The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In by Hugh Kennedy

From the Publisher

Today’s Arab world was created at breathtaking speed. In just over one hundred years following the death of Mohammed in 632, Arabs had subjugated a territory with an east-west expanse greater than the Roman Empire, and they did it in about one-half the time. By the mid-eighth century, Arab armies had conquered the thousand-year-old Persian Empire, reduced the Byzantine Empire to little more than a city-state based around Constantinople, and destroyed the Visigoth kingdom of Spain. The cultural and linguistic effects of this early Islamic expansion reverberate today. This is the first popular English-language account in many years of this astonishing remaking of the political and religious map of the world. Hugh Kennedy’s sweeping narrative reveals how the Arab armies conquered almost everything in their path, and brings to light the unique characteristics of Islamic rule. One of the few academic historians with a genuine talent for story telling, Kennedy offers a compelling mix of larger-than-life characters, fierce battles, and the great clash of civilizations and religions.

Philadelphia Inquirer

The Bush administration might have given all the Annapolis participants a swag bag-the mix of goodies Hollywood presenters get at the Oscars-packed with a copy.of The Great Arab Conquests.That would guarantee heated but honest future negotiations.State[s] historical truths most nonexperts, general readers and politicians ignore. The key truth laid out in fine narrative style by Kennedy.is that the Islamic and Arabic character of every Mideast nation outside of present-day Saudi Arabia is the blunt result of military conquest.

Choice

An extremely readable work.in the flowing narrative style for which [Kennedy] has become known.An extremely valuable addition to the discipline.Highly recommended.

The Economist

By painstakingly reconstructing the series of Arab conquests, Mr. Kennedy paints a picture strikingly at odds with the popular clich‚s.Mr. Kennedy tells a remarkable tale with skill and authority.

Financial Times

This excellent guide to the campaigns initiated by Mohammed is highly relevant today.Not least, the account helps explain many of the current borders of the Muslim world. It also provides the early context for religious ideas that continue to motivate believers.A highly-readable account of remote events that still have a striking relevance for the shape of our modern world.

New York Times Book Review

A brisk account of Islam's momentous first century.

San Diego Union-Tribune

Send a copy to the frat boys in the State Department...in the hope that they might remember the past so the rest of us aren't condemned to repeat it.

Books & Culture

Hugh Kennedy describes and convincingly analyzes the astonishing story of how the Arabs took over the Middle East.

Charleston Post and Courier

Though the scope of the book appears slightly daunting, Kennedy surprises in giving unexpected texture and depth to these large-scale religious, military and political events.An eminently readable history of one of the most significant periods in world history.A dynamic, well-written account of the spread of Islam.

Melissa Aho - Library Journal

This is a fascinating historical narrative of the Arab Muslim conquests of the Middle East and beyond from 632 C.E. to 750 C.E. Kennedy (medieval history, Univ. of St. Andrews, Scotland; When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty) does a marvelous job of drawing upon and interpreting the written conquest accounts of the Arabs, and of the people they conquered, including the Byzantines, Christians, Persians, and Jews, while using the research of modern historians to give as clear and rich an account as possible. His analysis comes down to the instability of the Byzantine and Persian Empires, the small populations owing to the plague that occurred just before the conquests, the absence of any real resistance by local populations being conquered, and the toughness of the Arab armies and their ability to move quickly. The book also includes a chapter of personal responses (both positive and negative) to the conquests, ranging from a Chinese prisoner of war to letters of vanquished Greeks. Highly recommended for all public and academic libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

Talk about your clash of civilizations. How is it, wonders Kennedy (When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty, 2005, etc), that a comparative handful of desert herdsmen could conquer much of the known world and topple several venerable empires in the bargain?In 632 CE, when Muhammad died, Islam was confined to a few parts of the Arabian Peninsula. The dominant power in the region was the Byzantine Empire, with Greek the lingua franca of Egypt and the Holy Land; in much of the Middle East, Arabic was unknown. Yet, notes Kennedy, something unexpected happened; within the next century, Arabic-speaking armies, most smaller than 20,000 men, emerged from the Arabian desert and took down states from Portugal to Pakistan. The Muslim doctrine of jihad fit nicely with this unprecedented expansion, but it seems clear from Kennedy's anecdote-rich narrative that there was more to it than all that; the possibility of leaving the desert for more congenial, better-watered climes beckoned, and so did the prospect for wealth and booty figure. One telling tale, in that regard, concerns a man who tried to enlist, was warned that he might be martyred as a holy warrior and tried to back out-until he dreamed that should he join he would become rich, "which proved more enticing than the spiritual benefits." But the larger explanation for success, as Kennedy observes, is that the Arab armies were just that-armies: "The early Muslim conquests were not achieved by a migration of Bedouin tribesmen with their families, tents and flocks in the way that the Saljuk Turks entered the Middle East in the eleventh century," he writes. "They were achieved by fighting men underorders." Blend discipline, training and ideology with hunger, set all this up against ripe, decadent, even corrupt targets, and the Arab conquest seems nearly inevitable. A little-known history lucidly told, with episodes that might have come out of today's headlines.

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Product Details

• ISBN: 0306815850
  
• ISBN-13: 9780306815850
• Format: Hardcover, 421pp
• Publisher: Perseus Publishing
• Pub. Date: September 2007
• Sales Rank: 46,214

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents