# data[].attributes.body
Damascus, as capital of the Umayyad caliphate - the first Islamic caliphate - was of key importance in the development of subsequent Arab cities. With its Great Mosque at the heart of an urban plan deriving from the Graeco-Roman grid, the city provided the exemplary model for the Arab Muslim world.

# data[].attributes.body
Baghdad was centrally located between Europe and Asia and was an important area for trade and exchanges of ideas. Scholars living in Baghdad translated Greek texts and made scientific discoveries—which is why this era, from the seventh to thirteenth centuries CE, is named the Golden Age of Islam.

# data[].attributes.body
Medina is celebrated as the place from which Muhammad established the Muslim community after his flight from Mecca in 622 C.E. and is where his body is entombed. A pilgrimage is made to his tomb in the city's chief mosque.

# data[].attributes.body
Mecca, Arabic Makkah, ancient Bakkah, city, western Saudi Arabia, located in the Ṣirāt Mountains, inland from the Red Sea coast. It is the holiest of Muslim cities. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born in Mecca, and it is toward this religious centre that Muslims turn five times daily in prayer.

# data[].attributes.body
During these Muslim periods, Córdoba was transformed into a world leading center of education and learning, producing figures such as Averroes, Ibn Hazm, and Al-Zahrawi, and by the 10th century it had grown to be the second-largest city in Europe.

# data[].attributes.body
Alexandria was the third largest city in Egypt. In 634, the Muslim leader Umar ascended to the role of caliph and inherited a heterogeneous and rapidly expanding Islamic empire.

# data[].attributes.body
Ever since the time of Muhammad, Muslims have considered Jerusalem to be an important place for pilgrimage after Makka, due to its religious significance as being the place of the prophet's miraculous journey to heaven.

# data[].attributes.body
Many ahadith from the early period and other Islamic texts indicate that those who participated in the siege of the capital of Byzantium would achieve great material and spiritual gains; this encouraged the Muslims living during the lifetime of the Prophet and soon after to focus on the conquest of Constantinople.

# data[].attributes.body
Arabia had a mix of polytheism, Christianity, Judaism, and Iranian religions until the emergence of Islam in 610 C.E.

# data[].attributes.body
After the fall of Rome, Egypt became part of the Byzantine Empire, until it was conquered by the Muslim Arabs in 641 CE.

# data[].attributes.body
Al-Andalus, also called Muslim Spain, Muslim kingdom that occupied much of the Iberian Peninsula from 711 CE until the collapse of the Spanish Umayyad dynasty in the early 11th century.

# data[].attributes.body
The Muslim conquest of Persia, also known as the Arab conquest of Iran, was carried out by the Rashidun Caliphate from 633 to 654 AD, which led Islam to become the dominant religion in the Persian Empire

# data[].attributes.body
Islam took hold in the Indian Ocean through a combination of trade, military conquest, and peaceful conversion-the latter mostly done through the work of Sufis.

# data[].attributes.location_name
Persian Gulf (also known as the Arabian Gulf)

# data[].attributes.body
The Muslim conquest of Persia was carried out by the Rashidun Caliphate from 633 to 654 AD, which led to Islam taking over the Persian Gulf.

# data[].attributes.body
Miraculously, Allah divided the waters of the red sea leaving a dry path in the middle, which the Children of Israel immediately followed.

# data[].attributes.body
Islamic territories had almost encircled the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean has always been a linking sea, and as Islam became established as a power to be reckoned with, contacts developed with the Christian-ruled states of Europe.