In six pages a thousand years of Middle East social and political authority is examined in a discussion of culture, economics, the Abbasid, the caliphates, and Islam's rise. Four sources are cited in the bibliography.
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forgiven if he or she were to shake his/her head in perplexity. The region seems to be one of shifting borders and shifting customs - in some Middle Eastern countries,
for example, women have the right to work and to own property. But in others, women are veiled and segregated from men, with no rights of their own. In some
countries, dynasties oversee governments, whereas in others, elections take place on a regular basis. The entire Middle Eastern political and social authority, therefore is one of huge complexity.
Yet the complex politics and social customs didnt just happen overnight - they took close to 1,000 years to truly develop and gel toward
what they are today. Much of that development took please from between 500 and 1500 CE In the history of the Middle East, this period is rich with the rise
and falls of dynasties, as well as the launching of customs (religious and otherwise) we all know today. In addition Islam played a huge role in the rise of Middle
Eastern cultures - its safe to say that Islam, when founded around the 7th century by the prophet Mohammed, ended up being less a religion and more a way of
life that impacted cultural mores throughout the Middle East (Hourani). The Rise of Islam According to Albert Hourani, author of A History
of the Arab Peoples, the Middle East during the 6th and 7th centuries was considered an exotic interesting place, a new world toward which other European cultures were drawn (Hourani).
And much of the attraction of the Middle East was the new religion of Islam, which began in Mecca around 600 CE (Wheeling Jesuit University/Center for Educational Technologies). Many Europeans