6 - The Umayyad Caliphate

While Europe lay in the Dark Ages, the Umayyad Caliphate established the largest empire the world had yet seen, the political, military, economic and cultural superpower of its day.  It also set the standards for what a great Muslim empire would be and set in motion trends that would dominate the world for the next 500 years and continue to influence the world today.  Yet its division of the world into a realm of peace and a realm of war continues to worry some oberservers.  In this episode, we look at the transformation of the growing Muslim community into a great world empire which laid the foundations for one of History's Golden Ages.