The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 448 pages
• Published by: Da Capo Press September 10, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0306815850
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0306815850
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Weighs: 1.4 pounds

From Booklist
In forthrightly popular style, Kennedy fascinatingly chronicles the expansion of Islam from the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 (the latter the subject of Kennedy's When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World, 2005). Relating the story, however, requires care since most sources date, as Kennedy cautions, from 150 to 250 years after the conquests they purport to describe. Kennedy's warnings engage interest as he provides the contexts of late antiquity, which lent advantage to the new religion sweeping out of Arabia. Crucially, Near East populations had been devastated by plague and by a war between Islam's political enemies: the Byzantine Empire and the Sasanian Empire of Persia. Kennedy's attention to these factors deepens his interpretations of the Islamic chronicles, which he describes as frustratingly vague on details of battles but strangely attentive to the division of booty. Explaining the élan that propelled Islam so far, so fast, and so permanently, Kennedy vividly introduces the formative establishment of Islam. Taylor, Gilbert

Product Review
"Hugh Kennedy describes and convincingly analyzes the amazing story of how the Arabs took over the Middle East." -- Books & Culture, November/December 2007

"A brisk account of Islam's momentous first century." -- New York Tiimes Book Review, Editor's Choice

"An extremely readable workin the flowing narrative style for which [Kennedy] has become knownAn extremely valuable addition to the disciplineHighly recommended." -- Choice

"By painstakingly reconstructing the series of Arab conquests, Mr. Kennedy paints a picture strikingly at odds with the popular clichésMr. Kennedy tells a remarkable tale with skill and authority." -- The Economist

"Send a copy to the frat boys in the State Departmentin the hope that they might remember the past so the rest of us aren't condemned to repeat it." -- San Diego Union-Tribune

"The Bush administration might have given all the Annapolis participants a swag bag--the mix of goodies Hollywood presenters get at the Oscars--packed with a copyof The Great Arab ConquestsThat would guarantee heated but honest future negotiationsState[s] historical truths most nonexperts, general readers and politicians ignore. The key truth laid out in fine narrative style by Kennedyis that the Islamic and Arabic character of every Mideast nation outside of present-day Saudi Arabia is the blunt result of military conquest." -- Philadelphia Inquirer

"This great guide to the campaigns initiated by Mohammed is highly relevant todayNot least, the account helps explain many of the current borders of the Muslim world. It also provides the early context for religious ideas that continue to motivate believersA highly-readable account of remote events that still have a striking relevance for the shape of our modern world." -- Financial Times

"Though the scope of the book appears slightly daunting, Kennedy surprises in giving unexpected texture and depth to these large-scale religious, military and political eventsAn eminently readable history of one of the most significant periods in world historyA dynamic, well-written account of the spread of Islam." -- Charleston Post and Courier

"[An] anecdote-rich narrativeA little-known history lucidly told, with episodes that might have come out of today's headlines." -- Kirkus Reviews

Talk about your clash of civilizations. How is it, wonders Kennedy (When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty, 2005, etc), that a comparative handful of desert herdsmen could conquer much of the known world and topple several ageless empires in the bargain?In 632 CE, when Muhammad died, Islam was confined to a few parts of the Arabian Peninsula. The dominant power in the region was the Byzantine Empire, with Greek the lingua franca of Egypt and the Holy Land; in much of the Middle East, Arabic was unknown. Yet, notes Kennedy, something unexpected happened; within the next century, Arabic-speaking armies, most smaller than 20,000 men, emerged from the Arabian desert and took down states from Portugal to Pakistan. The Muslim doctrine of jihad fit nicely with this unprecedented expansion, but it seems clear from Kennedy's anecdote-rich narrative that there was more to it than all that; the possibility of leaving the desert for more congenial, better-watered climes beckoned, and so did the prospect for wealth and booty figure. One telling tale, in that regard, concerns a man who tried to enlist, was warned that he might be martyred as a holy warrior and tried to back out - until he dreamed that should he join he would become rich, "which proved more enticing than the spiritual benefits." But the greater explanation for success, as Kennedy observes, is that the Arab armies were just that - armies: "The early Muslim conquests were not achieved by a migration of Bedouin tribesmen with their families, tents and flocks in the way that the Saljuk Turks entered the Middle East in the eleventh century," he writes. "They were achieved by fighting men under orders." Blend discipline, training and ideology with hunger, set all this up against ripe, decadent, even corrupt targets, and the Arab conquest seems nearly inevitable.A little-known history lucidly told, with episodes that might have come out of today's headlines. (Kirkus Reviews)

Reader Reviews
After the death of the Mohammed in 632 and up to the Battle of Poitiers in 732, Arab Muslim armies conquered a swath of land that extended from Spain and Portugal in the West to what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan in the East. Our traditional understanding of these events is that a group Muslim fanatics were hell-bent (pardon the expression) on proselytizing others to their faith. Hugh Kennedy, professor of history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, tells us in this excellent and well-written book that there were more mundane reasons for this sudden expansion of the realm: namely, the quest for the spoils of war. Religious conversion was not yet a factor; that would come two to three hundred years later. This story is told in chronological as well as geographical order, moving outward from Mecca and Medina. Kennedy reminds us that many of his sources are unreliable and unclear since they were written by the victors. But he has done a masterful job putting it together, making use also of the records of the conquered. His knowledge of Arabic is evident throughout this book. How did a group of disorganized Bedouins with no military weapons or martial tradition create such a large empire? In the beginning, Kennedy tells us, it was due mainly to the weakness and decline of the immediate surrounding empires. Byzantium, which controlled Syria and Palestine, and Sassanid Persia, which controlled what is now Iraq and Iran, had exhausted themselves fighting each other. When the Arab armies arrived they were met with little resistance. Their mode of conquest was simple and time-honored. First they defeated the army, then they beseiged the population centers giving them a choice of paying tribute and allegiance or facing death. Conquered peoples invariably chose the former. Arab administrators wisely left existing structures and traditions in place. They established a very tolerant and multicultural empire. ( For more on empires and tolerance read Amy Chua's Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--and Why They Fall.) They were tolerant of Christianity in the West as well as Hinduism in the East. During the 100 year period covered in this book, Egypt remained Coptic-speaking and Christian, and Persia remained Pahlavi-speaking and Zoroastrian. It was not until much later that the Arabic language and Muslim faith took hold. The conquests were driven by the quest for booty to satisfy the growing Arab-controlled armies. Since Muslims were forbidden to fight each other, according to Kennedy, the constantly sought out new lands and peoples to conquer. This may throw some light on the present condition of the Middle East. Now we know that Muslims do fight each other and that Islam in its current form in Iran and Saudi Arabia has very little tolerance of other faiths. During the time period covered in this book, Kennedy does not say much about inter-Muslim and inter-Arab conflicts, apparently there weren't many. There may have been greater harmony within during a time of tolerance of outside cultures. For those Arabs today who mourn the loss of empire and feel humiliation and inferiority at the hands of the West, they would do well to study the lessons of this book. Tolerance of other cultures and religions - not rigidity and exclusion - is the key to greatness and power.