Islamic culture and Muslim culture refer to cultural practices which are common to historically Islamic people. The early forms of Muslim culture, from the Rashidun Caliphate to the early Umayyad period and the early Abbasid period, were predominantly Arab, Byzantine, Persian and Levantine. With the rapid expansion of the Islamic empires, Muslim culture has influenced and assimilated much from the Persian, Egyptian, North Caucasian, Turkic, Mongol, Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Malay, Somali, Berber, Indonesian, and Moro cultures. Islamic culture generally includes all of the practices which have developed around the religion of Islam. There are variations in the application of Islamic beliefs in different cultures and traditions. Language and literature Arabic Arabic literature ( / ALA-LC: al-Adab al-'Arabī) is the writing, both prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is "Adab", which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and which implies politeness, culture and enrichment. Arabic literature emerged in the 5th century with only fragments of the written language appearing before then. The Qur'an,(the holy book of Islam) widely regarded by people as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language, would have the greatest lasting effect on Arabic culture and its literature. Arabic literature flourished during the Islamic Golden Age, but has remained vibrant to the present day, with poets and prose-writers across the Arab world, as well as rest of the world, achieving increasing success. Persian Persian literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Persian language and it is one of the world's oldest literatures. It spans over two-and-a-half millennia. Its sources have been within Greater Iran including present-day Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and Turkey, regions of Central Asia (such as Tajikistan) and South Asia where the Persian language has historically been either the native or official language. For instance, Rumi, one of best-loved Persian poets born in Balkh (in what is now the modern-day Afghanistan) or Vakhsh (in what is now the modern-day Tajikistan), wrote in Persian and lived in Konya, then the capital of the Seljuks in Anatolia. The Ghaznavids conquered large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is thus Persian literature from Iran, Mesopotamia, Azerbaijan, the wider Caucasus, Turkey, western parts of Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia. Not all Persian literature is written in Persian, as some consider