Muslims have historically conceived of and lived with Islam as norms and truths that are at once contradictory yet coherent. These findings are in line with a rich body of earlier work by prominent Islamicists including Lapidus (2002), Berkey (2003), and Lewis (1993), who have extensively discussed the role of long-distance trade, noting both the diffusion of Muslims along trade routes (Geertz, 1968; Lewis, 1980; Trimingham, 1962) and the importance that Islamic scriptures confer on trade-related matters (Cohen, 1971; Hiskett, 1984; Last, 1979). An innovation of Islam was the practice of direct trade, where Muslim merchants personally carried goods over long distances along the trade routes rather than relying on intermediaries. First, it allows us to test in a sharper manner whether differences in proximity to pre-Islamic trade routes are meaningful predictors of local adherence to Islam. Prior to Muslim conquests, trade was conducted by a network of local merchants who traded exclusively in their homelands. The territories featured important trade hubs during the pre-Islamic era, particularly those along the Silk Road in Asia and the Red Sea in North Africa.

The Islamization of the nomadic Turkic peoples of Central and Inner Asia occurred during the 10th century along the trade routes. Though he wasn’t the first European to embark on this journey, he was the first one to write a book about his adventures, giving Europeans a glimpse of what Asia was like. And do not kill yourselves (nor kill one another). When the plot evolved from kidnapping to assassination, Powell was assigned to kill Secretary of State William Seward. Check out similar cases related to Engel v. Vitale that deal with religion in schools and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. So, we should know regard and turn out to be nearer to the teacher who will give us training and learning. So, to the extent that trade is likely to flourish when the parties involved adhere to a common code of exchange, the trade-promoting institutional framework of Islam would find likely converts across such territories. Along the same lines, contemporary scholars have noted that when farmers and herders coexisted in absence of an institutional framework coordinating their activities, their interactions were often conflictual, disrupting trade flows across these territories (Richerson, 1996). We conjecture that Islam with its redistributive economic principles was a unifying force aimed at reining in the underlying inequality in exchange for security for the trading caravans (Michalopoulos, Naghavi, and Prarolo, 2016). The premise that geographie inequality becomes more salient when long-distance trade opportunities arise generates an auxiliary prediction.

In this study we explore the historical determinants of contemporary Muslim representation. Although the primary contribution of this study is to establish how proximity to pre-Islamic trade routes has influenced the distribution of Muslim communities in the Old World, we also explore whether the ecological similarity to the Arabian peninsula of a given region predicts the presence of Muslim communities. Famous trade hubs along the routes of the Persian Empire were Rey (in Iran), Samarkand and Bukhara (in Uzbekistan), and Merv (in Turkmenistan). Figure 1 – Muslim Adherence and Ancient Trade Routes – Selected Countries. Figure 1 portrays Muslim adherence at the ethnic group level and historical trade routes within five countries (1a: China, 1b: Mali, 1c: Tanzania, 1d: Indonesia and 1e: India). With full Muslim control of the western half of the Silk Road by mid-8th century, any long-distance exchange had to traverse Muslim lands, giving trade a central role in the further propagation of the religion. Often depicted lurking in secluded forests, this urban legend features a half man, half goat creature, emerging from the shadows of mythology to become a staple of campfire horror stories. But which are the salient geographic features of the cradle of Islam?

There are few temples dedicated to Ares, as the people did not want to overly glorify the dark associations of war. Which God of War game is your favorite? It took three years of waiting but the God of War 3 console game has hit the shelves much to the joy of those waiting for its release for some time now. There has been growing interest in Muslim societies in recent years amongst economists and political scientists, see for example, Blydes (2014), Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott (2015), Clingingsmith, Khwaja, and Kremer (2009), Jha (2013), and Kuran (2004). Our analysis investigates the role that ancient trade routes have played in facilitating the spread of Islam. The dark fantasy film from 1985 was a commercial flop and didn’t appear on VHS for 13 years. The core of the Uyghurs’ homeland was Kashgar, an oasis city located in the West of China near the current-day border of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which historically served as a strategic trade hub between China, the Middle East, and Europe (Roemer, 2000). The Hui people are another Muslim Chinese minority historically connected to Muslim merchants travelling along the Silk Road. Before the Prophet died at the age of 63, the greater part of Arabia was Muslim, and within a century of his death, Islam had spread to Spain in the west and as far east as China.What is the Qur’an?