ABSTRACT
From the earliest days of Islam, interactions between diverse religious, ethnic and cultural groups contributed to the dynamics of its history. The muslims, initially almost exclusively arabs, had to deal with various groups of non-muslims who came under their control during the first expansion, and as they settled in the provinces formerly belonging to the byzantine and sasanian empires and Islam became more attractive for the locals, the arab character of the religion was substituted by a more universal approach and new ideas were absorbed. by the time of the abbasid revolution in 750, the Islamic empire stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to central asia where the arab muslim armies defeated those of Tang china at the river Talas in 751.
