HIS 240 The Medieval World

Beginning with Muhammad and his historical and cultural context, this book recounts the tale of the thirteen-century-long encounter of Western and Islamic civilizations. Armour uses the best of contemporary research to show how events such as the Crusades and the Reconquista of Spain have indelibly shaped the mindset of the West toward Islam and vice versa. He reveals how the modern Western political and economic system -- marked by the globalization of capitalism, technology, and science -- has been perceived by the Islamic world as a Godless secular assault on all that is holy. He ends with the Arab-Israeli conflict and the events of 9/11.

Beginning in the pre-Islamic Arab world, the chapters range from the story of Muhammad and his Companions, to the development of Islamic religion and culture and the empires that grew from it, to the influence that Islam has on today's world. The book covers a wide array of subjects, casting light on topics such as the historical encounter of Islam and Christianity, the role of Islam in the Mughal and Ottoman empires, and more. In addition, the book offers excellent articles on Islamic religion, art and architecture, et al.

Tolan shows how Christian responses to Islam changed from the seventh to thirteenth centuries, through fast-charging crusades and spirit-crushing defeats, crystallizing into polemical images later drawn upon by Western authors in the fourteenth to twentieth centuries. Saracens explores the social and ideological uses of contempt, explaining how the denigration of the other can be used to defend one's own intellectual construction of the world.

This book investigates the history of the relationships between Christians and Muslims over the centuries, from their initial encounters in the medieval period, when the Muslims were the dominant group, through to the modern period, when the balance of power seems to have been reversed. This much-needed overview of the Christian-Muslim encounter places the emphasis on the context within which perceptions and attitudes were worked out and provides a depth of historical insight to the complexities of current Christian-Muslim interactions on different continents.

Ilya Gaiduk's The Great Confrontation offers a comparative approach to the long and complex history of relations between Europe and Islam, from the early seventh century to the present day. The book differs from other works in its greater emphasis on Russia as part of European civilization and on Russian relations with Islam. Mr. Gaiduk argues that twentieth-century developments have made "the great confrontation" a phenomenon of the past, that in today's interrelated and interdependent world, lines of division run not between different civilizations but between civilization and the ills that threaten it.

In this immensely readable history that couldn't be more timely, award-winning historian Richard Fletcher chronicles the relationship between Islam and Christianity from the time of Muhammad to the Reformation. With lucidity and sound scholarship, Fletcher demonstrates that though there were fruitful trading and cultural interactions between Muslims and Christians during the period when the Arabs controlled most of the Mediterranean world, each group viewed the other's religion from the beginning as fundamentally different and suspect.