Islamic Civilization In Thirty Lives (the First 1000 Years)

By (author) Robinson Chase F.
Short description/annotation
An accessible introduction to pre-modern Islam, showcasing the individuals – caliphs, law-makers, theologians, poets, mystics and scholars – who shaped the course of early Islamic history.
Description
The religious thinkers, political leaders, law-makers, writers and philosophers of the early Muslim world helped to shape the 1,400-year-long development of today’s secondlargest world religion. But who were these people? What do we know of their lives, and the ways in which they influenced their societies?

Chase F. Robinson draws on the long tradition in Muslim scholarship of commemorating in writing the biographies of notable figures, but weaves these ambitious lives together to create a rich narrative of early Islamic civilization, from the Prophet Muhammad to fearsome Tamerlane. Beginning in Islam’s heartland, Mecca, we move across Arabia to follow Islam’s journey across North Africa, as far as Spain in the West, and eastwards through Central and East Asia; we see the rise and fall of Islamic states through the political and military leaders working to secure peace or expand their power, and, within this political climate, the development of Islamic law, scientific thought and literature through the words of the scholars who devoted themselves to these pursuits. Alongside the famous characters who coloured this landscape, including Muhammad’s controversial cousin, ’Ali; the first Sultan of Egypt, Saladin; and the poet Rumi, the reader will also meet less wellknown figures, such as Shajar al-Durr, slave-turned-Sultana of Egypt, and Ibn Fadlan, whose travels in Eurasia brought first-hand accounts of the Volka Vikings to the Abbasid Caliph.
Table of contents
1. Islam and Empire 600–850 • 2. The Islamic Commonwealth 850–1050 • 3. The Sunni Synthesis 1050–1250 • 4. Conflict & Change 1250–1550
Review quote
''A beautifully written set of brief, vividly drawn portraits'' - Times Higher Education
Biographical note
Chase F. Robinson taught Islamic history for fourteen years at the University of Oxford before being appointed President of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and later Distinguished Professor of History. His extensive publications on pre-modern Islam include Islamic Historiography (2003), Empires and Elites after the Muslim Conquest: The Transformation of Northern Mesopotamia (2000) and The New Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. 1 (2010).
Promotional headline
An accessible introduction to the caliphs, law-makers, poets, theologians and scholars who shaped the course of early Islam