The Crucible of Islam

The Crucible of Islam
Title The Crucible of Islam PDF eBook
Author G. W. Bowersock
Publisher Harvard University Press
Pages 120
Release 2017-04-10
Genre History
ISBN 0674978218

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Little is known about Arabia in the sixth century, yet from this distant time and place emerged a faith and an empire that stretched from the Iberian peninsula to India. Today, Muslims account for nearly a quarter of the global population. A renowned classicist, G. W. Bowersock seeks to illuminate this obscure and dynamic period in the history of Islam—exploring why arid Arabia proved to be such fertile ground for Muhammad’s prophetic message, and why that message spread so quickly to the wider world. The Crucible of Islam offers a compelling explanation of how one of the world’s great religions took shape. “A remarkable work of scholarship.” —Wall Street Journal “A little book of explosive originality and penetrating judgment... The joy of reading this account of the background and emergence of early Islam is the knowledge that Bowersock has built it from solid stones... A masterpiece of the historian’s craft.” —Peter Brown, New York Review of Books

God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215

God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215
Title God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 PDF eBook
Author David Levering Lewis
Publisher W. W. Norton & Company
Pages 505
Release 2009-01-12
Genre History
ISBN 0393067904

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From the two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning author, God’s Crucible brings to life “a furiously complex age” (New York Times Book Review). Resonating as profoundly today as when it was first published to widespread critical acclaim a decade ago, God’s Crucible is a bold portrait of Islamic Spain and the birth of modern Europe from one of our greatest historians. David Levering Lewis’s narrative, filled with accounts of some of the most epic battles in world history, reveals how cosmopolitan, Muslim al-Andalus flourished—a beacon of cooperation and tolerance—while proto-Europe floundered in opposition to Islam, making virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, religious intolerance, perpetual war, and slavery. This masterful history begins with the fall of the Persian and Roman empires, followed by the rise of the prophet Muhammad and five centuries of engagement between the Muslim imperium and an emerging Europe. Essential and urgent, God’s Crucible underscores the importance of these early, world-altering events whose influence remains as current as today’s headlines.

The Crucible of Islam

The Crucible of Islam
Title The Crucible of Islam PDF eBook
Author Glen Warren Bowersock
Publisher
Pages 0
Release 2017
Genre Arabs
ISBN 9780674978232

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Little is known about sixth-century Arabia. Yet from this distant time and place emerged a faith and an empire that stretched from Iberia to India. G. W. Bowersock illuminates this obscure yet most dynamic period in Islam, exploring why arid Arabia proved to be fertile ground for Muhammad's message and why it spread so quickly to the wider world. Little is known about Arabia in the sixth century CE. Yet from this distant time and place emerged a faith and an empire that stretched from the Iberian peninsula to India. Today, Muslims account for nearly a quarter of the global population. G. W. Bowersock seeks to illuminate this most obscure and yet most dynamic period in the history of Islamfrom the mid-sixth to mid-seventh centuryexploring why arid Arabia proved to be such fertile ground for Muhammads prophetic message, and why that message spread so quickly to the wider world. In Muhammads time Arabia stood at the crossroads of great empires, a place where Christianity, Judaism, and local polytheistic traditions vied for adherents. Mecca, Muhammads birthplace, belonged to the part of Arabia recently conquered by the Ethiopian Christian king Abraha. But Ethiopia lost western Arabia to Persia following Abrahas death, while the death of the Byzantine emperor in 602 further destabilized the region. Within this chaotic environment, where lands and populations were traded frequently among competing powers and belief systems, Muhammad began winning converts to his revelations. In a troubled age, his followers coalesced into a powerful force, conquering Palestine, Syria, and Egypt and laying the groundwork of the Umayyad Caliphate. The crucible of Islam remains an elusive vessel. Although we may never grasp it firmly, Bowersock offers the most detailed description of its contours and the most compelling explanation of how one of the worlds great religions took shape.

Crucible of Faith

Crucible of Faith
Title Crucible of Faith PDF eBook
Author Philip Jenkins
Publisher Basic Books
Pages 341
Release 2017-09-19
Genre Religion
ISBN 0465096417

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One of America's foremost scholars of religion examines the tumultuous era that gave birth to the modern Judeo-Christian tradition In The Crucible of Faith, Philip Jenkins argues that much of the Judeo-Christian tradition we know today was born between 250-50 BCE, during a turbulent "Crucible Era." It was during these years that Judaism grappled with Hellenizing forces and produced new religious ideas that reflected and responded to their changing world. By the time of the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, concepts that might once have seemed bizarre became normalized-and thus passed on to Christianity and later Islam. Drawing widely on contemporary sources from outside the canonical Old and New Testaments, Jenkins reveals an era of political violence and social upheaval that ultimately gave birth to entirely new ideas about religion, the afterlife, Creation and the Fall, and the nature of God and Satan.

Militant Islam in Southeast Asia

Militant Islam in Southeast Asia
Title Militant Islam in Southeast Asia PDF eBook
Author Zachary Abuza
Publisher Lynne Rienner Publishers
Pages 308
Release 2003
Genre Political Science
ISBN 9781588262370

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Zachary Abuza has traveled to most of the hot spots of Islamic militancy in Southeast Asia. Drawing on this intensive on-the-ground investigation, he explains the growing--and increasingly violent--Islamic political consciousness in Southeast Asia.

The Throne of Adulis

The Throne of Adulis
Title The Throne of Adulis PDF eBook
Author G.W. Bowersock
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 204
Release 2013-07-25
Genre History
ISBN 0199739323

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Leading historian G.W. Bowersock provides a narrative account of a fascinating but overlooked chapter in pre-Islamic Arabian history — the holy war between Christian Ethiopians and Jewish Arabs in the sixth century AD.

The Second Umayyad Caliphate

The Second Umayyad Caliphate
Title The Second Umayyad Caliphate PDF eBook
Author Janina M. Safran
Publisher Harvard CMES
Pages 292
Release 2000
Genre History
ISBN 9780932885241

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The Second Umayyad Caliphate recovers the Andalusi Umayyad argument for caliphal legitimacy through an analysis of caliphal rhetoric--based on proclamations, correspondence, and panegyric poetry--and caliphal ideology, as shown through monuments, ceremony, and historiography.