Innovations introduced by Muslim economists, traders and merchants include the earliest uses of credit, cheques, promissory notes, savings accounts, transactional accounts, loaning, trusts, exchange rates, the transfer of credit and debt, and banking institutions for loans and deposits.

Additionally, Muslim trading communities had flourished throughout coastal south India, particularly on the western coast, where Muslim traders arrived in small numbers, mainly from the Arabian peninsula.

Thus, until the 15th century, only minor trade and cultural exchanges between Europe and Asia continued at certain terminals controlled by Muslim traders.

Muslim traders had little incentive to go beyond the coast into the interior of Africa.

The Soninké kings never fully adopted Islam, but the empire had good relations with Muslim traders.

Trade also increased during this period, as Sri Lanka began to trade Cinammon and a large number of Muslim traders were bought into the island.

* Muslim traders settle in the northwest and southeast of Madagascar.

Brunei benefited from the scattering of Muslim merchants and traders who were forced to use other ports.

With the rise of Islam, the trade became dominated by Muslim traders, one ancient Arabic source appears to know the location of the islands, describing them as fifteen days ' sail East from the ' island of Jaba ' - presumably Java — but direct evidence of Islam in the archipelago occurs only in the late 14th century, as China's interest in regional maritime dominance waned.

With Muslim traders came not just Islam, but a new technique of social organisation, the sultanate, which replaced local councils of rich men ( orang kaya ) on the more important islands, and proved more effective in dealing with outsiders.

From the 7th century it spread rapidly from the Arabian Peninsula to the rest of the world through the initial Muslim conquests, and subsequently with traders and explorers after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

There is evidence of Arab Muslim traders entering Indonesia as early as the 8th century.

The spread, although at first introduced through Arab Muslim traders, continued to saturate through the Indonesian people as local rulers and royalty began to adopt the religion, subsequently their subjects would mirror their conversion.

The " Islamization " process continued as Muslim traders married the local women, with some of the wealthier traders marrying into the families of the ruling elite.

The northeastern sector of the country was also influenced by an influx of Hausa Muslim traders from the 16th Century onwards

About the time Majapahit was founded, Muslim traders and proselytizers began entering the area.

Much of central Asia and southern Russia was won over to Islam through the missionary work of the ṭarīqahs, and the majority of Indonesia's population, where a Muslim army never set foot, was converted to Islam by the perseverance of both Muslim traders and Sufi missionaries.

The Sahara was traversed by mostly Muslim traders, natives and pilgrims, of which the best known is Ibn Battuta.

Although well-known to the Tuareg and Muslim traders who caravaned across the Sahara, Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs was the first European to document the Great Sand Sea.

Most traffic between Al-Andalus and Christian regions remained in the hands of Jewish and Muslim traders until the dramatic shifts initiated by European commercial expansion throughout the 11th and 12th centuries.

Two years after the CMS established a mission, French Catholic White Fathers also arrived at the king's court, and the stage was set for a fierce religious and nationalist rivalry in which Zanzibar-based Muslim traders also participated.

In premodern Muslim countries, Jews rarely faced martyrdom, exile or forcible conversion, and were mostly free in their choice of residence and profession.

Drafted by a treaty and a bill of sale, and constituted between 1820 and 1858, the Princely State of Kashmir and Jammu ( as it was first called ) combined disparate regions, religions, and ethnicities: to the east, Ladakh was ethnically and culturally Tibetan and its inhabitants practised Buddhism ; to the south, Jammu had a mixed population of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs ; in the heavily populated central Kashmir valley, the population was overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, however, there was also a small but influential Hindu minority, the Kashmiri brahmins or pandits ; to the northeast, sparsely populated Baltistan had a population ethnically related to Ladakh, but which practised Shi ' a Islam ; to the north, also sparsely populated, Gilgit Agency, was an area of diverse, mostly Shi ' a groups ; and, to the west, Punch was Muslim, but of different ethnicity than the Kashmir valley.

The population is mostly Muslim, with a Hindu population of two percent.

In addition, significant numbers of the Tongas live in the north ; Ngonis -- an offshoot of the Zulus who came from South Africa in the early 19th century — live in the lower northern and lower central regions ; and the Yao, who are mostly Muslim, predominate in the Southern Region of the country and live in a wide band from Blantyre and Zomba north to Lake Malawi and east to the border with Mozambique.

Muslim 97 %, Christian ( mostly Roman Catholic )

Her medal also meant the breakthrough for sporting women in Morocco and other mostly Muslim countries.

An opposing statement put forward by Muslim nations was signed by 57 member states, mostly in Africa and Asia.

The mostly Hindu and Muslim labourers were compelled to work 7 and a half hours a day, six days a week for 3 years, receiving about 13 cents a day for their work.

Uyghurs in China, unlike the Salar and Hui who are also mostly Muslim, generally do not oppose coeducation ( grouping male and female students together ).

The nation is 88 % Muslim ( mostly Sunni, with a 5 % Shi ' a minority ), 9 % Eastern Orthodox and 3 % other faiths ( which include small communities of Korean Christians, other Christian denominations, Buddhists, Baha ' is, and more ).

The slaves were mostly captured by Venice from Dalmatia, the Holy Roman Empire from what is now Prussia and Poland, and the Byzantines from elsewhere in the Balkans, and were generally destined for other parts of the Byzantine Empire and ( most frequently ) the Muslim states surrounding the Mediterranean: the Abbasid Caliphate, the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba, the Emirate of Sicily, and the Fatimid Caliphate ( which relied on Slavs purchased at the Bari market for its legions of Sakalaba Mamluks ).

In 1960, the mostly Muslim Turkish Cypriots were only 18 % of the Cypriot population.

By the 1560s there were 10, 000 Catholics in the area, mostly on Ambon, and by the 1590s there were 50, 000 to 60, 000, although most of the region surrounding Ambon remained Muslim.

In the 1950 parliamentary elections, the Wafd Party of el-Nahhas gained a victory — mostly due to the absence of the Muslim Brotherhood, who boycotted the elections — and was perceived as a threat by the Free Officers as they had campaigned on demands similar to theirs.

Afghan refugees are mostly Persian-speaking Hazara or Tajiks, speaking a dialect of Persian, and Iraqi refugees, who are mainly Shia Muslim Mesopotamian Arabic-speakers of Iranian origin.

Low-lying and largely flat, the region has Fula, Serer-Ndut people ( the original founders of Biffeche, the Mt Rolland etc., thousands of years ago, and strong adherents to Serer religion, even after the French and the Muslim communities of Senegal tried to kill them off ), Wolof and Moor ethnic groups engaged in pasturing animals ( mainly the Fulas ) and irrigation-based agriculture ( mostly the Serer-Ndut who are usually mixed-farmers ).

Gbagbo is mainly supported by the largely Christian south ; his opponents are mostly concentrated in the Muslim north.

* Moro people, the mostly Muslim indigenous people of Southern Philippines

The appointment was perceived as a demotion because the division was mostly formed from new Muslim recruits rather than the elite troops that Michael had commanded previously.

After this period, volunteers were enrolled, mostly of Muslim origin.

The Greek spirit of rationalism survived in medieval Islam and, in regard to the insane, Muslim physicians and psychologists relied mostly upon clinical observation, not demonological explanation.

In terms of religion, the majority of Kurds, Arabs are Sunni Muslim while Turkmen are mostly Shi ' ite, Assyrians and Armenians are exclusively Christian, and Yazidis, Shabaks and Mandeans following their own religious beliefs.