'Kitab at-Tabaqat al-Kabir' by Abu 'Abdullah Muhammad ibn Sa'd is one of the most important and earliest surviving collections of biographical details of the early Muslims, spanning just over the first two centuries of Islam. It is a rich storehouse of information compiled from all the sources available to Ibn Sa'd, as a result of which, the reader is given a vivid insight into the lives of the early Muslims and how extraordinary they were.

This book is the translation of Volume 7 of the Kitab at-Tabaqat al-Kabir of Ibn Sa?d which deals with the Companions, Tabi?un and the subsequent generations of the people of knowledge in Basra, Baghdad, Khurasan, Syria and Egypt. This book is of particular interest because its pages demonstrate the attitude and action of the Companions and the Tabi?un when confronted by the most dangerous of trials ? fitna, or civil war. This is extremely important in the modern age, in which fitna is commonplace, for we can learn a great deal from how the early Muslims dealt with it.

This is an abridged translation of volume eight of Ibn Sa'd's Kitab at-Tabaqat al-Kabir. This deals exclusively with the women who met the Prophet (saas) or transmitted from him.

A renowned scholar of Islamic studies interviews ex-Muslims, who feel it is their duty to speak up against their former faith to tell the truth about the fastest growing religion in the world.

Just before dawn one winter's morning, a hijacked jetliner explodes above the English Channel. Through the falling debris, two figures, Gibreel Farishta, the biggest star in India, and Saladin Chamcha, an expatriate returning from his first visit to Bombay in fifteen years, plummet from the sky, washing up on the snow-covered sands of an English beach, and proceed through a series of metamorphoses, dreams, and revelations.