ABSTRACT
Since its introduction in the Arabian peninsula in the early years of the seventh century Ce Islam has come to embrace over one-sixth of the world’s population and stretches almost continuously over wide and diverse areas from, for example, Mauretania in the west to China in the east. This makes it easier to point to those parts of the world, such as Australia and South America, where to date Islam has had little or virtually no impact, than to enumerate the numerous regions where it is the religion of a majority or a substantial minority of the population or those, such as the Iberian peninsula, where it once had a strong presence and has left a very distinctive mark on the culture and history.
