The Bronze Age died, and the Iron Age replaced it. Human progress is on a slow roll because we are such slow learners. We prefer the killing floor instead. The Sea People got taken out, but not before they raped, pillaged, and burned many Eastern Mediterranean cities to the ground.
In the seventh Century, Mohamanah and Gabriel authored the Quron, and the Religion took over the Middle East. Mohammad supplanted Jesus as the final all-knowing prophet of monotheism. The semi-nomadic tribes of the Middle East were all in. The advantage was they knew how to fight wars. In 1258 AD, Bagdad was burned to the ground by the Mongol hordes.
Jews stick together; that’s what they do. Their Religion holds them together, just like they knew it would.
By the end of the 5th Century, the global Christian population was estimated at 10-11 million. Then, in 660 AD, Islam grew up, and Christianity took its eyes off the ball. A migration period showed up. It happened after Rome’s fall (476–800 AD). There was no Roman (or Holy Roman) emperor in the West between 500 AD and 1000 AD, marked by frequent warfare and the virtual disappearance of urban life. The populations in the Middle East adopted Islam with a vengeance. The Dark Ages began in the Middle Ages. (500 to 1000 AD). After the fall of the Roman Empire, much of the Roman culture and knowledge was lost. This included art, technology, engineering, and history. All of the cultures went dark. The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD marked the end of the Dark Ages.
The Roman Catholic church’s repression of the Bible in vernacular languages has been documented since the Middle Ages, with a few highlights being Pope John X in 920 banning the use of the Old Church Slavonic translation. The Catholic church owned and controlled God’s biblical message. It took Gutenberg’s moveable type and Luther’s Reformation to get the Word out. It was too late; Islam had grown by leaps and bounds. Until the twentieth Century, only Protestants actively embraced Scripture study as Catholic Bibles.
The 14th Century saw significant developments in Christianity, including the Western Schism, the decline of the Crusades, and the appearance of precursors to Protestantism.
Soon after the prophet Muhammad’s death, there were military expeditions called “futuhat,” or literally openings, into what is now Egypt and other parts of North Africa. In other parts of the world, Islam spread through trade and commerce. Islam under the Abbasid caliphate (750–1258), which succeeded the Umayyads (661–750) in 750, was the focal point of Islamic political and cultural life. It shifted eastward from Syria to Iraq. In 762, Baghdad was founded as the new capital. Islam spread through military conquest, trade, pilgrimage, and missionaries. Arab Muslim forces conquered vast territories and built imperial structures over time. There are many reasons why Islam spread so quickly. First, Mecca was connected to many global trade routes. Another important reason was their military conquered lots of territory. A third factor was the Muslim’s fair treatment of conquered peoples. Islam spread to West Africa through the influence of Muslim merchants and scholars and was adopted by the rulers of the Sudanic Empires (Ghana, Mali, and Songhay). Rulers of the later Mali Empire encouraged the conversion to Islam by political and trading elites. Islam spread quickly because its leaders conquered surrounding territories. As Muhammad and the Muslim leaders who came after him conquered lands in the Middle East and beyond, they spread the teachings of Islam. Islam spread quickly because its countries were well-governed and orderly. The rulers of Islamic lands were expected to rule their land fairly.
