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In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire
by
Tom Holland
The acclaimed author of Rubicon and other superb works of popular history now produces a thrillingly panoramic (and incredibly timely) account of the rise of Islam.
No less significant than the collapse of the Roman Republic or the Persian invasion of Greece, the evolution of the Arab empire is one of the supreme narratives of ancient history, a story dazzlingly rich in d...more
No less significant than the collapse of the Roman Republic or the Persian invasion of Greece, the evolution of the Arab empire is one of the supreme narratives of ancient history, a story dazzlingly rich in d...more
Hardcover, 544 pages
Published
May 15th 2012
by Doubleday
(first published January 1st 2011)
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Absolutely brilliant and highly recommended reading for anyone interested in Islam and its true origins. One quibble, I wish the author wouldn't introduce really important characters by backing into them, so to speak, so only after three paragraphs, do you get an aha! moment when you recognize the historical figure entering the scene.
Otherwise, clear writing, entertaining presentation of complicated historical material and rich depiction of a place (post-Roman Near East) and centuries (7th and 8...more
Otherwise, clear writing, entertaining presentation of complicated historical material and rich depiction of a place (post-Roman Near East) and centuries (7th and 8...more
After hearing an interview with the author, I decided to read this, not out of any particular interest in Islam, but because of my curiosity for the origins of things. In that respect, In the Shadow of the Sword did not disappoint. As best I can tell, Tom Holland deserves to be commended for his research. His writing, on the other hand, leaves a little to be desired.
The book spans thousands of years, and in presenting his history, Holland often weaves together events that occurred many, many yea...more
The book spans thousands of years, and in presenting his history, Holland often weaves together events that occurred many, many yea...more
A book of two halves, both equally compelling. The opening chapters give us the overview of the Roman and Persian worlds in the closing centuries of antiquity, told with Tom Holland's usual flamboyant narrative style which few history writers can match. It seemlessly blends big picture analysis with fascinating detail to give a highly enjoyable romp through the period. The conventional history of Islam's origins is laid out in similar style along with a valuable insight into the Jewish experienc...more
This book has an unfortunate title, and I would not have picked it up unless someone had recommended it to me. My fear was that it was some diatribe by a right-wing Orientalist, but it isn’t that at all. It is, in fact, a very readable survey of the Middle East and Fertile Crescent in the first eight centuries A.D. Holland’s ability to juxtapose the political, religious, and cultural milieus of the several empires that existed simultaneously in the area gives readers a broad picture of their int...more
Popular histories of Christianity and Jesus have been abundant and accessible for decades now, modern scholarship dealing with the origins of Islam and its prophet Muhammad, not so much. Holland remedies that with this exhaustive look at the forces that helped to create modern Islam. Holland focuses much of his attention on the Roman and Persian empires, but also writes about the development of Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism, and their role in the brew that would create Islam.
The most...more
“In the Shadow of the Sword” by Tom Holland, published by Doubleday.
Category – History
Tom Holland takes on a daunting task of tracing the rise of Islam. He traces the beginning from antiquity to the present. It is far reaching in scope and gives new insight into present day politics and religion.
The book starts with the founding of Rome and how it was able to rule the known world to the how and why Rome failed. It takes on the rise of the Muslim world with the teachings of Muhammad to its presen...more
Category – History
Tom Holland takes on a daunting task of tracing the rise of Islam. He traces the beginning from antiquity to the present. It is far reaching in scope and gives new insight into present day politics and religion.
The book starts with the founding of Rome and how it was able to rule the known world to the how and why Rome failed. It takes on the rise of the Muslim world with the teachings of Muhammad to its presen...more
I've given this 4 stars, but I wish my rating could've been a bit more nuanced. The writing is excellent, and there are parts of "In the Shadow of the Sword" that are fascinating--- Holland's account of the controversies about the first century of Islam, the account of the first intrusions by the new Arab power into Byzantine and Persian territory. Holland does highlight how little we actually know about the early 600s in northern and northwest Arabia, and how very, very few contemporary account...more
Holland is really good with his narrative, but just as in Millenium (I have not read his other books so far) I think this book shows that he struggles slightly with "the big picture". The scope of this book is very broad - Holland attempts to show the links early Islam has with the other religions it came into contact with: Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity in particular, and how these religions influenced the hadith and the Qu'ran itself. It works well...but not perfectly. He builds up w...more
1 like · like · see review
What a controversially exciting book for the Muslims of the world. Its an
honour to get a serious scholar like Tom Holland actually researching the
history of the Muslims and presenting theories that help fill out many gaps in
the known Muslim history. Read on if you are slightly concerned about the
various claims put together by the Ulema about the authenticity of the Quran
guaranteed by Allah; read on if you want to know why there is a period of
almost 200 years of literally silence after the death...more
It's in Holland's first chapter where he sets the stage for the book. There are virtually no contemporary sources on the life of Muhammad, and the few that do exist only give the barest hint of the historical existence of what later became the life of the prophet.
But while the bulk of the book is an extraordinary and immensely interesting walk through of late classical times, using recently uncovered facts to make fascinating if reasonable claims, while grippingly bringing this distant and vast...more
But while the bulk of the book is an extraordinary and immensely interesting walk through of late classical times, using recently uncovered facts to make fascinating if reasonable claims, while grippingly bringing this distant and vast...more
I think the marketing for this book was a little misleading, I was expecting the focus to be on the collapse of Roman and Persian power in the near east in the face of the Arabs, but the book actually focuses little on this event. Instead the book focuses on the interplay between religion and empire and how it shaped the events we now mark as the end of antiquity, as well as their aftermath.
There is also tantalising and very well researched scholarship in here about the historicity of the Koran,...more
There is also tantalising and very well researched scholarship in here about the historicity of the Koran,...more
Light years better than the crappy Byzantine history I read last week, this is well-written, accessible and useful for non-historians. Holland locates the rise of Islam in the nexus of 6th and 7th century borderlands between a Byzantine Empire riven by religious and political problems and a Persian Empire struggling with warlord dynasties and the Zoroastrian clergy as well as both contending with a fractious Jewish diaspora. When Islam appeared, its forces not only took advantages of these weakn...more
I found this book interesting, but am not quite convinced it is important. Holland spends two thirds of the book on the rivalry between the Roman and Persian empires. I had not previously understood the relationship between the way this rivalry had weakened both empires, nor the effect of pandemic disease in advance of the Arab conquests. The final third of the book tries to narrate the parallel rise of Islam and the Arab conquests. His account did not, to my way of thinking, show a tight link b...more
Not what I expected but I enjoyed it very much, even though, (because of work needs) it took me five weeks to get through it. I expected the book to focus on the history of Islam from its inception, then get into how the religion and Muslims have come to be what they are in the twenty first century. However, most of the book was a detailed history of Christianity, Judeaism, and some other minor religions from about 100 AD through the 8th or 9th centuries, a few hundred years after the time of Mo...more
Great book. Not only provides context for the birth and spread of Islam, but gives a good history of why the Christian church and the Jewish faith as they evolved and exist as they look today. Nice chronology of the evolution of these monotheistic religions in late antiquity to meet the needs of the times and the ruling dynasties. Also a great treatment of the Nestorian Church and the rise and fall of Zoroastrianism For anybody who's been raised reciting the Nicene Creed (I never knew the histor...more
Fills in some important gaps and opens up a few more.
Holland has two outstanding talents- his ability to present the past as a continuum with no beginning and no end is once more brought to the fore, nothing comes of nothing. A Darwinian historian whose second attribute is a style that is contemporary, witheringly pointed and cheeky all at the same time. With a curt phrase, not so much tongue in cheek as needle in balloon,he manages to deflate zeppelin scale bags of hot air without missing his s...more
Holland has two outstanding talents- his ability to present the past as a continuum with no beginning and no end is once more brought to the fore, nothing comes of nothing. A Darwinian historian whose second attribute is a style that is contemporary, witheringly pointed and cheeky all at the same time. With a curt phrase, not so much tongue in cheek as needle in balloon,he manages to deflate zeppelin scale bags of hot air without missing his s...more
Per Ardua ad Astra: 'In the Shadow of the Sword' by Tom Holland
The RAF's motto is Per Ardua ad Astra, 'Through struggle to the stars' and I have chosen this as the title for the review for two reasons. One is that it may well have been on the lips of RAF crew as they bombed the descendents of the people Tom Holland writes about in his newest book. The second is that Holland has engaged in a five year struggle to bring this complex and epic story to fruition.
Interestingly there are two titles to...more
The RAF's motto is Per Ardua ad Astra, 'Through struggle to the stars' and I have chosen this as the title for the review for two reasons. One is that it may well have been on the lips of RAF crew as they bombed the descendents of the people Tom Holland writes about in his newest book. The second is that Holland has engaged in a five year struggle to bring this complex and epic story to fruition.
Interestingly there are two titles to...more
This book is packed full of information and I really learned a lot. Basically, the main thesis is that the widely known history of Islam is mainly incorrect and was invented centuries after the events depicted by politicians and imams in order to justify their own views and decisions. So, Holland looks at the histories of Rome, the Jews, and the Sassanian Empire in Persia in the years leading up to Muhammad to try and decipher what actually took place and how Islam conquered the East.
I had prev...more
I had prev...more
Tom Holland's recent Channel 4 documentary on the same subject has attracted much attention, opprobrium and criticism. The book, as you might expect, is more detailed, and perhaps more nuanced. A great deal of it is spent painting a vivid picture of how the world looked in late Antiquity, as the Roman empire in Constantinople, and the Persian empire in Iran fell. Holland explains how the monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism) developed in these times, how the affected...more
I've read all of Tom Holland's books to date, but this one has proved the most controversial by far. It recounts the birth of the three great Abrahamic religions in late-antiquity, but predictably, given the current intellectual climate, it's his musings on the third, Islam, that has attracted the most ire. I read one review in particular, from a distinguished scholar that derided Holland's book in such excoriating terms as to make me take particular notice.
That review struck me at the time as h...more
That review struck me at the time as h...more
May 31, 2012
Sven Nomadsson
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
history,
non-fiction
The mists of history leave a lot of questions unanswered for those brave souls who seek the source where everything comes from. Humanity throughout its history has left bits of information scattered across the world through all sorts of environments and in a variety of forms and mediums. Within the last 2000-3000+ years the written word has become as ubiquitous as the wheel, but that doesn’t mean that there are still large swathes of history that are with record.
The time of Muhammad, Prophet of...more
The time of Muhammad, Prophet of...more
Holland is here addressing a basic conundrum of Islamic history—despite the massive amount of writing (eventually) produced by a very literary people (ultimately leading to a body of hadiths regulating almost every conceivable facet of human existence), none of that writing, except the Qur’an, was written within 150 years of Muhammad’s death. Left without primary sources, Holland goes backward instead of forward.
Interestingly, Holland sees the early Arab Empire as being in the tradition of Late...more
Interestingly, Holland sees the early Arab Empire as being in the tradition of Late...more
This is an odd book. Holland explains at the beginning "a history of Islam's origins cannot be written without reference to the history of the origins of Judaism and Christianity--and why in turn a history of the origins of Judaism and Christianity cannot be written without reference to the world that incubated them both." But so very little of the book actually discusses Islam. Holland actually seems more interested in pointing out the inaccuracies and "inventiveness" of the scholars and believ...more
The origins of Islam are intimately tied to the origins of Christianity and Judiasm and as much a product of the times as they are. Rather than being scared and offended by these notions, modern religious adherents and those not inclined to belief should consider precisely how valuable inquiries like Holland's and similar scholars can be. Questioning the origins of religion, its myths, etc. is a worthy endeavor. This book is probably not for everyone; and I don't mean because it is likely to off...more
A great skeptical take-down of myth making in the world of the early caliphate with a significant backlogging of the context the first Arab empire was born into. Its about time someone treated the founding of Islam as critically as that of Christianity for centuries now. Sadly, like many such more recent grand narratives, it skimps heavily on the important battles which so determined what happened socially, culturally, and politically afterwords-particularly with the fall of the Sassanian Empire...more
In 'Musical-theatre world', this would be a 'dance-10. Looks-3'.
Mr Holland's research and passion for his topic are exceptional; his ability to write coherently, somewhat less than exceptional.
Frequently, the narrative spears off on tangents and his writing style becomes so cumbersome, as to cloud the point.
That said, I am thankful for the attempt to bring the subject out of the academy.
Mr Holland's research and passion for his topic are exceptional; his ability to write coherently, somewhat less than exceptional.
Frequently, the narrative spears off on tangents and his writing style becomes so cumbersome, as to cloud the point.
That said, I am thankful for the attempt to bring the subject out of the academy.
Very interesting history of the Islamic Empire. From the start of the hey-day of the Romans and Persians to the gradual infusion of the Muslims, this book asks the question, "how does religion effect global dominance?" The answer is...in the very last sentence of this book. What leads the author to this conclusion is a very interesting, thorough study presented by examples and stories from history. I enjoyed the way Tom Holland describes key characters with his sarcastic humor. For example he po...more
A wonderful book! All about the rise of Islam, and the problems connected with the historical sources, their crediblility, the shadowy figure of Mohammed, the falling apart of the Roman and Persian Empires... It's an intricate fresco that Holland has painted, but with such a light touch it's a delight to read. A must-read for history lovers.
After Rubicon and Persian Fire, Holland was easily one of my favorite authors of ancient history. In the Shadow of the Sword is a well-written book with excellent scholarship. Holland does a great job of weaving the origins of Islam into the decline of the Persian and Roman Empires. As usual, I look forward to the next Holland book.
He steered clear of what he could have discussed very carefully in a rather unsatisfactory book. It is not clear when the Koran was written or how or whether it was based partly on Christian sources. My take: http://pvewood.blogspot.ro/2012/10/or...
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An acclaimed British author. He has written many books, both fiction and non-fiction, on many subjects from vampires to history.
Holland was born near Oxford and brought up in the village of Broadchalke near Salisbury, England. He obtained a double first in English and Latin at Queens' College, Cambridge, and afterwards studied shortly for a PhD at Oxford, taking Lord Byron as his subject, before i...more
More about Tom Holland...
Holland was born near Oxford and brought up in the village of Broadchalke near Salisbury, England. He obtained a double first in English and Latin at Queens' College, Cambridge, and afterwards studied shortly for a PhD at Oxford, taking Lord Byron as his subject, before i...more
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Sep 19, 2012 04:01pm