ROME vs. ISLAM - a comparison & contrast essay by Smruthi Maganti

Imagine you were a trader in the Byzantine Empire. You plan on journeying to the Arabian Peninsula for the first time soon. You make your way there and when you finally arrive, you notice some very evident differences and some similarities. There are many similarities and differences between the political, environmental and economic aspects of the Roman Empire and the Islamic Empire. Two examples of this would be the two civil wars and the different climates.

Both the Roman and the Islamic Empires had a civil war. While both were about some type of power struggle, the Roman civil wars was “between the different classes in Roman society”, and the Islamic civil war caused the people to split into two groups and fight. Also, in this case, the war was for religious and about a leadership problem (p.49) (p.102-103). This shows the reasons behind each of the wars were not very small and were a big part of the outcome of history. The motives behind the Islamic civil war, in my opinion, were much deeper because the whole war in the first place was about religion and who should and would become the religious leader. The Roman civil war mainly because of tension disputes between 'nobility' and the poor. Even though both the Islamic and Roman Empires had a civil war, they were extremely different.

In the beginning of each of the empires, both the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula and the Romans started building near water sources. While the Romans built Rome near the Tiber River, the Islamic people built their trading cities, Mecca and Medina, around oases.(pg. 47)(pg. 87) Those major water sources were very important in the growth of both the empires, because without them, the people wouldn't have settled there. As time passed, both civilizations came up with more sophisticated ways of bringing water to them, the Romans with their arched aqueducts and the Islamic people with their highly decorated fountains. Even though this happened, in the beginning, they were very similar. Even though the time and geographical distance between the Roman and Islamic Empire, in some ways they were extremely similar.

One of the most outstanding differences between the two empires was the place, and because of the place, the climate. The climate in Italy was during Roman times and still is sub-tropical. The arid desert climate in the Arabian peninsula is unmistakable (p.85)(wikipedia.org[climate of Italy]) This is important because the climate shaped the peoples' way of life. Because of the desert climate, water was scarce, so people settled at the oases. Because of this, the oases soon became large trading cities. The same way, the sub-tropical climate made the air a bit humid and have more farmland than the Arabic peninsula. Because of these differences in climate, the Romans and the Islamica led extremely different ways of life.

All in all, the Roman Empire and the Islamic Empire had many similarities in their politics, environment, and technology. The climate, the civil wars, and their ways of getting water are all examples of this.