Islamic history can roughly be divided into 10 stages (as opposed to the 10 stages of Christian history):
- Ancient Times: Mesopotamia and Persia
- Birth of Islam
- The Caliphate: Quest for Universal Unity
- Fragmentation: Age of the Sultanates
- Catastrophe: Crusaders and Mongols
- Rebirth: The Three-Empires Era
- Permeation of East by West
- The Reform Movements
- Triumph of the Secular Modernists
- The Islamist Reaction