Chronicles the history of Islam from the birth of Mohammed to the independence of former Soviet Muslim States, covering a wide variety of themes, including philosophy, arts, and architecture.

Extensive maps and color photographs enhance an informative study of the development of Islam, detailing the rise of Arab power, its fragmentation, the spread of Islam, and the modern Arab world

The history of Islamic mapping is one of the new frontiers in the history of cartography. This book offers the first in-depth analysis of a distinct tradition of medieval Islamic maps known collectively as the Book of Roads and Kingdoms (Kitab al-Masalik wa al-Mamalik, or KMMS). Created from the mid-tenth through the nineteenth century, these maps offered Islamic rulers, scholars, and armchair explorers a view of the physical and human geography of the Arabian peninsula, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, Spain and North Africa, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, the Iranian provinces, present-day Pakistan, and Transoxiana. Historian Karen C. Pinto examines around 100 examples of these maps retrieved from archives across the world from three points of view: iconography, context, and patronage. By unraveling their many symbols, she guides us through new ways of viewing the Muslim cartographic imagination.

Islamic peoples account for one fifth of the world's population and yet there is widespread misunderstanding in the West of what Islam really is. Francis Robinson and his team set out to address this, revealing the complex and sometimes contrary nature of Muslim culture. As well as taking on the issues uppermost in everyone's minds, such as the role of religious and political fundamentalism, they demonstrate the importance of commerce; literacy and learning; Islamic art; the effects of immigration, exodus, and conquest; and the roots of current crises in the Middle East, Bosnia, and the Gulf. Throughout, emphasis is placed on the interaction between Islam and the West, from the first Latin translations of the Quran to the fatwa on Salman Rushdie. This elegant book deliberately sets out to dismantle the Western impression of Islam as a monolithic world and replace it with a balanced view, from current issues of fundamentalism to its dynamic culture and art. Francis Robinson is the editor of two outstanding reference works: Atlas of the Islamic World Since 1500 (Cambridge, 1982) and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India (1989).

This Atlas provides the main outlines of Islamic history from the immediate pre-Islamic period until the end of 1920, that is, before most parts of the Muslim world became sovereign nation states. Each map is accompanied by a text that contextualises, explains, and expands upon the map, and are fully cross-referenced. All of the maps are in full colour: 18 of them are double-page spreads, and 25 are single page layouts. This is an atlas of Islamic, not simply Arab or Middle Eastern history; hence it covers the entire Muslim world, including Spain, North, West and East Africa, the Indian sub-continent, Central Asia and South-East Asia. The maps are not static, in that they show transitions within the historical period to which they refer: for instance, the stages of the three contemporaneous Umayyad, Fatimid and ‘Abbasid caliphates on Map 10, or the progress of the Mongol invasions and the formation of the various separate Mongol khanates between 1200 and 1300 on Map 21. Using the most up to date cartographic and innovative design techniques, the maps break new ground in illuminating the history of Islam. Brought right up to date with the addition of a Postscript detailing The Islamic World since c.1900, a Chronology from 500 BCE to 2014, and additional endpaper maps illustrating The Spread of Islam through the Ages and The Islamic World in the 21st Century, the Atlas of Islamic History is an essential reference work and an invaluable textbook for undergraduates studying Islamic history, as well as those with an interest in Asian History, Middle East History and World History more broadly.