THE
RISE AND DECLINE OF ISLAM.
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION.
[Sidenote: Islam pre-eminent in its rapid spread.]
Among the religions of the earth Islam must take the precedence in the
rapidity and force with which it spread. Within a very short time from
its planting in Arabia the new faith had subdued great and populous
provinces. In half a dozen years, counting from the death of the
founder, the religion prevailed throughout Arabia, Syria, Persia, and
Egypt, and before the close of the century it ruled supreme over the
greater part of the vast populations from Gibraltar to the Oxus, from
the Black Sea to the river Indus.
[Sidenote: Propagation far quicker than of Christianity.]
In comparison with this grand outburst the first efforts of Christianity
were, to the outward eye, faint and feeble, and its extension so gradual
that what the Mohammedan religion achieved in ten or twenty years it
took the faith of Jesus long centuries to accomplish.
[Sidenote: Object of the Tract.]
The object of these few pages is, _first_, to inquire briefly into the
causes which led to the marvelous rapidity of the first movement of
Islam: _secondly_, to consider the reasons which eventually stayed its
advance; and, _lastly_, to ascertain why Mohammedan countries have kept
so far in the rear of other lands in respect of intellectual and social
progress.
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