Islamic Studies: History

In Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history as the Islamic world saw it, from the time of Mohammed to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and beyond. He clarifies why our civilizations grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was affected by its slow recognition that Europe-a place it long perceived as primitive and disorganized-had somehow hijacked destiny.

"In this work sixteen leading scholars, both Muslim and non-Muslim, examine the origins and historical development of Islam—its faith, community, institutions, sciences, and arts. Beginning in the pre-Islamic Arab world, the chapters include extensive overviews and perspectives from the story of Muhammad and his Companions, to the development of Islamic religion and culture and the empires that grew from it, to the influence that Islam has on today's world. The content covers a wide array of subjects, casting light on topics such as the historical encounter of Islam and Christianity, the role of Islam in the Mughal and Ottoman empires, the growth of Islam in Southeast Asia, China, and Africa, the political, economic, and religious challenges of European imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Islamic communities in the modern Western world. In addition, the book offers articles on Islamic religion, art and architecture, and sciences as well as critical bibliographies." - Oxford University Press

"The Venture of Islam has been honored as a magisterial work of the mind since its publication in early 1975. In this three-volume study, illustrated with charts and maps, Hodgson traces and interprets the historical development of Islamic civilization from before the birth of Muhammad to the middle of the twentieth century. This work grew out of the famous course on Islamic civilization that Hodgson created and taught for many years at the University of Chicago." - Publisher

"No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular imagination as an extreme faith that promotes terrorism, authoritarian government, female oppression, and civil war. In a vital revision of this narrow view of Islam and a distillation of years of thinking and writing about the subject, Karen Armstrong’s short history demonstrates that the world’s fastest-growing faith is a much more complex phenomenon than its modern fundamentalist strain might suggest." - Publisher

"This book presents for the first time a clear narrative analysis of the central events of the Islamic domains between the rise of the Abbasids and the Salijuq invasion. It was a period of intense political and economic activity as the Abbasids extended their empire and gradually lost control of it; these years also marked the rise and fall of the Fatimid regime in Egypt and the growth of other regional power groups. The study is based on original sources and Dr Shaban challenges many received opinions." - CUP