Showing results for "Asia" in History

With all the narrative power and intellectual authority that have distinguished his earlier books, V.S. Naipaul explores the life, the culture, the ferment inside the nations of Islam–in a book that combines the fascinations of great travel literature with the insights of a uniquely sharp, original and idiosyncratic political mind.

In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time.