Before beginning this course, I had very little knowledge about Islam during the Middle Ages or how it spread from the Arab peninsula throughout the mediterranean region.  I was unaware of how the Islamic faith divided into the two factions and of the life of the prophet Muhammad.  I learned about the timeline of the four caliphs directly following the death of Muhammad and the impact each one had on the expansion of the religion.  Twenty years ago in Paris, I learned a few things in an art history course about Islamic art and visited various sites in Paris that held artwork and artifacts.  At that time, I learned about the astrolabe and the connection to the famous 12th century love story of Heloise and Abelard whose tomb you can visit at Père Lachaise cemetery.  The focus of that course was about the art and not to develop an understanding of the Islamic Empire.  I am not a history teacher so I don't have any curriculum that includes this topic.  As a beginning level French language teacher, I would like to learn more about this topic so that I might be able to include connections with the Middle Ages in Europe, particularly France, with the Middle Ages of the Middle East.