W. Robert Godfrey

After his flight, he raised a small army and was able to return in triumph to Mecca in 630.

And the cry of the movement became, there is but one God and Muhammad is his prophet.

And so that's the essential message.

confession of Islam.

Islam believes there were other prophets that preceded the coming of Muhammad, but Muhammad is the final prophet, the last prophet who brings the final definitive word.

He died in Mecca in 632.

The brilliance of his mind and of the Koran, which he taught was received by divine revelation, the simplicity of the religion attracted followers very quickly and soon became a remarkably powerful movement.

And the spread of Islam is really remarkable.

And within 21 years of the death of Muhammad, Islam ruled a realm as large as what had been the Roman Empire.

So they spread both north along the eastern Mediterranean, capturing Jerusalem only a few years after the death of Muhammad, and then moving through North Africa,

By 707, most all of northern Africa was in the hands of Islam.

So that's only, what, 70 years, 80 years after the death of Muhammad.

By 711, they had crossed into Spain.

They captured Spain and reached as far north as the French cities of Poitiers and Tours in 732.

So they had pushed into the very heart of northwestern Europe by 732.

There they were stopped and then pushed back south of the Pyrenees Mountains, but maintained a dominant presence there and were not finally driven from Spain altogether until 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

So, there was this explosion of energy, of intellectual energy, of religious energy, of military energy coming out of Arabia and spreading out and suddenly capturing really remarkable sections of the world.

In the ninth century, Islam spread into Persia, Afghanistan, and even into India.

and as I talked about before, eventually took Constantinople in 1453 and continued to threaten Vienna from the east as late as 1683.

The last major Muslim attack on the eastern outskirts of Vienna was in 1683.