Islamic history · 632–1591 CE

History you can see.

An atlas of Islamic history on a living globe. Walk the Sīrah where it happened, follow the scholars from city to city, and trace who taught whom, with the classical sources beside every step.

Open the globe Begin the Sīrah

Free to explore. No account needed to look around.

The Tārīkh globe in 1000 CE: the Abbasid Caliphate, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Emirate of Sicily, with their neighbours, drawn as they stood that year
Tārīkh in forty seconds0:40

New at launch

See it move.

Three short films. Each one ends where you can try it.

  1. Begin the Sīrah
  2. See al-Bukhārī’s teachers
  3. Ask a question

What's inside

Everything opens from the globe.

Names and dates turned into something you can see, follow and understand.

  1. I

    The world as it was

    Move the year from 632 to 1591 and the empires redraw as they stood, with the scholars alive in it. The right era, not a modern map wearing old names.

    Open the globe →
  2. II

    The Sīrah

    The life of the Prophet ﷺ in chapters, stop by stop, read on the globe where it happened.

    Begin the Sīrah →
  3. III

    Journeys

    A scholar's life walked city by city, in the order it happened. The globe carries you to each stop as you read it.

    See the journeys →
  4. IV

    Lineage

    Who learned from whom, across the centuries. Every link says how well it is attested, and none is invented to close a gap.

    Follow a chain →
  5. V

    Ask Tarikh

    Ask about a place, a person or an event. The answer is written from the sources, and the globe moves with it.

    Ask a question →
  6. VI

    Profiles

    Every figure on one page: their life, their teachers and students, and the classical works that tell us about them.

    Browse the profiles →
A journey in Tārīkh: Ibn Baṭṭūṭah at Tangier on the globe, beside the reading panel with an 1878 engraving of him and the first stop's account
Ibn Baṭṭūṭah sets out from Tangier: the first stop of his journey.

Who checks it

Read like a book. Sourced like one.

Historians are reviewing the journeys, correcting them and keeping them honest to the sources. What Tārīkh says comes from the classical works, and it shows you where.

Fawaz Abdul Salam

Fawaz Abdul Salam

Islamic/Ottoman intellectual, institutional and architectural history

Fawaz Abdul Salam is a postdoctoral researcher at Concordia University in Montreal, where he studies the history of Muslim heritage in Quebec. His research focuses broadly on religion and urbanism, with particular emphasis on urban materiality, including architecture, built environments, and the institutional heritage of the Muslim world. He completed a PhD dissertation on the continuing significance of Ottoman architectural and built heritage in the reconfiguration of Muslim urban life in contemporary Istanbul.

Nabil Khan

Nabil Khan

South Asia

Nabil Khan is a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on precolonial and colonial land revenue systems, agrarian expansion and identity formation in South Asia with particular attention to the Muslim communities of Bengal, Assam and Arakan. Khan has delivered history lectures as a guest speaker at universities. He has also been elected as a member of the Royal Historical Society (RHistS).

Meet the historians →

The passage, in Arabic

Wherever it can, a step sets the classical sources' own words beside it, with the book and page they come from.

References in the text

Each step lists the works it draws on, numbered where they are used, so you can see where a sentence comes from.

Honest about certainty

Where the sources disagree or a date is a guess, the step says so plainly rather than inventing precision.

From readers

What readers say

As history grad student and someone who works closely with digital humanities, I believe this is a really excellently developed project and has so much pedagogical potential.

A history graduate student
I can already imagine myself spending hours using this, and I'm excited about using in teaching as well.
A student and educator
The layout seems like its out of a history book.
Beta reader, on Ḥafṣ's journey
The arc connecting place to place is a really good touch.
Beta reader, on al-Bukhārī's journey
Lineage graph is a wonderful feature alhamdulillah.
Beta reader
4.1 / 5

the average of 392 ratings beta readers gave inside the app.

Open now

Begin with the globe.

Free to explore. No account needed to look around.

Open the globe Begin the Sīrah
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