This volume traces the second great expansion of the Islamic world eastwards from the eleventh century to the eighteenth. As the faith crossed cultural boundaries, the trader and the mystic became as important as the soldier and the administrator. Distinctive Islamic idioms began to emerge from other great linguistic traditions apart from Arabic, especially in Turkish, Persian, Urdu, Swahili, Malay and Chinese. The Islamic world transformed and absorbed new influences. As the essays in this collection demonstrate, three major features distinguish the time and place from both earlier and modern experiences of Islam. Firstly, the steppe tribal peoples of central Asia had a decisive impact on the Islamic lands. Secondly, Islam expanded along the trade routes of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Thirdly, Islam interacted with Asian spirituality, including Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Taoism and Shamanism. It was during this period that Islam became a truly world religion.

Volume 2 of The New Cambridge History of Islam is devoted to the history of the Western Islamic lands from the political fragmentation of the eleventh century to the beginnings of European colonialism towards the end of the eighteenth century. The volume embraces a vast area from al-Andalus and North Africa to Arabia and the lands of the Ottomans. In the first four sections, scholars – all leaders in their particular fields - chart the rise and fall, and explain the political and religious developments, of the various independent ruling dynasties across the region, including famously the Almohads, the Fatimids and Mamluks, and, of course, the Ottomans. The final section of the volume explores the commonalities and continuities that united these diverse and geographically disparate communities, through in-depth analyses of state formation, conversion, taxation, scholarship and the military.

Robert Irwin's authoritative introduction to the fourth volume of The New Cambridge History of Islam offers a panoramic vision of Islamic culture from its origins to around 1800. The introductory chapter, which highlights key developments and introduces some of Islam's most famous protagonists, paves the way for an extraordinarily varied collection of essays. The themes treated include religion and law, conversion, Islam's relationship with the natural world, governance and politics, caliphs and kings, philosophy, science, medicine, language, art, architecture, literature, music and even cookery. What emerges from this rich collection, written by an international team of experts, is the diversity and dynamism of the societies which created this flourishing civilization. Volume four of The New Cambridge History of Islam serves as a thematic companion to the three preceding, politically oriented volumes, and in coverage extends across the pre-modern Islamic world.

Volume One of The New Cambridge History of Islam, which surveys the political and cultural history of Islam from its Late Antique origins until the eleventh century, brings together contributions from leading scholars in the field. The book is divided into four parts. The first provides an overview of the physical and political geography of the Late Antique Middle East. The second charts the rise of Islam and the emergence of the Islamic political order under the Umayyad and the Abbasid caliphs of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries, followed by the dissolution of the empire in the tenth and eleventh. 'Regionalism', the overlapping histories of the empire's provinces, is the focus of Part Three, while Part Four provides a cutting-edge discussion of the sources and controversies of early Islamic history, including a survey of numismatics, archaeology and material culture.

Unparalleled in its range of topics and geographical scope, the sixth and final volume of The New Cambridge History of Islam provides a comprehensive overview of Muslim culture and society since 1800. Robert Hefner's thought-provoking account of the political and intellectual transformation of the Muslim world introduces the volume, which proceeds with twenty-five essays by luminaries in their fields through a broad range of topics. These include developments in society and population, religious thought and Islamic law, Muslim views of modern politics and economics, education and the arts, cinema and new media. The essays, which highlight the diversity and richness of Islamic civilization, engage with regions outside the Middle East as well as within Islam's historic heartland. Narratives are clear and absorbing and will fascinate all those curious about the momentous changes that have taken place among the world's 1.4 billion Muslims in the last two centuries.

Islamic civilization flourished in the Middle Ages across a vast geographical area that spans today's Middle and Near East. First published in 2006, Medieval Islamic Civilization examines the socio-cultural history of the regions where Islam took hold between the 7th and 16th centuries. This important two-volume work contains over 700 alphabetically arranged entries, contributed and signed by international scholars and experts in fields such as Arabic languages, Arabic literature, architecture, history of science, Islamic arts, Islamic studies, Middle Eastern studies, Near Eastern studies, politics, religion, Semitic studies, theology, and more. Entries also explore the importance of interfaith relations and the permeation of persons, ideas, and objects across geographical and intellectual boundaries between Europe and the Islamic world. This reference work provides an exhaustive and vivid portrait of Islamic civilization and brings together in one authoritative text all aspects of Islamic civilization during the Middle Ages. Accessible to scholars, students and non-specialists, this resource will be of great use in research and understanding of the roots of today's Islamic society as well as the rich and vivid culture of medieval Islamic civilization.

Volume One of The New Cambridge History of Islam, which surveys the political and cultural history of Islam from its Late Antique origins until the eleventh century, brings together contributions from leading scholars in the field. The book is divided into four parts. The first provides an overview of the physical and political geography of the Late Antique Middle East. The second charts the rise of Islam and the emergence of the Islamic political order under the Umayyad and the Abbasid caliphs of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries, followed by the dissolution of the empire in the tenth and eleventh. 'Regionalism', the overlapping histories of the empire's provinces, is the focus of Part Three, while Part Four provides a cutting-edge discussion of the sources and controversies of early Islamic history, including a survey of numismatics, archaeology and material culture.

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.

A fundamental reassessment of Christian/Islamic relations during the First Crusade, combating its representation as an inter-faith clash of civilizations.

Explores the interconnected creative partnerships of the Wattses and De Morgans - Victorian artists, writers and suffragists