The spread of Islam, from its heartland in the Middle East and North Africa to India and Southeast Asia, revealed the power of the religion and its commercial and sometimes military attributes.
Civilizations were altered without being fully drawn into a single Islamic statement.
A similar pattern developed in sub-Saharan Africa, as Islam provided new influences and contacts without amalgamating African culture as a whole to the Middle Eastern core.
New religious, economic, and political patterns developed in relation to the Islamic surge, but great diversity remained.
Africa below the Sahara was never totally isolated from the centers of civilization in Egypt, west Asia, or the Mediterranean, but for long periods the contacts were difficult and intermittent.
During the ascendancy of Rome, sub-Saharan Africa like northern Europe was on the periphery of the major centers of civilization.
After the fall of Rome, the civilizations of Byzantium and the Islamic world provided a link between the civilizations of the Middle East and the Mediterranean as well as the areas, such as northern Europe and Africa, on their frontiers.
In Africa, between roughly A.D. 800 and 1500, the frequency and intensity of contact with the outside world increased as part of the growing international network.
A number of social, religious, and technological changes took place that influenced many of the different peoples throughout the vast and varied continent.
The spread of Islam across much of the northern third of Africa produced profound effects on both those who converted and those who resisted the new faith.
Islamization also served to link Muslim Africa even more closely to the outside world through trade, religion, and politics.
Trade and long-distance commerce, in fact, was carried out in many parts of the continent and linked regions beyond the orbit of Muslim penetration.
Until about 1450, however, Islam provided the major external contact between sub-Saharan Africa and the world.
<span>State building took place in many areas of the continent under a variety of conditions.</span>
