Portal: Early Islamic History: Difference between revisions

The first centuries of the Islamic Hijri calendar, starting in the CE year 622, were the formative years of the religion. Between the first and third Islamic centuries the Qur'an was written down and codified, the prophet lived and died, the great [[hadith]] collections were gathered, the [[sira]] of the prophet was committed to writing, the great schools of Sunni jurisprudence came to be, and the theology of Islam attained its familiar form. The end of the Abbasid period saw the "crystallization" of the Islamic tradition around the Sunnah of the prophet and the Qur'an placed in creation before all time and space after the defeat of the Mu'atazilite heresy. These years thus can be said to cover the formation of the religion of Islam as we know it today (see also [[History of Islamic Thought]]).

Although not technically part of the "holy history" of Islam which ends with the death of the prophet and the sealing of the holy prophetic example, the years of the [[Rashidun Caliphs]], the Umayyads and the Abassids were absolutely instrumental in the formation of Islam as we now know it. It was during this time that the Uthmanic recension of the Qur'an was canonized and all other versions were annihilated; it was in the early years of the Rashidun caliphs that the word "Muslim" came to define the movement as opposseed to the earlier "believer", and it was under the Umayyads and Abassids that the doctrine of the prophetic example was formulated, the Sunnah was assembled and the place of the caliph in the [[ummah]] was finally fixed.