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Indian Ocean Trade continued to grow, creating demand for silk and porcelain from China, spices from southeast Asia; pepper, gems, pearls, and cotton from India; incense and horses from Arabia and southwest Asia; and gold, ivory, and slaves from east Africa.

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Persian Gulf (also known as the Arabian Gulf)

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Persian Gulf (also known as the Arabian Gulf)

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Persian Gulf (also known as the Arabian Gulf)

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The Persian Gulf sometimes called the Arabian Gulf is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. Trade routes connected ports in western India to Persian Gulf.

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Since the days of the Phoenicians, Greeks, Minoans, and the Romans, the Mediterranean Sea
was a major trading region. This trend of valuable commerce carried into the era of 1000 C.E.

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The Red Sea, for instance, has emerged as an important corridor for long-distance trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

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Over the next hundred years or so, the Muslim Arabs' political reach extended from Mecca throughout the Arabian Peninsula and as far north as Baghdad, Iraq and Damascus, and Iran.

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This series of Arab-Islamic empires controlled all of the Middle East (except present-day Turkey), all of North Africa, Iran, Pakistan, India, and parts of Afghanistan. They even conquered Spain and Portugal.

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Around 600 CE, the Middle Eastern religion Islam began in Mecca, which is located in western Saudi Arabia.

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The Muslim conquest of Egypt, also known as the Rashidun conquest of Egypt, led by the army of 'Amr ibn al-'As, took place between 639CE and 646CE and was overseen by the Rashidun Caliphate.

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The Cordoban Caliphate and officially known as the Second Umayyad Caliphate, was an Islamic state ruled by the Umayyad dynasty from 929 to 1031.

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Amr Ibn Al'as is claimed to have chosen Alexandria to be the capital of Egypt in his era, but the Caliph back then, Omar Ibn Al Khattab, is said to have refused the idea when he knew that Alexandria was cut off from the rest of the Arab world with the yearly Nile floods.

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Jerusalem, which is also a holy city to Jewish and Christian people, is an Islamic holy city because it is believed that the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven from Jerusalem.

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The conquest of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) in 1453 enabled the Ottomans to consolidate their empire in Anatolia and Thrace. In 1453 C.E. Ottomans conquer the Byzantine seat of Constantinople and change its name to Istanbul.

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Damascus is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. First settled in the second millennium BC, it was chosen as the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750. After the victory of the Abbasid dynasty, the seat of Islamic power was moved to Baghdad.

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Baghdad was the largest city in the world for much of the Abbasid era during the Islamic Golden Age, peaking at a population of more than a million. The Abbasid caliphs established the city of Baghdad in 762 CE.

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Medina is celebrated as the city from which Muhammad established the Muslim community (ummah) after his flight from Mecca (622 ce) and is where his body is entombed. Medina is the second holiest city of Islam, after Mecca.

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Mecca is the place where the Islamic religion started. The Prophet Muhammad was born there and received the first revelations from Allah (God) that went on to become the Koran - the holy book read by Muslims.