Dar al-Islam
Teacher Resources
Lesson Guide
Find lesson timing, sample answers, teaching tips, and important teacher instructions.
Teaching Sensitive Topics Guide
Belief systems, while interesting, can be a bit dicey to talk about in class. Before kicking off this lesson, revisit discussion norms so students share ideas respectfully while connecting belief systems to the course frames.
Driving Question: How did the spread of Islam influence human communities and networks in Afro-Eurasia during this period?
Dar al-Islam is Arabic for The House of Islam. It’s a way of describing the Islamic world—the vast regions controlled by Muslim rulers and linked by the Islamic faith. Stretching from West Africa to Indonesia, Dar al-Islam encompassed a vast array of cultures, languages, and traditions in this period, all connected by a shared Islamic culture.
Learning Objectives:
- Assess the role that the Islamic Golden Age played in Afro-Eurasian states and networks.
- Use the historical thinking practice of contextualization to assess how Mansa Musa was able to make his journey during this historical period.
- Use a graphic biography to support, extend, or challenge the overarching narratives of this period.
Vocab Terms:
Maps can help you understand how beliefs spread and change. Use this quick mapping activity to help guide you through the changes in this lesson.
Looking for an at-a-glance introduction to how OER Project: World History approaches contextualization? Take a look at our contextualization one-pager.
To see where we’re going, we have to remember where we’ve been. That might sound like something from a self-help book, but you’ll soon see why knowing the context for an event is so important.
The Islamic world—often called Dar al-Islam—was expansive. When Ibn Battuta made his journeys, the Islamic world stretched from West Africa to Southeast Asia. The shared cultural system of Islam allowed people to move relatively freely across political borders. Ibn Battuta’s story and the cultural connections forged by the Crusades can help students complexify their preexisting ideas about Islam and its relationship with other parts of the world.
A vast expanse of Afro-Eurasia was connected by the shared cultural and religious system of Islam. Even after empires declined, these cultural ties continued to thicken.
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Guiding Questions
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Guiding Questions
Did you know: Women of all classes accompanied the crusaders on their march to the Holy Land. Merchants and servants supplied the crusaders with goods and services. Wives traveled with—and in some cases fought alongside—their crusader husbands, including Eleanor of Aquitaine and Shajar al-Durr, wife of the Sultan of Egypt, who later became the first female sultan. To learn more about women’s roles in the Crusades, see Helen J. Nicholson’s 2023 history, Women and the Crusades, from Oxford University Press.
How did centuries-long wars between Christians and Muslims lead to productive cultural and scientific exchange? It doesn’t seem like war would be great for intellectual reciprocity, but stranger things have happened.
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Guiding Questions
Adjust video speed: If you’re watching OER Project videos on YouTube, you can slow things down or speed things up by going to Settings and adjusting the playback speed.
Did you know that the wealthiest person in world history lived in fourteenth-century West Africa? Learn how Mansa Musa embraced Islam and reshaped the economics of Afro-Eurasia.
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Guiding Questions
Rumi wrote poetry and expressed his faith through mysticism and dancing. His teachings crossed borders and inspired people for centuries.
