Blog post #8

In chapter 10 the author discusses the spread and contraction of Christianity. It was in Arabia where the decimation of earlier Christian communities occurred. Within a century of Muhammad's death in 632, only a few Christian groups remained. In the Middle East, Jewish and Christian communities felt the impact of Islam as well. Because of the local Muslim rules, churches were destroyed, villages plundered, fields burned and Christians forced to wear distinctive clothing. In Egypt, however, Christianity had become the religion of the majority by the time of the Muslim conquest around 640. Across coastal North Africa widespread conversion to Islam reduced the extinction of Christian communities. By the thirteenth century, Christian crusaders from Europe and Mongol invaders from the east threatened Egypt. And by the mid-fourteenth-century there was a violent anti-Christian pogroms, destruction of churches.