The route takes the visitor through the spread of Islam from Arab Lands and Iran under the Umayyads and Abbasids (seventh to 13th centuries) all the way to Later South Asia (16th to 20th centuries).
Muslim rulers, from the Abbasids in the eighth century to the Mamluk sultanate in Egypt and the Ottomans, developed the institution of military slavery to lessen nepotism and the internal conflicts created by tribal loyalties.
Man battled the elements in Mesopotamia, and the desert and its ways of plunder and raiding pushed against urban life, but the land gave rise to powerful kingdoms: the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Sumerians, the Abbasids.