Islamic history can roughly be divided into 10 stages (as opposed to the 10 stages of Christian history):

  1. Ancient Times: Mesopotamia and Persia
  2. Birth of Islam
  3. The Caliphate: Quest for Universal Unity
  4. Fragmentation: Age of the Sultanates
  5. Catastrophe: Crusaders and Mongols
  6. Rebirth: The Three-Empires Era
  7. Permeation of East by West
  8. The Reform Movements
  9. Triumph of the Secular Modernists
  10. The Islamist Reaction