So in a period of time that was, historically speaking, both remarkably recent and remarkably short, a small group of people from an area of the world with no natural resources managed to create one of the great empires of the world and also one of its great religions. And that very fact may be why people of Western European descent remain largely ignorant about this period. Not only were the Muslims great conquerors, they spawned an explosion of trade and learning that lasted hundreds of years. They saved many of the classic texts that formed the basis of the so-called Western canon while Europe was ignoring them and they paved the way for the Renaissance. While it's important to remember that much of the world between Spain and the Indus River wasn't Arabized, most of it was so thoroughly Islamized that these days we can't think of the world we now call the Middle East without thinking of it as Islamic. Like perhaps the greatest testimony to Islam's power to organize people's lives and their communities is that in Egypt, five times a day, millions of people turn away from the pyramids and toward Mecca. Egypt, birthplace to one of the longest continuous cultures the world has ever known, is now the largest Arab country in the world.