Download Ebook In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, by Tom Holland

Download Ebook In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, by Tom Holland

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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

Download Ebook In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, by Tom Holland

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Review

Praise for Tom Holland's In the Shadow of the Sword“Elegantly written. . . . A veritable tour de force.”—The Wall Street Journal“A brilliant tour de force of revisionist scholarship and thrilling storytelling with a bloodspattered cast of swashbuckling tyrants, nymphomaniacal empresses and visionary prophets. The book is unputdownable. . . . An important work based on respected scholarship. It takes courage and intellect to confront such complexity and sensitivity. Written with flamboyant elegance and energetic intensity.” —The Times (London)  “Accessible but delightful . . . as fun to read as any thriller, and with far richer intellectual nutritional content. . . . Those unwilling to struggle through academic texts have long needed a guide to the story of Islam as it’s understood by those with the fullest access to the latest linguistic and archaeological evidence. Now at last in Tom Holland’s In the Shadow of the Sword, they finally have it. . . . Holland—author previously of Rubicon and Persian Fire—is about as exciting a stylist as we have writing history today.”—The Daily Beast “[Holland’s] prose is shot through with wit and empathy. The result is a portrait of a lost world that is complex, contradictory and populated by people in thrall to ideas future generations would dismiss as ridiculous. Much like our own, in other words.”—Dallas Morning News“[An] elegant study of the roiling era of internecine religious rivalry and epic strife that saw the nation of Islam rise and conquer. . . . Holland confronts questions in the Quranic text head-on, providing a substantive, fluid exegesis on the original documents. Smoothly composed history and fine scholarship.” —Kirkus Reviews“Tom Holland is a writer of clarity and expertise, who talks us through this unfamiliar and crowded territory with energy and some dry wit. . . . The emergence of Islam is a notoriously risky subject, so a confident historian who is able to explain where this great religion came from without illusion or dissimulation has us greatly in his debt.” —The Spectator (London)“This is a book of extraordinary richness. I found myself amused, diverted and enchanted by turn. For Tom Holland has an enviable gift for summoning up the colour, the individuals and animation of the past, without sacrificing factual integrity. He writes with a contagious conviction that history is not only a fascinating tale in itself but is a well-honed instrument with which we can understand our neighbours and our own times, maybe even ourselves. He is also a divertingly inventive writer with a wicked wit—there’s something of both Gibbon and Tom Wolfe in his writing. In the Shadow of the Sword remains a spell-bindingly brilliant multiple portrait of the triumph of monotheism in the ancient world.” —The Independent (London)“This is a handsome volume, tackling an important question from a novel perspective.”—Sunday Telegraph (London)“Holland tells a complex story, dotted with names and places leagues beyond the realm of popular recognition. Yet he makes it unmistakably his own. He is one of the most distinctive prose stylists writing history today, and he drags his tale by the ears, conjuring the half-vanished past with such gusto that characters and places fairly bound from the page. In the Shadow of the Sword may reach provocative conclusions, but it is also a work of impressive sensitivity and scholarship.” —Telegraph (London)“An exhilarating read because Holland succeeds in capturing much of the excitement, strangeness and importance of a long past age. It is difficult not to be bedazzled.” —Financial Times (London)“An ambitious and important book. . . . His excellent book will be lauded, as it should be for doing what the best sort of books can do—examining holy cows.” —The Observer (London)

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About the Author

Tom Holland is a historian of the ancient world and a translator. His books include Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, Persian Fire, In the Shadow of the Sword and The Forge of Christendom. He has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for the BBC. In 2007, he was the winner of the Classical Association prize, awarded to “the individual who has done most to promote the study of the language, literature and civilization of Ancient Greece and Rome.” He lives in London with his family. Visit the author's website at www.tom-holland.org.

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Product details

Paperback: 560 pages

Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (February 12, 2013)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0307473651

ISBN-13: 978-0307473653

Product Dimensions:

5.2 x 1.1 x 8 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

3.8 out of 5 stars

194 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#77,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

A penetrating history that reads like a detective novel. I have been doing a study of Islam for my own interest, do to all the things that we see in our lives that are evidently the result of people claiming to be dedicated Islamic followers. This book was recommended to me by a friend that has been studying this subject for the 30 years he has lived and worked in the Middle East. He was right, it is a page turner. The author keeps our interest from page one to the end of the book by building a case for his conclusion based on the available historical facts. i have studied a lot of history but not so much about the late antiquity, and now i wish i had had the opportunity to read this book 20 years ago. It combines textual criticism, historical analysis, geographical analysis, archaeology, .and enough theology to walk the reader through the analysis of the time frame. i will not spill the beans on his tentative conclusion, but his conclusion does not matter so much as all the analysis that gets us there. This is not a book about Islam, it is a book about the time period and historical context in which Islam showed up on earth, and why.

Very good. This period of history is very interesting. I didn't know about the first great epidemic of Bubonic Plague that hit in 541 AD, the defining event of the time period which decimated both the Persian and late Roman empires and largely accounted for the success of the Arab conquest. The author is very informative about the development of Islam, how it was contrived after the fact to provide a framework for the developing Arab civilization. Incidentally, as Holland points out, this ex post facto rationalization is true of most, if not all, religions, not just Islam and is true of Judaism and Christianity as well. Lots of detail and explanation of the zeitgeist of that period. The reason for four instead of five stars is the author's somewhat elliptical writing style, hard to follow at times. Otherwise, highly recommended.

Tom Holland was one of my favorite historians for sometime when I was as yet unaware of his personal opinions and beliefs. The book is well written as can be expected, but ultimately adds nothing to the conversation. The book is very much the work of that thoroughly western centric school of english historians that has proved less helpful and less decent with each passing year. If you are the type to care, be aware that Tom is at present a figure of some note in the communities of transphobes, millitant atheists, and Islamaphobes. of his personal character all one can really say is that when he picks the weong side, he will dig in his heels and never let anyone dissuade him.

I'm 20% through the audio-book and im fighting the urge to throw my phone out the window. Not only has he not even touched on the subject of islam, let alone his thoughts on an alternative view on the origins of islam. The subjects he has been rambling on about, the Persians and the Romans, he hasn't even kept on a clear point about them, just seems to be filling up pages with overly verbose statements which don't seem to be drawing to a clear point. Very disappointed,i go through lots of audio-books since i commute alot and i never have the urge to write a comment.

Tom Holland is wonderful. This book casts the rise of Islam in its historical context. In the Shadow of the Sword is a robust historical society but also a great read that doesn't get too technical or too bogged down in detail. A very interesting book and something of a page turner. Very relevant for current events, too!

The author has undertaken the task to look at the original documents that created Islam and the Koran. If anyone wants to take a critical view of these founding documents, they owe it to themselves to read this book.

The background is astounding, a detailed account of how Islam took root in the Middle-East and the processes that allowed it to spread. This work gets to the root causes that allow for a true understanding.

The reviews that precede me are thorough and point out both the strengths and weaknesses of *The Shadow of the Sword*. I am largely in agreement with their comments. I *do,* however, disagree with the claim that this is poorly written. To the contrary, the writing is elegant and flows rapidly: in the parts of the history that I was acquainted with, I could consume whole pages in seconds.The problem arises precisely from Holland's fluent prose: as he reconstructs events, his eloquent descriptions can deceive the reader into taking his formulations literally, rather than being what they are--literary reconstructions. It reminded me of a newspaper: if it misrepresents the facts that I *know* about, how can I trust those assertions that I do *not* have personal knowledge about? I want to be clear: I am not accusing Mr. Holland of historical errors. The problem is that he writes so well that the reader can be tempted to take his descriptions at face value.Here's an example, literally at random (Kindle Loc 3333): "In 527, five years before work began on Hagia Sophia, a small boy named Simeon had trotted through the bazaars and shanty-towns of Antioch, out through the olive groves that stretched southwards of the city, and up the slopes of a nearby mountain. Its rugged heights were no place for a child, nor for anyone with a care for comfort." There are 3 facts in those sentences: that Simeon became a stylite in 527, he was a child at the time, and that he came from Antioch. Everything else is in Holland's very vivid imagination.Much in this work I already knew about: the Jewish and Christian history, and the contemporary skeptical reconstructions of Islamic origins and history. Unfortunately, when he poses the crucial questions about Islamic origins (ch. 6, "More Questions that Answers,"--"When?" [Loc 5030], "Where?" [Loc 5423] "Why?" [Loc 5779]), his answers are obscure. His answer to "Where?" was especially disappointing, since it is a question I myself have thought about a good bit. I was hoping he would give a clear, even if tentative, answer.The Persian history was for me an eye-opener. In general, Holland excels at painting a picture of the fevered apocalypticism that coursed through Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian religiosity in the sixth and seventh centuries. That, along with the fact that he brings the contemporary literature on Islamic origins into popular historiography, is probably his greatest contribution.

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