| A | B |
|---|
| Allah | God in the Islamic religion |
| Muhammad | Prophet and founder of Islam; began to convert Arabia to Islam; teachings are recorded in the Koran |
| Islam | A monotheistic religion that developed in Arabia in the seventh century |
| Muslim | A follower of Islam |
| Hijrah | Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina in AD 622 |
| Qur'an | The holy book of Islam; Koran |
| mosque | An Islamic house of worship |
| hajj | A pilgrimage to Mecca, performed as a duty by Muslims |
| Sunna | An Islamic model for living, based on the life and teachings of Muhammad |
| shari'a | A body of law governing the lives of Muslims |
| caliph | A supreme political and religious leader in a Muslim government |
| Umayyads | A dynasty that ruled the Muslim Empire from AD 661 to 750 and later established a kingdom in al-Andalus |
| Shi'a | The branch of Islam whose members acknowledge Ali and his descendants as the rightful successors of Muhammad |
| Sufi | A Muslim who seeks to achieve direct contact with God through mystical means |
| Abbasids | A dynaty that ruled much of the Muslim Empire from AD 750 to 1258 |
| al-Andalus | A Mulim-ruled region in what is now Spain, established in the eighth century AD |
| Fatimid | A member of a Muslim dynasty that traced its ancestry to Muhammad's daughter Fatima and that built an empire in North Africa, Arabia, and Syria in the 10th-12th centuries |
| House of Wisdom | A center of learning established in Bagdad in the 800s. |
| calligraphy | The art of beautiful handwriting |
