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The Islamic World in Ascendancy From the Arab Conquests to the Siege of Vienna
(Click to Enlarge)
Martin Sicker
Book Code: C6892
ISBN: 0-275-96892-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-96892-2
240 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 6/30/2000
List Price: $110.95 (UK Sterling Price: £65.00)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • Sicker's narrative is a usable sythesis of this material and as such can be recommended to nonspecialists as a brief introduction to the political history of the premodern Middle East.
    —The Historian     vol 64 no 3/4
  • By reading this book the reader gets exposed to a wide range of fascinating issues, indeed.
    —American Review of China Studies
Description: In the view of Dr. Martin Sicker, it was with the emergence of Islam that the combination of geopolitics and religion reached its most volatile form and provided the ideological context for war and peace in the Middle East for more than a millennium. The conflation of geopolitics and religion in Islam is predicated on the concept of jihad (struggle), which may be understood as a crescentade, in the same sense as the later Christian crusade, which seeks to achieve a religious goal, the conversion of the world to Islam, by militant means. This equates to a concept of perpetual war with the non-Muslim world, a concept that underlays Muslim geopolitical thinking throughout the thousand-year period covered in this book. However, as Sicker amply demonstrates, the concept often bore little relation to the political realities of the region that as often as not saw Muslims and non-Muslims aligned against and at war with other Muslims. The story of the emergence and phenomenal ascendancy of the Islamic world from a relatively small tribe in sparsely populated Arabia is one that taxes the imagination, but it becomes more comprehensible when viewed through a geopolitical prism. Religion was repeatedly and often shamelessly harnessed to geopolitical purpose by both Muslims and Christians, albeit with arguably greater Muslim success. Islamic ascendancy began as an Arab project, initially focused on the Arabian peninsula, but was soon transformed into an imperialist movement with expansive ambitions. As it grew, it quickly registered highly impressive gains, but soon lost much of its Arab content. It ended a millennium later as a Turkish--more specifically, an Ottoman--project with many intermediate transformations. The reverberations of the thousand-year history of that ascendancy are still felt today in many parts of the greater Middle East. A comprehensive geopolitical survey for scholars, students, researchers, and all others interested in the history of the Middle East and Islam.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
  • Empire of the Quraish
  • The Umayyad Empire
  • The Abbasid Empire
  • Abbasid Decline and Imperial Disintegration
  • The Rise of the Seljukids
  • The Period of the First Crusades
  • The Era of the Zengids
  • Saladin and the Ayyubid Empire
  • The Eary Thirteenth Century
  • The Mongol Onslaught
  • Between Mamluks and Mongols
  • The Rise of the Ottomans
  • The Era of Murad and Bayezid
  • Tamerlane
  • End of the Byzantine Empire
  • Mehmed the Conqueror
  • The Rise of the Safavids
  • Ottoman Expansionism under Selim
  • The Era of Suleiman the Magnificent
  • The End of Islamic Ascendancy
  • Bibliography
LC Card Number: 00-037326
LCC Class: DS38
Dewey Class: 909
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