Islam is one of the largest religions in existence today, with a total of approximately 1.6 billion1 followers, according to the Pew Research Center. The sheer scale of the number of people following this religion is staggering, but the influence that Islam has had on world history is even greater. Without Muslim advances in areas such as mathematics, science and medicine, the Western world would not have existed. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Roman knowledge was preserved in Muslim and Byzantine libraries. Muslims were interested in learning because mathematicians and astronomers needed to know when to recite certain prayers and in which direction Mecca was. Additionally, Islamic rulers wanted to live longer and needed doctors to treat their illnesses2. These needs led scholars and physicians to add to the knowledge they had preserved from the Roman Empire. These additions have helped advance learning and save countless lives around the world. Islamic civilization flourished from around the mid-8th century until 1258, when the Mongols captured Baghdad3. The extreme wealth and prosperity of Islamic civilization at this time was evident in the Muslim city of Córdoba. The city had "[...] 27 libraries, countless bookstores, 800 public schools... and a total population of 300,000 inhabitants4", according to Phililp Hitti in his book Capitals of Arab Islam. Hitti goes on to say that "[t]he people of Córdoba [...] walked the cobbled streets... all this at a time when virtually no city in Europe [...] had more than a few thousand inhabitants. 4 » These extracts show how powerful Islamic culture was while Europe was in a state of disunity and chaos. Islamic poets have created great works, such as the Rabi'ah al-Adawiyya, one of the greatest works of Islamic literature...... middle of article ......ch, Roger B. , Linda Black, Larry S. Krieger, Phillip C. Naylor, and Dahia Ibo Shabaka. World history: patterns of interaction. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 1999. [Document 1]3. Abbas, Tahir. Islamic radicalism and multicultural politics. New York: Routledge, 2011. [External source]4. Hitti, Philip K.. Capitals of Arab Islam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972. [Document 2]5. Document 8 [I didn't know how to quote this.] From the Quran verse 6. Clute, John and John Grant. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, 2 ed., sv "Arabian fantasy". New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.7. Holdich, Sir Thomas. The Gates of India. London: The MacMillan Company, 1910. [Document 9]8. Kramers, JH. The Legacy of Islam.*: In researching various sources, I saw estimates ranging from 2020 to 2050. I chose the year that most sources claimed.