Islamic missionary activity

Islamic missionary work or dawah means to "invite" (in Arabic, literally "invitation") to Islam. After the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, from the 7th century onwards, Islam spread rapidly from the Arabian Peninsula to the rest of the world through either trade and exploration or Muslim conquests. Following the death in 632 AD of Muhammad, Islam spread far and wide within a very short period, much of this occurring through an initial establishment and subsequent expansion of an Islamic Empire through conquest, such as that of North Africa and later Spain (Al-Andalus), and the Islamic conquest of Persia putting an end to the Sassanid Empire and spreading the reach of Islam to as far east as Khorasan, which would later become the cradle of Islamic civilization during the Islamic Golden Age and a stepping-stone towards the introduction of Islam to the Turkic tribes living in and bordering the area. The Arab Christian Bedouins embraced Islam following the wake of the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah in which the Sassanids were routed. During the rule of Umar II and Al-Ma'mun, Islam gained numerous converts. Following the initial establishment of the empire and stabilization of borders and ruling elites, various missionary movements emerged during the ensuing Islamic Golden Age, with the express purpose of preaching to the non-Muslim populations in their midst. These missionary movements also preached outside the borders of the Islamic empire taking advantage of the expansion of foreign trade routes, primarily into the Indo-Pacific and as far south as the isle of Zanzibar and the southeastern shores of Africa. In Persia, Islam was readily accepted by Zoroastrians who were employed in industrial and artisan positions because, according to Zoroastrian dogma, such occupations that involved defiling fire made them impure. Moreover, Muslim missionaries did not encounter difficulty in explaining Islamic tenets to Zoroastrians, as there were many similarities between the faiths.