Product Description

Based on original Arabic sources, the new edition of this well-established text has been comprehensively revised. The book covers the life of Muhammad and the birth of Islam, through the great days of the Ummayad and Abbasid Caliphates (8th-10th centuries), to the period of political fragmentation which followed it when Islam lost its core unity, never to be recovered.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63773 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 440 pages

From the Back Cover

The Near East and Islamic society have never been so close to the forefront of international attention. In this time of conflict the Western population is increasingly eager to increase their knowledge of the region’s past. This updated edition of Hugh Kennedy’s popular introduction to the history of the Near East is a timely aid to this quest for knowledge about the roots of Islam.

The Prophet and the Age of Caliphates

is an accessible guide to the history of the Near East from c.600-1050AD, the period in which Islamic society was formed. Beginning with the life of Muhammad and the birth of Islam, Kennedy goes on to explore the great Arab conquests of the seventh century and the golden age of the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates when the world of Islam was politically and culturally far more developed than the West. A period of political fragmentation shattered this early unity, never to be recovered.

This new edition takes into account new research on early Islam and contains a fully updated bibliography. Based on extensive reading of the original Arabic sources, Kennedy breaks away from the Orientalist tradition of seeing early Islamic history as a series of ephemeral rulers and pointless battles by drawing attention to underlying long term social and economic processes.

This new edition deals with issues of continuing and increasing relevance in the twenty-first century, when it is, perhaps, more important than ever to understand the early development of the Islamic world. General readers and scholars of early Islamic history will find Kennedy’s book a clear, informative and readable introduction to the subject.

Hugh Kennedy is Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews. Previous publications include Crusader Castles; Muslim Spain and Portugal; and Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the early Islamic State.

About the Author
Hugh Kennedy is Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews.

Customer Reviews

Dry but very worthy
This work is a very useful historical survey of the major political developments that marked the classical era of Islamicate civilisation. I found it a very useful companion to other works that concentrate upon the cultural, social and intellectual aspects of Muslim history for example the works of Ira Lapidus and Marshall G Hodgson. Although it is a specialist work it has a clear narrative structure which allows for a degree of comparative analysis between the different regions covered by the study. Whilst it might be true to describe it as being a little dry and academic I consider this to be a strength and would certainly prefer it over more populist works of narrative history for example Bernard Lewis and the sensationalist revisionist accounts propounded by writers such as Patricia Crone and Wilfred Madelung. He does not seek to make reductive connections between historical effects and essential psychological or cultural causes which is refreshing and only adds to its overall authorativeness. I would recommend it to any reader who is genuinely interested in understanding the complexity of early Islamic history and its hightly contested and ideological character.

Hard going
Five stars for content, two stars for readability. Densely written, colourless, but masses of factual detail which are not easy to find elsewhere. A book for specialists only, in my opinion.