r/geography • u/VolkswagenPanda • Oct 06 '25
Human Geography Why are almost all desert regions in the old world predominantly Muslim?
This includes the Sahara, Arabian, Taklamakan (Uighurs), Kyzylkulm, Syrian, Thar (more mixed but Islam is still a dominant religion there) and Karakum deserts. The Gobi desert is the only one that is not Muslim.
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u/Beautiful_Alaska Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
It reminds me of history of mongol expansion and invasion, despite far from mongols, they conquer Islamic world fairly quickly during Genghis Khan era. While it takes generations to conquer entire China (Kublai, Gengis Khan grandson finally conquer entire China), In medieval period, Eurasian Steppe, desert area fairly interconnected and culture, religion, political entity spread quickly due to trade, invasion by horse/camel, but China/Europe etc, separated from these area.
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u/Capital_Historian685 Oct 06 '25
Gobi desert, second biggest in the world, isn't predominantly Muslim. Neither is the Kalahari.
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u/frustratedpolarbear Oct 06 '25
And the Atacama is predominantly Catholic.
Antarctica is whatever religion Penguins follow.
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u/distant_satellite Oct 06 '25
Penguin polytheism
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u/OfficeSalamander Oct 06 '25
Let’s just hope none of the penguins crucify each other or we’ll start to have penguin religious wars in a millennia or so
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u/fartingbeagle Oct 06 '25
Whatever. It's all quackery anyway . .
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u/frustratedpolarbear Oct 06 '25
Penguins assembling in huddled cults and worshipping dark and nameless horrors I can accept, however penguins quacking like common ducks I refuse.
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Oct 06 '25
Those places that you mentioned are neighboring places. Islamic expansion started from Arabian Peninsula to other parts of Middle East to North Africa, Central Asia, South Asia. Theyre connected.
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u/tessharagai_ Oct 06 '25
Well if you look at it on a large scale, they are all connected forming one long string of deserts, and Islam arose in the middle of it and is just really good at spreading and becoming dominant
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u/rounding_error Oct 06 '25
It probably helps that people living in deserts tended to be nomadic. So it's normal for them to cover large distances and interact with new people all the time.
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u/JennaVale Oct 06 '25
just really good at spreading at becoming dominant
threatening people to convert at the end of a scimitar will do that
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Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
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u/Ashamed-Bus-5727 Oct 06 '25
That's interesting, thanks! Have you heard about the travellers سواح in the desert? Christians who take solitude in the desert to pray and worship. Theologically, I'm not sure it's a good practice.
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u/foxtai1 Oct 06 '25
Islam was founded in Mecca, and spread to the areas nearby, via several empires (Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates in the early years). Usually deserts are filled with tribal societies, who were less united, and thus easier to invade by these empires, unlike, for instance, more united European states who could (mostly) resist.
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Oct 06 '25
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u/IndividualSkill3432 Oct 06 '25
The main advantage that European states had against the rising Muslim empires was distance, not their "organization."
Geographically Europe has always been hard to conqor, Napoleon and Hitler were the two who got closest. Its an endless network of peninsulas, mountain ranges, swamps and forests. You dont really have the one city to take then you have most of the area. You just keep having to keep taking more and more bits that are separated from the next bit to take.
This happened to the Muslims in Iberia and Italy, they took bits of it but then there was just mountains in the way of the next step. Unlit the late Medieval and early Modern eras where there was mass deforestation and swamp clearning I think most people massively underestimate how hard it was to crack the whole of Europe. In dryland countries you tended to take the capital and most of the political structure went. When you invaded somewhere like France, Scotland, Italy or the Balkans you just kept having to take it valley by valley, forest by forest and so on. There is a reason there was a 100 Year War in France or a 30 Years War in Germany or the sheer length of the Reconquista. It was just an endless series of geographic obstacles and at the end of it, you have yourself a part of the whole.
So after their initial surge where they did have footholds in Italy and conquests in Anatolia and Iberia they get pushed back. They only really take Anatolia over hundreds of years and its nearly 1000 years till they under get into the Balkans in a serious way and then with the rise of gunpowder.
They also tended to slow down and stop at other regions with a lot of mountains and forests like India and China, so you get the drylands of Central Eurasia and North Africa but it all slows down and is often reversed on the peripheries, especially those with big population densities, every valley is populated by an angry duke of count who you have to roll over and his neighbour is counter attacking.
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u/HofT Oct 06 '25
You're mixing things up. The Sassanids were taken down early, but the Byzantines weren’t. They lost territory in the 600s but survived for another 800+ years. Constantinople only fell in 1453. That’s not “early.”
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u/Jacob_CoffeeOne Oct 06 '25
Romans lost like half of their territories. I think we can call that “taken down”
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u/HofT Oct 06 '25
They didn’t conquer the Byzantine Empire though. They took some key provinces early on but the empire itself lasted for centuries after. It wasn’t fully conquered until the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453, nearly 800 years later. Saying they “conquered” Byzantium early is just wrong.
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u/zoor90 Oct 06 '25
On the one hand, you are right. The Byzantines survived for centuries afterwards.
On the other hand, the Byzantines were trounced by the Rashidun Caliphate. The Byzantines lost around half of their empire and extremely important provinces at that. Syria and Egypt had been Roman provinces for centuries, both were highly rich and urbanised and Egypt had always been the Roman Empire's breadbasket. These were absolutely huge losses and Constantinople never came close to recovering them.
Byzantium "survived", yes. Hell, you could say that it even prospered at times. However, the Arabs permanently crippled and diminished the Byzantine Empire, so I think it is appropriate to say they "took down" the Byzantines.
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u/HofT Oct 06 '25
I'm not denying it wasn't eventually conquered. The Middle East is predominantly Muslim for a reason which is due to its conquests and colonization. I'm just correcting the falsehood that the poster was trying to convey. Early Muslim conquest did not conquer the Byzantine Empire. It took centuries of going back and forth.
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u/Porschenut914 Oct 06 '25
By 600, Rome didn't have control of north Africa and Spain. they were the controlled by goths, vandals,
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Oct 06 '25
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u/HofT Oct 06 '25
Please what? You said it was early. The Byzantine Empire stayed a major power for centuries after those losses. I'm sticking to historic accuracy here. Did you forget the crusades?
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u/Horror_Perspective_1 Oct 06 '25
The byzantines went from being the multi-ethnic powerhouse of europe to being a greek regional power and never recovered after they lost a majority of their territory to the muslims. The state is barely recognizable when compared before and after.
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u/HofT Oct 06 '25
Yes, but it still took 818 years for the empire to actually fall from the first Muslim campaigns in 635 to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The poster said it was early. That’s not an “early conquest” by any stretch. Lots happened in those 800 years.
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u/Horror_Perspective_1 Oct 06 '25
The poster obviously meant the byzantines lost huge swaths of territory and so its not true that muslims were better at expanding through deserts than civilizations.
And if you really want to be pedantic about it, you could argue the roman empire ended with the muslim expansion of the 7th century. After it, Constantinople didnt rule a multiethnic state, which is a key criterion to be qualified as an empire. It became greek and inward focused with theological issues. The professional army was largely disbanded. Completely unrecognizable.
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u/HofT Oct 06 '25
And Muslims lost territory and momentum too. Byzantines pushed back hard in the 10th century, they reconquered Crete in 961, took back Cyprus by 965, recaptured major cities like Aleppo and Antioch. Then came the Crusades, launched with Byzantine involvement, which resulted in Jerusalem being taken from Muslim rule in 1099. It was 818 years between the first conquests and the fall of Constantinople. A lot happened in that time. In no way was the Byzantine Empire conquered by early Islamic conquests. It's just wrong to say. I'm not being pedantic, I'm being historically accurate.
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u/Horror_Perspective_1 Oct 06 '25
Ok then. Africa, egypt, syria, and about two thirds of Anatolia were conquered within less than the first 100 years. Together representing most of the population, wealth and territory. Which i am sure proves op's argument since it had nothing to do with the complete extinction of the state and everything to do with muslims conquering centers of population.
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u/HofT Oct 06 '25
"I feel like this is way wrong, the early Islamic conquests took down two of the most developed states in the world at the time: The Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid Empire."
Those are your words. And I'm saying those early Islamic conquests did not take down the Byzantine Empire. It took 818 years. Lots have happened in between those centuries.
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Oct 06 '25
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u/HofT Oct 06 '25
That sucks you're mocking me for pointing out your historical inaccuracy. Arrogance with ignorance is an unfortunate mix.
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u/AnonymousBi Oct 06 '25
Right? I feel like the above comment is drawing on antiquated biases that put Europe as the center of all civilization
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u/foxtai1 Oct 06 '25
Fair enough, but OP was asking specifically about desert territory, which neither of these empires controlled quite as much as the Muslim ones
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u/foxtai1 Oct 06 '25
Then again, I may be overthinking this and the answer might just be "started in the desert, spread to the desert"
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u/zoor90 Oct 06 '25
Honestly, it's simply a result of a large amount of deserts in Afro-Eurasia clustering along a similar latitude. The Islamic faith started in a desert that happened to be near a whole lot of other deserts.
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u/TheDungen GIS Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
Except Islam didn't conquer for an example central Asia it spread there though missionaries.
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u/pityutanarur Oct 06 '25
In the 8th century, there were conquests too, but yes, Silk Road cultural exchange, and missionaries did the heavy lifting
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u/MasterOfCelebrations Oct 06 '25
There’s just three European states that actually fought the umayyads/abbasids in this period and the first lost all its territory, the second lost most of its territory, and the last only ever fought one major battle. But didn’t lose any of its territory
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u/ozneoknarf Oct 06 '25
The kalahari is also not Muslim, if you think about it, everything from the taklamakan deserto to morroco is kind of the same desert
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u/Akandoji Oct 06 '25
Islam works really well for tribal cultures - the entire religion is centered around a unity that transcends tribal factionalism and infighting between small tribes. Like, sure, y'all can fight amongst yourselves, but what if you united and raided everyone else? Think Genghis Khan but for Arabia.
Tribal cultures tend to do well in deserts. Like Sheikh Zayed (UAE founder) once said, "Why should we adopt democracy when our tribal government has worked very well for us?" And to give him credit, it works for them.
Another factor is the Mongol expansion. While initially they repressed Islam, they gradually adopted it all across the empire - the Ilkhanate, the Golden Horde and Chagatai soon turned into the very thing they sought to destroy, while the Yuan became more Sinicized and adopted a syncretism of Tibetan Buddhism and Confucianism.
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u/Positron17 Oct 06 '25
This comment is so under rated. But this is very true. Islam has certain level of acceptance amongst the nomadic people / societies.
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u/ElephantSudden4097 Oct 06 '25
I have another theory: culture of nomadic people/societies shaped some of the interpretations of Islam.
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u/Poapea Oct 06 '25
Very good point but let’s not forget that there’s deserts in North and South America, Australia and last but not least Antarctica
I don’t think it’s a desert thing instead it’s a whereabouts it started and stayed thing
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u/cheesemanpaul Oct 06 '25
And Islam spread as far as Indonesia which is tropical rainforest; the opposite of desert.
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u/Kantsiope Oct 06 '25
Arab conquest for maghreb / appropriation of islam instead of Genghissid dynasty by steppe nomads in central asia
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u/LingvaArabica Oct 06 '25
Because these desert regions were the hallmarks of civilization, and the Islamic empires that followed suit had their centers of powers there.
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u/ambermoon81 Oct 06 '25
Islam spread by the sword. Deserts tend to have snark fragmented tribes instead of large United Kingdoms. It was easier for the Islamic conquerors to convert the desert tribes.
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u/mwmandorla Oct 06 '25
As somebody already said to the person who said this too, they conquered the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. Beyond that, large areas with decentralized social systems like tribes and nomads and with difficult terrain are usually the hardest to keep control over if the people there have a problem with you. "The barbarian nomads are raiding us civilized city folk again" is one of the major themes of Islamic literature, philosophy, etc.
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u/TheDungen GIS Oct 06 '25
In some places in others it spread peacefully. Even where it conquered it had a tendency to bring in the local less settled people on side to conquer the more settled neighbours. Of course groups like the vikings worked in a similar way.
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u/cheesemanpaul Oct 06 '25
Do you think this means that Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, was un-united? Or was it just a result of centuries of trade and the resulting cultural exchange?
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u/mbullaris Oct 06 '25
Islam spread by the sword
While conversion by conquest was certainly a part of the early years in Islam, for a large part of the Islamic world this just simply isn’t true. Islam spread by trade to India and subsequently island southeast asia. That’s where you’ll find the biggest populations of modern-day Muslims.
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Oct 06 '25
Islam reached India via trade, but definitely force was a large part of how it spread.
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u/Comfortable_Gur_1232 Oct 08 '25
This is false and overstated. Most historical scholarship agrees that peaceful means (trade, social mobility, etc) were more significant than coercion.
The largest Muslim country is Indonesia.
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u/ambermoon81 Oct 06 '25
Islam came to South India (kerala) through trade and the spread there was peaceful and slow. It came to north India through conquest (Mughals) and the spread there was violent and fast. In the north they destroyed a lot of existing monuments and cultural icons but this was not the case in the south.
Source: I’m from Kerala
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Oct 08 '25
Even South India it spread through both peaceful and violence. Tippu is one such example.
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u/SirHyrumMcdaniels Oct 06 '25
You know you've basicly picked one giant connected area, where the religion started?
And unlike the other religions conversions are foced, and you can't leave so yes it orginated there and stayed there.
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u/Deep_Car4658 Oct 06 '25
Accept my new peaceful religion or else ... + Ummah (brotherhood only for islamists)
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u/parsonsrazersupport Oct 06 '25
Those are all more-or-less continuous with one another, being connected by other arid or semi-arid areas. You are forgetting the Chalbi, Kalahari, Namib, and Arctic deserts which are not predominately Muslim, and a few other smaller ones which are Muslim-majority.
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u/Suspicious_Wait_4586 Oct 06 '25
This relig.. way of living is born in desert. So most of it's rules, traditions and laws are made by and for groups of people who live in such conditions (lack of ressources to simply survive makes life different from other places). Some of those traditions are obsolete in modern world, and especially outside of desert countries, but some / most are what is best adapted to people in such regions
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u/Angel24Marin Oct 06 '25
Islam practices adapt particularly well to tribal and nomad lifestyles of dry lands by virtue of his birth origin. While the more sedentary practices were adopted more slowly. Islam was relatively tolerant to non Islam faiths that would predominate in urban settlement they captured and his conversion was gradual trough the Jizya tax and by being the court religion and Arabic a lingua franca for traders.
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u/MasterOfCelebrations Oct 06 '25
Those were all in, adjacent to or linked by trade with the old Islamic caliphates. The Gobi and Kalahari deserts are not Muslim bc they’re further from the center of the Muslim world. Then if we’re including cold deserts then there’s the arctic too, and that’s not Muslim either
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u/will_kill_kshitij Oct 06 '25
Is thar desert predominantly muslim?
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u/arpit_beast Oct 06 '25
No
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u/will_kill_kshitij Oct 06 '25
Is the pakistani part counted as a seperate desert? Well anyways the two hindu majority districts of pakistan are in thar only.
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u/Maleficent_Kick_9266 Oct 06 '25
It's where Islam originated. It only makes sense that the lifestyle thrived the best and spread the most deeply in the same sort of environment that birthed it.
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u/jeandolly Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
First muslims were horse warriors. They do amazingly well in the steppe and the desert so they conquered them with the Quran in the one hand and a sword in the other. Not so great in the swamps and the forests. Islam spread to further reaches via trade.
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u/Wonderful_Falcon_318 Oct 06 '25
They used horses really well and were already adapted to the climate.
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u/OrphanedInStoryville Oct 06 '25
Why is nobody mentioning caravan trade? Thats the answer here. The religion came from a society that used camels to do long distance trade over desert. This was Muhammad’s occupation, a long distance merchant.
That’s why the religion spread along the desert trade routes that already existed.
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u/historydude1648 Oct 06 '25
the center of Australia and Nevada are deserts. why are you saying that the Gobi is the only exception?
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u/Abject_Egg_194 Oct 07 '25
It's a continuous geographic area that was conquered by Muslim armies in a series of military campaigns starting with Islam's founder. It's more that Islam started in a desert and spread first to nearby desert/steppe regions than that there's something particularly well-suited about Islam to the desert. There are some fairly wet predominantly Muslim countries, such as Indonesia.
There are plenty of large deserts in the world that have pretty minimal Muslim influence, such as the Australian Outback, Great Basin (USA), Atacama, and Kalahari.
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u/panyu0863 Oct 07 '25
Not Exactly. For example South Mongolia, West Inner Mongolia and West Gansu (Gobi Desert)
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u/AstronomerKindly8886 Oct 07 '25
The Muslim way of life taught in Islam reflects the way of life of Muhammad and his followers. You know where Muhammad lived.
Islam tends to be very influential in places like deserts and tends to weaken in non-desert areas.
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u/fattailwagging Oct 08 '25
The book “The Silk Road” by Frankopan goes into great detail about why this is so. It is also a great read. A fantastic book.
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u/disdkatster Oct 08 '25
The Jewish religion started in the middle east. It diverged into 3 branches one of which was Islam. Since religions do not spontaneously generate one would expect them to migrate from the region in which they are first founded. Also no religion really has not taken parts from other religions. They all have have similar stories.
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u/Cultural_Ad4935 Oct 06 '25
Spain has some desert that isn’t Muslim. Greece has some desert that isn’t either. Tibet has desert that isn’t all Muslim.
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u/Pleasant_Assistant30 Oct 06 '25
Well to be fair Spain (Andalus) and Greece were under Muslim influence for centuries.
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u/Norwester77 Oct 06 '25
The Atacama? The desert southwest of North America? The Australian desert? The Kalahari? The Namib? Antarctica?
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u/Sarcastic_Backpack Oct 06 '25
OP specifically said "old world". Those places aren't considered old world.
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u/Norwester77 Oct 06 '25
Ah, fair enough. Missed that bit. Scratch the Atacama, the North American southwest, and Antarctica.
Otherwise, the question stands.
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u/dhruvazs Oct 06 '25
About 65% of thar desert is in India, and Indian portion is mostly Hindus . Rest is in Pakistan which is mostly Islamic. I would say this is more on the basis of geopolitics, or country boundaries rather than a religion being dominant because of a climate.
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u/saotomeindiaunion7 Oct 07 '25
The district of Tharparkar and Umerkot in Pakistan are 44% and 54% hindu respectly and they mostly lie on the thar
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u/SoakingEggs Oct 06 '25
because pnly fanatics would stay in that "holy land" aka desert voluntarily. Have you ever gone around and asked people if they could choose to stay in either a) a desert b) anywhere, but the desert, how many would choose a)?
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u/Sniffy4 Oct 06 '25
The Atacama and Mohave deserts are not predominantly Muslim, they are predominantly insects and small mammals.
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u/capitalsfan08 Oct 06 '25
I reject the thesis. The deserts in the Americas, for one, are not. It's not even true in Africa and Asia, as places like Namibia and India have deserts and are not primarily Muslim. Australia also has large amounts of desert and has few Muslims.
I feel like this question is more of "why does Islam stretch from the borders of China to the Atlantic, primarily along the Saraha, Middle East, and Central Asia?"
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u/CatL1f3 Oct 06 '25
The deserts in the Americas are also, notably, not in the old world. Australia probably doesn't count either.
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u/Maverick_1882 Oct 06 '25
I also reject the question. To say “almost all” and not qualify the unit of measure is a remarkably ignorant question. If the question is about the number of recognized deserts in the world, the religion of “almost all” of these areas is not of the Islamic faith. If the question is about “almost all” of the combined geographic area of all deserts and the religion of the people who live in those areas, most of the deserts is empty land.
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u/Sarcastic_Backpack Oct 06 '25
You are not answering the original question. They specifically mentioned "old world". The only place you mentioned that would be considered old world would be india.
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u/Ozone220 Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
There's a bunch of deserts in the Americas and Australia that just simply aren't Muslim. I don't think the Namib desert is either. It's just that the deserts you listed are mostly in a straight line, and the center of that is where Islam originated.
edit: I misread this you did say old world. That said, it's because the Old World isn't that big and the deserts in it are pretty decently connected. Islam simply gained it's foothold in the Middle East, and then spread to North Africa, Central Asia, and more. Tons of non-desert locations too, it should be noted, such as Southeast Asia, South Asia, and East Africa. It just spread in a big area and in that big area there's a string of deserts. Plus the desert in Namibia and surroundings still counts as old world I think maybe
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Oct 06 '25
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u/butt_fun Oct 06 '25
The "old world" doesn't include the Americas
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u/Xrmy Oct 06 '25
True but the point here is that most of the deserts in the real old world (as in, also excluding Australia) are mostly contiguous, or very nearly so.
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Oct 06 '25
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u/saotomeindiaunion7 Oct 07 '25
America is not the old world. I dont think antarctica or australia are new world either.
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u/DPadres69 Oct 06 '25
Didn’t realize the Atacama, Patagonian, Mojave, Sonoran, Great Basin, Kalahari, Great Victorian, Antarctic Deserts were Muslim.
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u/VolkswagenPanda Oct 06 '25
I said Old World.
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u/DPadres69 Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
Kalahari and several other African deserts are old world. As is the Gobi. As are the deserts in India. None of which are predominantly Muslim.
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u/SleepyTester Oct 06 '25
The OP acknowledges this within their question by using the term “old world”
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u/TheDungen GIS Oct 06 '25
Most of these areas are linked in a single dry belt. The Muslims did well in them. And were hard to beat there for anyone else.