Islamic culture

Islamic cultures or Muslim cultures refers to the historic cultural practices that developed among the various peoples living in the Muslim world. These practices, while not always religious in nature, are generally influenced by aspects of Islam, particularly due to the religion serving as an effective conduit for the inter-mingling of people from different ethnic/national backgrounds in a way that enabled their cultures to come together on the basis of a common Muslim identity. The earliest forms of Muslim culture, from the Rashidun Caliphate to the Umayyad Caliphate and early Abbasid Caliphate, was predominantly based on the existing cultural practices of the Arabs, the Byzantines, and the Persians. However, as the Islamic empires expanded rapidly, Muslim culture was further influenced and assimilated much from the Iranic, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, Caucasian, Turkic, Malay, Somali, Berber, and Indonesian cultures.

Owing to a variety of factors, there are variations in the application of Islamic beliefs in different cultures and traditions.

Arabic literature (Arabic: الأدب العربي / ALA-LC: al-Adab al-'Arabī) is the writing, both prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is "Adab", which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and which implies politeness, culture and enrichment.

Arabic literature emerged in the 5th century with only fragments of the written language appearing before then. The Qur'an, (the holy book of Islam) widely regarded by people as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language, would have the greatest lasting effect on Arabic culture and its literature. Arabic literature flourished during the Islamic Golden Age, but has remained vibrant to the present day, with poets and prose-writers across the Arab world, as well as rest of the world, achieving increasing success.

Persian literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in Western Iranian languages, particularly Middle and New Persian, and it is one of the world's oldest literatures. It spans over two-and-a-half millennia. Its sources have been within Greater Iran including present-day Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and Turkey, regions of Central Asia such as Tajikistan, and South Asia, where Persian has historically been either the native or official language. For instance, Rumi, one of the best-loved Persian poets, was born in Balkh (in what is now Afghanistan) or Vakhsh (in what is now Tajikistan), wrote in Persian, and lived in Konya, then the capital of the Seljuks in Anatolia. The Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from Iran, Mesopotamia, Azerbaijan, the wider Transcaucasus, Anatolia, western parts of Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia.

Not all Persian literature is written in Persian; works written by ethnic Persians in other languages, such as Greek and Arabic, are sometimes included. At the same time, not all literature written in Persian is written by ethnic Persians or Iranians; Turkic, Caucasian, and Indian poets and writers have also used the Persian language in the environment of Persianate societies.

Described as one of the great literatures of humanity, including Goethe's assessment of it as one of the four main bodies of world literature, Persian literature has its roots in surviving works of Middle and Old Persian, the latter of which date back as far as 522 BCE, the date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Behistun Inscription. The bulk of surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Muslim conquest of Persia c. 650. After the Abbasid Caliphate came to power in 750, Persians became its scribes and bureaucrats and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The New Persian language literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political reasons, early Iranian dynasties such as the Tahirids and Samanids being based in Khorasan.

Persian poets such as Ferdowsi, Saadi Shirazi, Hafiz Shirazi, Attar of Nishapur, Nizami Ganjavi, Rumi and Omar Khayyam are also known in the West and have influenced the literature of many countries.