In science, medicine and law, Byzantium took the Greco-Roman culture and added some of the Middle Eastern ideas to have one of the most advanced cultures of the time. While a Christian Empire, it was never united under Christianity, even though the state church became known as the Eastern Orthodoxy. Arianism and Judaism were significant minorities, and there were many sects of Christianity that ebbed during the Byzantium period (e.g. Nestorianism, Myaphysite, etc.).
Part 4 - Prior to the 600s (rise of Islam), the Arabian Peninsula was populated by a largely autonomous group of clans/tribes with differing political, social and religious views. The area was governed, albeit loosely, by Persia and Rome at different times and different areas prior to the Islamic unification, and, as today, there were numerous desert dwelling nomadic Bedouin tribes. Prior to the rise of Islam, the peninsula was divided politically, culturally, socially, and economically....
The time period, the decline of Old Rome, the segmentation of the New Rome, and trade and technology were then open to a new idea. It would take the idea of a single God, the organization of the Qur'an, and the external destabilizing factors of the area to create a more cohesive grouping. Muhammad became the religious focus of this new faith, revealing revelations and by 629 captured Mecca and united the tribes of Arabia in a more unified political structure. From 632-750 the caliphates rose through a series of civil wars, and between 750-1258 the area was organized with a capital in Baghdad and trade to both the East and the West. A number of new technological advances occurred during this time; mathematics, astronomy, public hospitals, education, literature, etc. By the mid-14th century, much of the Islamic world was decimated by the plague (Black Death) which, between the Crusades and cultural decline, weakened the political and economic strength of…
