page_title: Human history
section_title: Greater Middle East
hierarchical_section_title: Human history / Post-classical history / Greater Middle East
caption_attribution_description: English: Overview of the Great Mosque of Kairouan (in Tunisia). This mosque, also called the Mosque of Uqba, extends over an area of about 9,000 square meters. Founded in 670 AD by the Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi, it dates, in its present form, from the 9th century. Besides the fact of being the oldest mosque in the Muslim West, the Great Mosque of Kairouan is a remarkable example of North African Islamic architecture. Français&#160;: Vue d'ensemble de la Grande Mosquée de Kairouan (en Tunisie). Cette mosquée, également appelée mosquée Oqba Ibn Nafi, s'étend sur une superficie d'environ 9000 mètres carrés. Fondée en 670 apr. J.-C. par le général arabe Oqba Ibn Nafi, elle date, dans sa forme actuelle, du IXe siècle. En plus d'être la plus ancienne mosquée de l'Occident musulman, la Grande Mosquée de Kairouan est un exemple remarquable de l'architecture islamique en Afrique du Nord. This is a photo of the protected monument identified by the ID 41-33 in Tunisia.
context_page_description: Human history, also known as the history of the world, is the carefully researched description of humanity's past. It is informed by archaeology, anthropology, genetics, linguistics, and other disciplines; and, for periods since the invention of writing, by recorded history and by secondary sources and studies.
  Humanity's written history was preceded by its prehistory, beginning with the Palaeolithic Era, followed by the Neolithic Era. The Neolithic saw the Agricultural Revolution begin, between 10,000 and 5000 BCE, in the Near East's Fertile Crescent. During this period, humans began the systematic husbandry of plants and animals. As agriculture advanced, most humans transitioned from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle as farmers in permanent settlements. The relative security and increased productivity provided by farming allowed communities to expand into increasingly larger units, fostered by advances in transportation.
  Whether in prehistoric or historic times, people always needed to be near reliable sources of potable water.
context_section_description: Prior to the advent of Islam in the 7th century, the Middle East was dominated by the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Sasanian Empire, which frequently fought each other for control of several disputed regions. This was also a cultural battle, with the Byzantine Hellenistic and Christian culture competing against the Persian Iranian traditions and Zoroastrian religion. The formation of the Islamic religion created a new contender that quickly surpassed both of these empires. Islam greatly affected the political, economic, and military history of the Old World, especially the Middle East.
  From their centre on the Arabian Peninsula, Muslims began their expansion during the early Postclassical Era. By 750 CE, they came to conquer most of the Near East, North Africa, and parts of Europe, ushering in an era of learning, science, and invention known as the Islamic Golden Age. The knowledge and skills of the ancient Near East, Greece, and Persia were preserved in the Postclassical Era by Muslims, who also added new and important innovations from outside, such as the manufacture of paper from China and decimal positional numbering from India.
  Much of this learning and development can be linked to geography. Even prior to Islam's presence, the city of Mecca had served as a centre of trade in Arabia, and the Islamic prophet Muhammad himself was a merchant. With the new Islamic tradition of the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, the city became even more a centre for exchanging goods and ideas. The influence held by Muslim merchants over African-Arabian and Arabian-Asian trade routes was tremendous. As a result, Islamic civilization grew and expanded on the basis of its merchant economy, in contrast to the Europeans, Indians, and Chinese, who based their societies on an agricultural landholding nobility. Merchants brought goods and their Islamic faith to China, India, Southeast Asia, and the kingdoms of western Africa, and returned with new discoveries and inventions.
  Motivated by religion and dreams of conquest, European leaders launched a number of Crusades to try to roll back Muslim power and retake the Holy Land. The Crusades were ultimately unsuccessful and served more to weaken the Byzantine Empire, especially with the 1204 sack of Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire began to lose increasing amounts of territory to the Ottoman Turks. Arab domination of the region ended in the mid-11th century with the arrival of the Seljuq Turks, migrating south from the Turkic homelands in Central Asia. In the early 13th century, a new wave of invaders, the Mongol Empire, swept through the region but were eventually eclipsed by the Turks and the founding of the Ottoman Empire in modern-day Turkey around 1280.
  North Africa saw the rise of polities formed by the Berbers, such as the Marinid dynasty in Morocco, the Zayyanid dynasty in Algeria, and the Hafsid dynasty in Tunisia. The region will later be called the Barbary Coast and will host pirates and privateers who will use several North African ports for their raids against the coastal towns of several European countries in search of slaves to be sold in North African markets as part of the Barbary slave trade.
  Starting with the Sui dynasty (581–618), the Chinese began expanding into eastern Central Asia, and confronted Turkic nomads, who were becoming the most dominant ethnic group in Central Asia. Originally the relationship was largely cooperative, but in 630 the Tang dynasty began an offensive against the Turks, capturing areas of the Mongolian Ordos Desert. In the 8th century, Islam began to penetrate the region and soon became the sole faith of most of the population, though Buddhism remained strong in the east. The desert nomads of Arabia could militarily match the nomads of the steppe, and the early Arab Empire gained control over parts of Central Asia. The Hephthalites were the most powerful of the nomad groups in the 6th and 7th centuries, and controlled much of the region. In the 9th through 13th centuries the region was divided among several powerful states, including the Samanid E
caption: Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, founded 670 CE
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