Key Dates That Shaped Islam
	A timeline of events

Posted Sunday, September 5, 2004
632
Death of the Prophet Muhammad

656
Murder of Uthman, the third Caliph, and the First Civil War. A crisis over succession leads to a rift and the creation of two Muslim factions, Sunni and Shi'ite

680
Second Civil War and the martyrdom of the ProphetÕs grandson Hussein at the Battle of Karbala Leadership disputes and factionalism proliferate

750
Overthrow of the Umayyad caliphate by the Abbasids. Under leaders like Harun al-Rashid, left, Islam is transformed from an Arab faith to a cosmopolitan, multiethnic religion

910
Establishment of the Fatimid caliphate in North Africa and, with it, the spread of its Ismaili Shi'ite doctrine, the belief that the seventh imam to succeed the Prophet was Ismail

1000
Sunni revival. In a backlash against Fatimid rule, Sunni adherents fight other Muslim sects, particularly the Ismaili Shi'ites and, later, foreign infidel Crusaders

1100s
Spread of Sufism. For centuries the Sufis propagate a spiritual and mystical form of Islam

1200s
Mongol invasions. A pagan conquest of Muslim territories marks a separation of political authority from Islamic religious authority for the first time

1400s-1700
Ottoman expansion. The Ottomans spread Islam through conquest and sustain it through the creation of a religious bureaucracy

1700s
Birth of Wahhabism in Arabia. Its rigid, puritanical beliefs are a reaction to the growth of Western ideas. Later, with Saudi oil and power, the sect gains enormous influence

1979
Iranian Revolution. Rallying the Muslim world against Western influence, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, left, reunites religious and political authority under Islamic law, or Shari'a

1990s
Formation of al-Qaeda. Composed of loosely affiliated terrorist cells, its activities fuel a resurgence in Islamic fundamentalism