city's main mosque under Muslim rule. While the mosque was demolished in the 14th century to build the cathedral, its minaret still survives, but has been converted to the cathedral's bell tower. Many of the palaces in the city also show strong influences from Arab architecture.