Yoruban settlements are often described as primarily one or more of the main social groupings called "generations":

• The "first generation" includes towns and cities known as original capitals of founding Yoruba states/kingdoms.
• The "second generation" refers to settlements created by diasporaconquest and/or unforced resettlement.
• The "third generation" consists of villages and municipalities that emerged following the Yoruba wars.

Mapungubwean society was "the most complex in southern Africa".^[9] It is thought by archaeologists to be the first class-based social system in southern Africa; that is, its leaders were separated from and higher in rank than its inhabitants.

Life in Mapungubwe was centered around family and farming. Special sites were created for initiation ceremonies, household activities, and other social functions. Cattle lived in kraals located close to the residents' houses, signifying their value.

Most speculation about society continues to be based upon the remains of buildings, since the Mapungubweans left no written or oral record.

The belief that everything in nature has a thinking concious spirit within it and those spirits need frequent appeasing so that the spirit won't become angry 

If the spirits are happy or at least content they will tend to work in your favor and not against you your family of your village thus ensuring fertility health and prosperity. 

The belief that the spirit of deceased people remain in this world and must be respected and that those spirits can influence animistic spirits on your behalf. 

Your are respecting your deceased ancestors!

Scarifying involves scratching, etching, or superficially cutting designs, pictures, or words into the skin as a permanent body modification.

In the process of body scarification, scars are formed by cuttingor branding the skin. Scarification is sometimes calledcicatrization (from the French equivalent).

The Holy Qur’an (pronounced [qurˈʔaːn]; Arabic: القرآن‎ al-qur’ān, literally “the recitation”) is the central religious verbal text of Islam, also sometimes transliterated as Quran, Qur’ān, Koran, Al-Coran or Al-Qur’ān. Muslims believe the Qur’an to be the verbal book of divine guidance and direction for mankind, and consider the original Arabic verbal text to be the final revelation of God.

The Kaaba (Arabic: الكعبة al-Kaʿbah, IPA: [ˈkɑʕbɐ]: "Cube")^[1] is a cube-shaped building in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and is the most sacred site in Islam.^[2] The building predates Islam, and, according to Islamic tradition, the first building at the site was built byAbraham. The building has a mosque built around it, the Masjid al-Haram. All Muslims around the world face the Kaaba during prayers, no matter where they are.

The Five Pillars of Islam (Arabic: أركان الإسلام) is the term given to the five duties incumbent on every Muslim. These duties are Shahadah (profession of faith), Salat (prayers), Sawm (fasting),Zakat (giving of alms, specifically during Ramadan) and Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca, the place where the most famous Islamic temple is located). These five practices are essential to Muslims. For Shia Islam, the five pillars are more abstract and inward oriented: Tawhid(monotheism), Qiyamah (Day of judgment), Nubuwwah (Prophets of Islam), Imamah(Leadership of the Twelve Imams), and Adl (Justice).

A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. Muslims often refer to the mosque by its Arabic name, masjid (Arabic: مسجد‎ — Arabic pronunciation: [ˈmæsdʒɪd] (pl.masājid, Arabic: مساجد‎ — [mæˈsæːdʒɪd]))which literally means place of prostration. The word "mosque" in English refers to all types of buildings dedicated for Islamic worship although there is a distinction in Arabic between the smaller, masjids dedicated for daily five prayers and the larger masajid where the daily five prayers and the Friday congregation sermons are held (مسجد جامع, masjid jāmi‘), which is attended by more people and play more roles such as teaching Qur'an.

Qiblah (Arabic: قبلة‎, also transliterated as Kiblah or Qiblih) is an Arabic word for the direction that should be faced when a Muslim prays during Salah. Mostmosques contain a niche in a wall that indicates the Qiblah.

The Qiblah has importance to more than just the salaat, and plays an important part in everyday ceremonies. The head of an animal that is slaughtered using Halalmethods is aligned with the Qiblah. After death, Muslims are buried with their faces in the direction of the Qiblah. Thus, archaeology can indicate a Muslim necropolis if no other signs are present.

An imam (Arabic: إمام plural أئمة A'immah‎, Persian: امام) is an Islamic leadership position, often the leader of a mosque and the community. Similar to spiritual leaders, the imam is the one who leads the prayer during Islamic gatherings. More often, the community turns to the mosque imam if they have an Islamic question. In smaller communities an imam could be the community leader based on the community setting. It is important to note that the position of the Imam is not clerical in Sunni-Islam.

Minarets (Turkish: minare,^[1] from Arabic manāra (lighthouse) منارة, usually مئذنة) are distinctive architectural features of Islamic mosques- generally tall spires with onion-shaped or conical crowns, usually either free standing or taller than any associated support structure; the basic form includes a base, shaft, and gallery. Styles vary regionally and by period. They provide a visual focal point and are used for the call to prayer (adhan).

Instead of recalling something related to the spoken word, calligraphy for Muslims is a visible expression of the highest art of all, the art of the spiritual world. 

Arabesque art consists of a series of repeating geometric forms which are occasionally accompanied by calligraphy. Ettinghausen et al. describe the arabesque as a "vegetal design consisting of full...and half palmettes [as] an unending continuous pattern...in which each leaf grows out of the tip of another."^[7] To the adherents of Islam, the Arabesque are symbolic of their united faith and the way in which traditional Islamic cultures view the world.

The Umayyad Caliphate (Arabic: بنو أمية‎, Banu Umayyah) was the second of the four Islamic caliphates established after the death ofMuhammad. It was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, whose name derives from Umayya ibn Abd Shams, the great-grandfather of the first Umayyad caliph. Although the Umayyad family originally came from the city of Mecca, Damascus was the capital of their Caliphate. Eventually, it would cover more than five million square miles, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen,^[2] and the fifth largest contiguous empire ever to exist.

His reputation was burnished by the medieval Turkish story known as "Osman's Dream". In this foundation myth, the young Osman was inspired to conquest by a prescient vision of empire (according to his dream, the empire is a big tree whose roots spread through three continents and whose branches cover the sky). In this period, a formal Ottoman government was created whose institutions would change drastically over the life of the empire. The government used the legal entity known as the millet, under which religious and ethnic minorities were allowed to manage their own affairs with substantial independence from central control.

Unlike many other dynasties founded by warlords and military chiefs, one of the unique aspects of the Safavids in the post-Islamic Iran was their origin in the Islamic Sufi order called the Safaviyeh. This uniqueness makes the Safavid dynasty comparable to the pre-Islamic Sassanid dynasty, which made Zoroastrianism into an official religion, and whose founders were from a priestly class. It should be noted that the Safaviyeh was not originally Shia but it was from the Shafii^[24] Sunni Islam^[25][26][27]. The transformation of the Safavids from a Sunni Sufi order into a politico-military grouping espousing a heterodox version of Shiʿism began with Ṣafi-al-Din's grandson, Khwaja ʿAli (d. 833/1429)^[24]

A chādor or chādar (Persian چادر‎) is an outer garment or open cloak worn by many Iranian women in public spaces; it is one possible way in which a Muslim woman may follow the Islamic dress code known as ḥijāb. A chador is a full-length semicircle of fabric open down the front, which is thrown over the head and held closed in front. It has no hand openings or closures but is held shut by the hands or by wrapping the ends around the waist.

A burqa (Arabic pronunciation: [ˈbʊrqa];also transliterated burkha, burka or burqua from Arabic:برقع‎ burqu‘ or burqa‘ ) is an enveloping outer garment worn by women in some Islamic traditions for the purpose of hiding a female's body when out in public. It is worn over the usual daily clothing (often a long dress or a shalwar kameez) and removed when the woman returns to the sanctuary of the household (see purdah), out of the view of men that are not their husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, sons and grandsons.

The name Muhammad means "Praiseworthy" and occurs four times in the Qur'an.^[20] The Qur'an addresses Muhammad in the second person not by his name but by the appellationsprophet, messenger, servant of God ('abd), announcer (bashir), warner (nathir), reminder (mudhakkir), witness (shahid), bearer of good tidings (mubashshir), one who calls [unto God] (dā‘ī) and the light-giving lamp (siraj munir). Muhammad is sometimes addressed by designations deriving from his state at the time of the address: thus he is referred to as the enwrapped (al-muzzammil) in Qur'an 73:1 and the shrouded (al-muddaththir) in Qur'an74:1.^[21] In the Qur'an, believers are not to distinguish between the messengers of God and are to believe in all of them (Surah 2:285). God has caused some messengers to excel above others 2:253 and in Surah 33:40 He singles out Muhammad as the "Seal of the Prophets".^[22] The Qur'an also refers to Muhammad as Aḥmad "more praiseworthy" (Arabic:أحمد‎, Surah 61:6).

Abraham is very important in Islam both in his own right as a prophet and as the father. Ishmael, his firstborn son, is considered the father of some of the Arabs—specifically Father of the Arabised Arabs, peoples who became Arab—and Isaac is considered the Father of the Hebrews. Abraham is mentioned in many passages in 25 of the 114 suras(chapters) of the Qu'ran.

Ishmael is a prophet in Islam The Qur'an considers him to be a son of Abraham. His name appears twelve times in the Qur'an mostly in lists. with other prophets "as part of a litany of remembrances in which the pre- Islamic prophets are praised for their resolute steadfastness and obedience to God, often in the face of adversity.

Upon succeeding his father, Suleiman began a series of military conquests, eventually suppressing a revolt led by the Ottoman-appointed governor of Damascus in 1521. Suleiman soon made preparations for the conquest of Belgrade from the Kingdom of Hungary—something his great-grandfather Mehmed II had failed to achieve. Its capture was vital in eliminating the Hungarians who, following the defeats of the Serbs, Bulgarians and Byzantines, remained the only formidable force who could block further Ottoman gains in Europe. Suleiman encircled Belgrade and began a series of heavy bombardments from an island in theDanube. With a garrison of only 700 men, and receiving no aid from Hungary, Belgrade fell in August 1521.^[13]

Her work refers to the social, cultural and religious codes of Muslim societies and the complexity of certain oppositions, such as man and woman. Neshat often emphasizes this theme with the technique of showing two or more coordinated films concurrently, creating stark visual contrasts through such motifs as light and dark, black and white, male and female. Neshat has also made more traditional narrative short films, such as her recent work, Zarin.

The work of Shirin Neshat addresses the social, political and psychological dimensions of women's experience in contemporary Islamic societies. Although Neshat actively resists stereotypical representations of Islam, her artistic objectives are not explicitly polemical. Rather, her work recognizes the complex intellectual and religious forces shaping the identity of Muslim women throughout the world.

A Muslim from Pakistan working and living in America, Sikander has explored stereotypes of Eastern and Pakistani women, and issues relating to the Hindu and Muslim divide in Pakistan and India. She has transformed a traditional art form – the highly precise and often impersonal genre of miniature painting – into a contemporary art context, and she frequently mixes imagery from both Hindu and Muslim mythology and iconography (like the Muslim veil and the Hindu multi-armed goddess), paralleling the complicated and interwoven nature of Indian and Pakistani history and culture.

Sikander has also experimented with wearing a veil in public (which she did not do before moving to the United States), and has characterized this as a form of performance.