The history of Islam concerns the political, social, economic and cultural developments of Islamic civilization. Most historians[1] believe that Islam originated in Mecca and Medina at the start of the 7th century CE. Muslims regard Islam as a return to the original faith of the prophets, such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon and Jesus, and, with the submission (Islam) to the will of God.[2][3][4]

According to tradition, in 610 CE, the Islamic prophet Muhammad began receiving what Muslims consider to be divine revelations, calling for submission to the one God, the expectation of the imminent Last Judgement, and caring for the poor and needy.[5] Muhammad's message won over a handful of followers and was met with increasing opposition from Meccan notables.[6] In 622, a few years after losing protection with the death of his influential uncle Abu Talib, Muhammad migrated to the city of Yathrib (now known as Medina). With Muhammad's death in 632, disagreement broke out over who would succeed him as leader of the Muslim community during the Rashidun Caliphate.

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 philosophers 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.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, most of the Islamic world fell under the influence or direct control of European "Great Powers." Their efforts to win independence and build modern nation-states over the course of the last two centuries continue to reverberate to the present day, as well as fuel conflict-zones in regions such as Palestine, Kashmir, Xinjiang, Chechnya, Central Africa, Bosnia and Myanmar. The Oil boom stabilized the Arab States of the Gulf Cooperation Council, making them the world's largest oil producers and exporters, which focus on free trade and tourism.[11][12]