Range of Islamic Literature

            The Muslim empire was enormous in size; it included a great diversity of peoples, many of whom had preserved ancient cultures and languages. For a long period, Arabic became the literary language for many regions of the empire; but as time passed, local influences reasserted themselves and native languages once again came into use. This was particularly true in Persia, where the Arabic alphabet was adapted to the Persian language.

           By the 11th century, northwestern India and the region that is now Pakistan had become a center of Islamic literature in the Persian language. Persian remained the language of Muslim India until the 1830s, when it was succeeded by Urdu, which had borrowed heavily from Persian sources in its early period during the 18th century.

            Central Asia became part of the Muslim empire after 711. With cultural centers at Samarkand, Bukhara, and Fergana, it was a hub of Islamic literature and scholarship, much of it in the Arabic language, until the Russian invasions of the late 19th century. A great deal of the literature of this region was also written in the Turkic languages; and in later centuries, when the Seljuq and Ottoman Turks conquered much of the Islamic empire, their languages displaced Arabic in some areas.

           After the 14th century, for example, an elaborate classical Turkish literature developed that was heavily influenced by Persian styles and vocabulary. In Spain, at the western end of the empire, the Muslims created a highly sophisticated culture that reached its apex in the 10th century and continued to flourish until the Muslims were driven from the country at the end of the 15th century. It was through Spain that so many of the major Arabic works in philosophy and the sciences made their way into medieval Europe.