HISTORY OF ISLAM (PART 2)

 By the 8th century, the Umayyad Caliphate extended from Iberia in the west to the Indus River in the east. Polities such as those ruled by the Umayyads and Abbasid Caliphate (in the Middle East and later in Spain and Southern Italy), Fatimids, Seljuks, Ayyubids and Mamluks were among the most influential powers in the world. Highly persianized empires built by the Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids made significant developments. The Islamic Golden Age gave rise to many centers of culture and science and produced notable polymaths, astronomers, mathematicians, physicians and philoso phers during the Middle Ages.

By the early 13th century, the Delhi Sultanate conquered the northern Indian subcontinent, while Turkic dynasties like the Sultanate of Rum and Artuqids conquered much of Anatolia from the Byzantine Empire throughout the 11th and 12th centuries. In the 13th and 14th centuries, destructive Mongol invasions and those of Tamerlane (Timur) from the East, along with the loss of population in the Black Death, greatly weakened the traditional centers of the Muslim world, stretching from Persia to Egypt, but saw the emergence of the Timurid Renaissance and major global economic powers such as West Africa's Mali Empire and South Asia's Bengal Sultanate.^[7][8][9] Following the deportation and enslavement of the Muslim Moors from the Emirate of Sicily and other Italian territories,^[10] the Islamic Spain was gradually conquered by Christian forces during the Reconquista. Nonetheless, in the Early Modern period, the states of the Age of the Islamic Gunpowders—the Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Iran and Mughal India—emerged as great world powers.