Islam’s first millennium splinters into rival histories

A new short video framing of Islam’s first 1,000 years moves fast—from the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 to the early caliphate’s expansion, and into the enduring dispute over succession that later separated Muslims into Shias and Sunnis. It also brings

When the story starts, it doesn’t start with monuments. It starts with a date—632—and the moment after it.

The Prophet Muhammad had unified the formerly polytheistic Arab tribes under his new faith. He lived a decade longer after that consolidation. Then. in the year 632. he died—marking the last time that every believer in Islam would have been “on the same page.” That death didn’t just end a life. It forced a question about who should come next. and it was at that point that the title “caliph. ” meaning “successor. ” was defined.

The first four caliphs after Muhammad held power for thirty years, the period in which the first Muslim state emerged. From there, the caliphate’s reach expanded far beyond the Arabian Peninsula, into the territories of the Byzantine and Sassanian empires. The map widened. The argument did, too.

One side centered on Ali ibn Abi Talib. Supporters of Ali argued that he was the true heir to Islam. Detractors insisted that he wasn’t. The split that followed eventually hardened into something widely recognized: the Shias on one side, the Sunnis on the other.

The most lasting part of that moment isn’t just the names that survived. It’s the fact that the crisis of authority—sparked after Muhammad’s death—persisted for nearly fourteen centuries. The video’s through-line is blunt: it’s been long enough to become defining. long enough that “what shape its societies will take over the next millennium” would require something as rare as a prophet to know.

And yet the story of early Islam isn’t only about schism. The first millennium’s political history is also a roll call of states whose names are less familiar to the general public but essential to how Islam took shape across the Middle Ages. Umayyads. Abbasids. Buyids and Fatimids all appear in this telling as major players in Islam’s continuing expansion well into the Middle Ages.

Those dynasties are anchored not in abstractions but in cities people still point to today. Damascus. Jerusalem. Baghdad and Constantinople—known now as Istanbul—sit at the center of the narrative because. as the video argues. you can’t fully understand the diverse forms civilization took in those places and across the wider region without understanding the religion that moved through them.

This is the tension at the heart of the first thousand years: unity arrived with Muhammad’s faith. but authority fractured almost immediately after his death. Empires expanded; cities changed hands; dynasties rose and fell. The dispute about succession. meanwhile. never fully went away—an argument that began when the last shared certainty ended in 632. and that has kept resurfacing for centuries since.

Islam Muhammad caliphate 632 Ali ibn Abi Talib Shias Sunnis Umayyads Abbasids Buyids Fatimids Damascus Jerusalem Baghdad Constantinople Istanbul Byzantine Empire Sassanian Empire cultural identity medieval history