The Caliph's Splendor - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Caliph's Splendor write by Benson Bobrick. This book was released on 2012-08-14. The Caliph's Splendor available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The Caliph’s Splendor is a revelation: a history of a civilization we barely know that had a profound effect on our own culture. While the West declined following the collapse of the Roman Empire, a new Arab civilization arose to the east, reaching an early peak in Baghdad under the caliph Harun al-Rashid. Harun is the legendary caliph of The Thousand and One Nights, but his actual court was nearly as magnificent as the fictional one. In The Caliph’s Splendor, Benson Bobrick eloquently tells the little-known and remarkable story of Harun’s rise to power and his rivalries with the neighboring Byzantines and the new Frankish kingdom under the leadership of Charlemagne. When Harun came to power, Islam stretched from the Atlantic to India. The Islamic empire was the mightiest on earth and the largest ever seen. Although Islam spread largely through war, its cultural achievements were immense. Harun’s court at Baghdad outshone the independent Islamic emirate in Spain and all the courts of Europe, for that matter. In Baghdad, great works from Greece and Rome were preserved and studied, and new learning enhanced civilization. Over the following centuries Arab and Persian civilizations made a lasting impact on the West in astronomy, geometry, algebra (an Arabic word), medicine, and chemistry, among other fields of science. The alchemy (another Arabic word) of the Middle Ages originated with the Arabs. From engineering to jewelry to fashion to weaponry, Arab influences would shape life in the West, as they did in the fields of law, music, and literature. But for centuries Arabs and Byzantines contended fiercely on land and sea. Bobrick tells how Harun defeated attempts by the Byzantines to advance into Asia at his expense. He contemplated an alliance with the much weaker Charlemagne in order to contain the Byzantines, and in time Arabs and Byzantines reached an accommodation that permitted both to prosper. Harun’s caliphate would weaken from within as his two sons quarreled and formed factions; eventually Arabs would give way to Turks in the Islamic empire. Empires rise, weaken, and fall, but during its golden age, the caliphate of Baghdad made a permanent contribution to civilization, as Benson Bobrick so splendidly reminds us.
The Caliph's Splendor
The Caliph's Splendor - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Caliph's Splendor write by Benson Bobrick. This book was released on 2012-08-14. The Caliph's Splendor available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Traces the story of the celebrated late-eighth and early ninth-century caliph from "The Thousand and One Nights" against a backdrop of Baghdad's cosmopolitan culture and its complex influence on the Byzantine Empire and Frankish kingdom of Charlemagne.
The Caliph's House
The Caliph's House - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Caliph's House write by Tahir Shah. This book was released on 2007. The Caliph's House available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. By turns hilarious and harrowing, this work by an acclaimed English travel writer is the story of his family's move from the gray skies of London to the sun-drenched city of Casablanca, where Islamic tradition and African folklore converge--and nothing is as easy as it seems.
Longing for the Lost Caliphate
Longing for the Lost Caliphate - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Longing for the Lost Caliphate write by Mona Hassan. This book was released on 2018-08-14. Longing for the Lost Caliphate available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In the United States and Europe, the word "caliphate" has conjured historically romantic and increasingly pernicious associations. Yet the caliphate's significance in Islamic history and Muslim culture remains poorly understood. This book explores the myriad meanings of the caliphate for Muslims around the world through the analytical lens of two key moments of loss in the thirteenth and twentieth centuries. Through extensive primary-source research, Mona Hassan explores the rich constellation of interpretations created by religious scholars, historians, musicians, statesmen, poets, and intellectuals. Hassan fills a scholarly gap regarding Muslim reactions to the destruction of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad in 1258 and challenges the notion that the Mongol onslaught signaled an end to the critical engagement of Muslim jurists and intellectuals with the idea of an Islamic caliphate. She also situates Muslim responses to the dramatic abolition of the Ottoman caliphate in 1924 as part of a longer trajectory of transregional cultural memory, revealing commonalities and differences in how modern Muslims have creatively interpreted and reinterpreted their heritage. Hassan examines how poignant memories of the lost caliphate have been evoked in Muslim culture, law, and politics, similar to the losses and repercussions experienced by other religious communities, including the destruction of the Second Temple for Jews and the fall of Rome for Christians. A global history, Longing for the Lost Caliphate delves into why the caliphate has been so important to Muslims in vastly different eras and places.
Famous Men of the Middle Ages
Famous Men of the Middle Ages - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Famous Men of the Middle Ages write by John Henry Haaren. This book was released on 1904. Famous Men of the Middle Ages available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
