| A | B |
|---|
| Allah | God |
| Islam | monotheistic religion |
| Muslim | follower of Islam |
| Hijrah | Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Yathrib |
| Qur'an | holy book of Islam |
| mosque | Islamic place of worship |
| hajj | pilgrimage to Mecca, performed as a duty by Mulims |
| Sunna | Islamic model for living, based on life and teachings of Muhammad |
| Shariah | a body of law governing the lives of Muslims |
| caliph | a supreme political and religious leader in the Muslin government |
| Umayyads | a dynasty that ruled the Muslin Empire from A.D.661 to 750 and later established a kingdom |
| Shi'a | a branch of Islam whose members acknowledge Ali and his descendants as the rightful successors of Muhammad |
| Sunni | the branch of islam whose members acknowledge the first four culiphs as the rightful successors of Muhammad |
| Sufi | a Muslim who seeks to achieve direct contact with God through mystical means |
| Abbasids | a dynasty that ruled much of the Muslim Empire from A.D. 750 to 1258 |
| al-Andalus | a Muslim-ruled region in what is now Spain, established in the 8th century A.D. |
| 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 |
| House of Wisdom | a center of learning established in Baghdad in the 800's |
| calligraphy | the art of beautiful handwriting |
