Muhammad Founds Islam
630 AD
630 630
39.50E21.30N
MISC

MECCA, ARABIA
	In the city of Mecca in Arabia, a merchant named Muhammad began preaching messages he said were from the angel Gabriel.  While in a trance he would dictate these to a scribe.  These teachings became the Koran, which Muslims believe supersedes Jewish and Christian scriptures.
	Muhammad's message of Islam (submission to God) was that there is only one God and that idolatry is wrong.  But Meccans opposed his preaching so he fled to Yathrib (now Medina) where he built an army and began attacking Meccan caravans, finally capturing Mecca in 630 AD.
	Muhammad destroyed the idols in Mecca's main temple (the Kaaba), conquered Arabia and was planning an attack on Syria at the time of his death in 632 AD.
	But by 750 A.D., the armies of his followers had marched west across North Africa and into Spain and France, and east, conquering to the edges of India and China.
	Today, Islam is the second largest religion in the world, with almost 925 million adherents worldwide.