How is the early expansion of Islam similar and/or different than the Ottoman expansion?

Question

How is the early expansion of Islam similar and/or different than the Ottoman expansion?

Answer 1

In Eastern Europe, the spread of Islam pretty well mirrored the growth of the Ottoman Empire. However, in Western Europe, Islamic conquest was unconnected with the Ottomans in any but the vaguest possible manner.

In fact the Moorish invasion of the Iberian Peninsula predates the establishment of the Ottoman Empire by a couple of hundred years. IIRC, by the late 17th through the early 1pth Century, the Barbary States of North Africa were nominally tributary states of the Ottoman Empire, but were more or less independent of the Sublime Ponte.

The Ottomans were more successful in permanently planting Islam in their Balkan possessions than the Moors were in Spain and Portugal. Witness the current conflict between Moslems and Christians in the former Yugoslavian Republics, and to a lesser extent in the other Balkan states. The Reconquista destroyed the Moors, and Moslem power in Iberia, and royal edict expelled all Moslems and Jews from the four kingdoms of Spain in 1492.

I suppose it is safe to say that the expansion of the Islam mirrored the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. Only those Eastern European countries occupied, or partially occupied by the Ottomans have a significant Moslem population.

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Answer 2

Look up the PERSIAN EMPIRE on Google, and you'll see who important they were in their day...