Year 2 of the JBJ Academy Islamic History track. One unit: Expansion and the Umayyads (661–750) — eighteen lessons, one every two weeks over a 36-week year.
The year moves from why and how the early conquests happened — context rather than a list of battles — and how newly conquered lands were governed, to the Umayyads from Damascus to Cordoba and the question of why the first dynasty fell. The Abbasid revolution now opens Grade 9 rather than closing this year.
Course Information
Course Instructor
Expansion and the Umayyads (661–750)
Mu’awiyah RA and the Founding of the Umayyad State
How & Why the Early Conquests Happened — Context, Not Just Events
The Conquest of Persia and the End of the Sasanian Empire
Egypt and North Africa — The Western Advance
Governance of Newly Conquered Lands — Treatment of Other Faiths
Jizyah, Kharaj and Dhimmah — How the System Actually Worked
Karbala — What Happened and How Sunni Scholars Have Understood It
Abd al-Malik — Arabising the State and Minting the Dinar
The Dome of the Rock — Architecture as Statement
From Damascus to Cordoba — The Umayyad Caliphate
Tariq ibn Ziyad and the Crossing into al-Andalus (711)
Islam Reaches Sindh — Muhammad ibn al-Qasim
Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz — The Fifth Rightly Guided Caliph?
The Tabi’un — The Generation After the Companions
The Birth of the Islamic Sciences — Hadith, Fiqh and the Early Schools
Tours, 732 — The Limits of Expansion
Why the Umayyads Fell — Tribalism, Taxation and Legitimacy
Umayyad Legacy — What the First Dynasty Built
