The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire

Rambling through history, myth and superstition this author leads the reader on a journey worth taking. The language is evocative and superb. The anecdotes and stories are interesting with a great deal of humour thrown in.

I had always questioned how Islam functioned, generaly defending it as a god religon with some people who misinterpreted the Q'uran. This book gives strong evidence that most of the beliefs and the Q'uran were created over 200 years after the supposed rise of Islam. Still don't know for sure but maybe much of the debate, on both sides, is based on total falsehood.

Reading this book was like walking through a desert longing for a cool spring. There are so many little details that take away from the premise of the book, not by being opposed to it, but by being too much detail.

too much non-islam history with very little insight into the formation or characteristics of the religion. This might serve as good background (or introductory) material for an intensive study of religions in general.

youll have to read over 300 hundred pages of everyone else in the region before you actually even get to islam.granted in the beginning we get some good info on muhammed but then its everything but islam.i kept reading and reading and hundreds of pages later I dropped it.the book is incredibly written.ive read his PERSIAN FIRE and loved it! but I got tired of waiting.....

I found this book bizarre... The first part, a description of the situation in the Middle East just before the rise of Islam, is very interesting and I have learned a lot about the Persian empire and Zoroastrism. The second part is much more disappointing. Tom Holland cannot believe that Mecca is the birth place of Islam: why not? it's always good, from time to time, to question accepted wisdom. The problem is that his reasons are not at all convincing: he cannot believe that a backwater like Mecca would be at the origin of a major religion. That's a bit light... especially as he does not explain how Mecca ended up, anyway, being the most sacred city in Islam.
I'm not a specialist but, to me, it seems that the standard biography of Muhammad, a man who spent time travelling through Arabia with caravans, is enough to explain that he was able to gather concepts born at the borders with the Byzantine and Persian empires and to mold them together to create a new religion back home. In other words, why change a coherent and accepted story against a flimsy one?
Another point, about the title (probably the publisher's choice): (1) it is in bad taste, (2) it does not really corresponds to the content of the book.

Fascinating view of eastern christianity, impact of the Roman empire, development and impact of the Quran on the behavior of the period and the growth of Islam. Also reveals the unbelievable and relentless cycle of history as impacted by countless plagues, human behavior and perspectives of the times. Interesting and educational read.

This is a pretty good reinterpretation of the origins of Islam. Says it was a feeble ideology linked to the Islamic conquests that initially anyway was due more to Khalid's generalship. It was then manufactured into a state ideology and expanded with the empire. Quite persuasive and not pushed down your throat. Sure to get a bigger run.

Tom Howard, In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire (New York: Doubleday, 2012). A challenging and even exciting book filled with statements one remembers (“Only the Qur’an had the awful purity of the divine revelation been properly preserved. Every last word of it, every last syllable, every last letter came directly from God and from God alone.”). The author claims that far from enjoying this awful clarity and directness, the first several hundred years of Islam are based on “the barest shreds of shreds” or “the delusory shimmering of mirages.” He asserts that the first true biographies of Mohammad were created 200 years after his death and that the references to figures in Judaism and Christianity require us to accept that fact that Mohammad was influenced by contemporary religious knowledge. Mecca was then simply a backwater of a backwater. Howard sees “the awesome sweep of their dominions” as being helped immeasurably by the existing declines of the Persians and Byzantine (Romans) and struggles between them and by the powerful war image of an all mighty Allah, one not one tainted by humanness as in the teachings of Jesus. Islam plus the sword plus relentless light horsemen became a religious and military revolution to a vast area including the Persian Empire. This revolutionary force was turned back only at Tours and Byzantium as this richly presented and deeply researched volume describes.

Holland tackles early Islamic history in a surprisingly creative, story-reframing way. First, he spends more than half the book weaving stories about what went just before Islam -- in the dramatic, momentously changing worlds of Zoroastrian Persia, Christian Rome, and heavily Jewish Mesopotamia. He does this with lavish attention to detail, as if telling these stories as an end in itself rather than a prelude. Only later does it grow evident how much Islam built on all of these foundations, in terms of government, philosophy, theology and holy law.

When it comes to telling the tale of Islam, at first Holland seems utterly underwhelming. He applies the historian's discipline of presuming that no tradition exists until it appears in a datable record. With that, the stories of Muhammad, the Quran, the Caliphs and the Sunna are presented only in fragments, as they appear piece by piece in documents starting 50 or more years after the Prophet reportedly died. The story involves how that record was constructed. It is an account of how colonized subjects under Arabian warlords gradually challenged the authority of autocrats, and did so through the power of scholarship and Jewish-style holy law. Where subjects had no right to challenge their rulers on the basis of personal judgment, they claimed a right to define a law higher than the ruling caliphs. In seeking to overcome the tyranny of the sword, they summoned a tyranny of the pen.

Very much worth it just for the history leading up to Mohammed which filled many lacunae in my knowledge by connecting many events of Roman, Greek and Jewish history with which I had already been familiar.

Would you believe I never realized that the Cyrus I who ended the Babylonian captivity was the grandfather of Cyrus II familiar from Greek history--obvious in retrospect; I had just failed to make this and a hundred other connections previously. Much as I love Roman and Greek history, I found this volume more personally informative than any five volumes of the former I have read lately.

The only point the author must be dinged for is mispronouncing "Sassanid" as "Sassanian." Savage!

The author is not a tenured historian. In his defense it must be noted though that he is a fine writer, received double firsts (English and Latin) at Cambridge, previously wrote a series of very well received histories until the present volume which resulted in death threats from the Guardian and harshly dismissive reviews from Tehran (or was it the other way around? One can't remember.)

This was a very disappointing book. He starts off talking about the lack of knowledge about the early years and rise of Islam. That was really interesting.

But then, instead of diving in to what is known, and what can be inferred, it instead wanders around to related bits of history. I get the feeling the author didn't want to put in the effort to come up with what an be inferred, and instead just filled up the rest with random looks at that time in the world.

Not worth reading.

In the Shadow of the Sword is actually quite bright and remarkably well written. Holland’s prose is excellent and entertaining. In the Shadow shines the brightest when he talks about changes in the strains of thought. It is full of tidbits of fascinating information. A rare glimpse into Parthian mythology is touched upon, and Holland describes in vivid terms how the Parthian House of Karin was born, with their patriarch who killed the demon prince Dahag. The prince was a necromancer who was so evil that snakes would burst from his mouth when he spoke. Of course Holland is writing nonfiction, and not a novel. But he does manage to bring some largely unknown mythology to the popular reader. His argumentation on Islam is reasonably strong. He is more reporting on a large body of academic literature on the genesis of Islam. His characterization of Judaism and Christianity is mostly solid. Though for the former, he exaggerates divisions among the church(es) which in reality were not there or were much less pronounced. Christian history is his weakest point, but still worth reading. What really matters is the collective change in the world west of Samarkand. What made imperial religion possible. This is commonly concentrated on Islam and Christianity, but Holland attempts to look at Pagan and Jewish thinking along the same lines, which predates the former two. I do not believe Holland is ‘anti’ Islam, Christianity, or any other religion. To the devout, he may come across. But this is not his intent. Holland is merely in the school of western skepticism. If you are religious, don’t turn away this book. Holland is not critical of faith, nor does he claim that a faith is not true. His perspective is simply an academic one, rather than a polemic in tone. Even if you vehemently disagree with his argumentation about Islam, his narrative is full of other information which is very interesting. I honestly believe that anyone can appreciate this book regardless of your religious perspectives. Give it a chance. Disregard what you dislike.

The book aims to explain Late Antiquity up to 600 AD, and to show how Islam developed from that up to 800 AD. Historians have much better records for Late Antiquity than they have for the first century of Islam - as this book notes and as many other historians have noted (and lamented). The bulk of the book amounts to an introductory overview; the origins of Islam takes up only the last third of it and this part reads more like an argumentary essay.

The prose is florid, yet interspersed with vulgarities. Holland is inordinately fond of the low, cant term "screwed" when discussing... tax extraction. This style felt to me like he was trying too hard to keep my interest. (He's much like Peter Heather here.)

Fortunately the book has marshaled an impressive array of facts behind its narrative. I was impressed that it had stayed so close to the cutting edge, especially in the Persia / Parthia sections.

Much of that recent material distills Parvaneh Pourshariati, "Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire"; that book came out in 2008. The reader must be warned here that Holland does not challenge Pourshariati where Pourshariati relies on mediaeval Iranian legend. For instance, Holland tells of Sukhrâ of the Parthian house Karin as avenger of the shah Peroz (pp. 83-5). Holland has this from Pourshariati `an Tabari (p. 455 nn. 47-49, 51). This is an in-house legend of the Karin and not history: Arthur Christensen, "Iran sous les Sassanides" (Copenhagen: 1944), p. 296. (Hat-tip to the review by Geoffery Greatrex, 1010.)

Where the book touches Islam, it is careful to contrast classical jargon against the way people (including Arabs) thought during the 600s. Two examples are "Quraysh" (from Syriac), who might not have coalesced into an Arabian tribe yet; and "Maqam" (from Hebrew), which back then meant "holy site". The book could have gone further - it applies the apocalyptic term Fitna to the First Civil War, but that term likely wasn't used for this war except amongst the Kufan Shi'a. Another scholar GHA Juynboll in the early 1980s showed that most Muslims agreed to apply Fitna only to the (far more destructive) Second Civil War.

Holland addresses the scholarly arguments over Islamic origins obliquely. I read in p. 306 that the scholarly consensus claims to have "disproved" that the Qur'an is a forgery... but the footnote 22 refers only to Wansbrough, Rippin and Hawting - all of whom argue that the Qur'an is, in fact, a forgery after all (wouldn't a better link point to the consensus, with the skeptics as a sub-footnote?). Later on, he'll note several contradictions between Arab rule and orthodox Islam, for instance Mu`awiya's consistent reference to the Crucifixion of Christ (which, as Holland points out, sura 4 denies). I suspect that Holland personally prefers the skeptic side; his book just won't admit it.

Holland is (much) more openly skeptical about the history of Mecca. He doesn't think Muhammad ever set foot there and he doesn't even think that the Zubayrite anticaliphate was based there. I felt whipsawed to see him (ostensibly) support the Qur'an and then to reject MECCA.

I wasn't convinced on the details of the argument; and I think that was because Holland hadn't fully convinced *himself* of it, or even fully formulated it when he submitted this manuscript. But that was just the last third. Up to then, the book was a real page-turner, exquisitely detailed and informative.

The book's wealth of detail holds value to all who are interested in Islamic origins. The book as a whole is also helpful as an introduction to Late Antiquity, especially Persian Late Antiquity (which we may now have to start calling, Partho-Persian). I have no problem in recommending this to others with occasional grains of salt.

[This book was a gift to me; but the donor did buy it via the store.]
[Also, a disclosure: At the time of posting this review, May 2012, I was writing a book of my own. My book partly depends upon this book and some might consider my book a rival (although I never intended to rival this book). I stand by my (4/5) rating and by the text of this review.]

Tom Holland is a brilliant and thoughtful historian. He approaches the fascinating subject of the origins of Islam with slow, methodical deliberation. The first half of the book sets the stage wonderfully, bringing to life the somewhat forgotten context into which Islam burst. In illuminating detail (and backed by a slew of ancient sources), Holland investiges the political and religious realms of the two great powers at the time, the Persian and Byzantine empires. Duly informed, we then get to Islam itself, which seems to have borrowed heavily from other religions (and their unorthodox variations). This stuff is very interesting, whether you end up agreeing with all of Holland's conclusions or not. We then close with the remarkable military expansion of a new Arab empire, along with its internal squabbles and tribulations. As readers, we can appreciate these events much more clearly in the context of what had come before, as wonderfully illuminated in this book. My big problem with the book is, alas, the same problem I have had with all of Holland's other fine books: the man uses sentence fragments on every page. A fact which is rather distressing. You see, "a fact which is rather distressing" is not a complete sentence, in and of itself. Holland commits this kind of sin with regularity, and to this day I have no idea why some kind editor has not prevented it. The written word demands greater vigor than the spoken word in order to flow smoothly. But anyway, if you can overlook this slight abomination and get to the history itself, you may find yourself as intrigued as I was.

Rambling, lacking direction and cohesion, this book is stuffed with irrelevant 'facts' which are which are clumsily stitched together in an attempt to create a narrative. Dan Brown but without Mr Brown's writing skills. A crude and boring attempt to cash in on the heat of the Islamic/Judeo/Christian confrontation. Don't waste your money on Mr Holland. Spend it on Hitchens, Dawkins or Harris.

As a lover of Western history but almost unread in late Antiquity and Islam, I expected a drier account and was delighted by Holland's narrative pulse and brio in telling the story of the times. HIs focus is on the how the dissolution of empires enabled Islam's rise. It isn't popularized (dumbed down) history; the author just has a talent for writing. As a survey of the declining centuries of 2 civilizations (Roman, Persian) and the birth of another (Arab/Muslim), the book by design lacks the depth and narrow pedagogical focus that some associate with scholarly history.

Those well familiar with the times and themes might see little to be gained from this book, but it is a very informative, enlightening and entertaining read for those just coming to the subject. I love Holland's dry Brit wit in recounting facts of note, avoiding both direct critical commentary (it really is a history book) and the safe or more traditional path of a factual account garnished with thematic conclusions. The reader can find the themes of the times from the telling of the facts. The author adds just enough understated perspective to the historical record, sometimes with panache, to earn the envy/dismissal of the average clunky writer-scholar yet avoid a descent into novelization. It's history for readers who think you're not less of an historian because you write well enough to be a novelist.

Tom Holland continues to prove himself a very capable and readable historian (I've now read 3 of his works). "In the Shadow of the Sword" explores an interesting period of history, looking at the mid-3rd century through to the eighth century, and focuses on the eastern Roman Empire, Persia, Palestine, and the Arabian Peninsula.

Although he begins the book by laying the foundation for an exploration of the Islamic/Arab empire, he spends nearly 200 pages in the middle of the book rehearsing more of Christian/Jewish/Roman/Persian history. While I appreciated the investigation, and he links the material together under the broad notion of empires and monotheistic faiths, I didn't find this extended excursion to be vital to understanding the end of the book, where he resumes a more in-depth look at the development of the Islamic empire.

He does surface a few critiques in regards to some historical and geographical issues within the Islamic faith, but doesn't engage deeply in the implications of these potential inconsistencies.

As usual, Holland does a great job of surfacing rarely heard names from history and turning them into full-fledged personalities. His book is well-researched, and the 400+ pages truly sped by. Recommended.

I have read every one of Mr. Hollands books, beginning with the discovery of "The Rubicon".

Contrary to some reviewers, I find his narrative beautiful, informative, and easy to read ( my Kindle just updated, so I was gleefully excited when I could map zoom and cross back and forth between the text and the footnotes).

It is obvious that Mr. Holland does indeed do his research. I use a lot of his notes for my own intelligence gathering being absolutely fascinated by this time period. Having said this, I have found Mr. Holland to be, in my opinion not biased in any way, but using the relevant facts to make a great story. Whether this offends certain reviewers is a moot point. Mr. Holland is in the history business folks; and very good at it.

Of course, history is rife with pitfalls as even Mr. Holland points out. Places and events may be vague, but the fact that we suffer today from the insidious tentacles of organized religion that was part of that history is not fiction, nor the imagination of the writer. It is a very real example of how people control people. Even today,in our supposedly progressive society, various religions are still advocating the end of times and warring with each other; as if living in the time of Ceasar or Cyrus. How utterly out of date with the times.

I am convinced that Mr. Holland is fair with the various religious factions in retelling this story. However, I am also convinced that were it not for these same factions, and all the killing and destruction contained and decreed in their dogma, that we might have a glimpse of priceless archives of history; clean history unadulterated by the pious, or those compelled to change the facts to satisfy whomever was in power at the time.

This book is a very good place to start in order to understand the events of humankind today and going into the future.

This is either the most over written history book I have read or really great literature. I can't judge. It was so mind numbingly full of detail and metaphor that I often got lost among the cast of characters or the references. Yet I found myself glued, not in the beginning which I skimmed, but in the section on Islam. Reading about three of the five world religions, I am reminded over and over again what kind of phony construct each is---and the other two also. Religious zealots (a religious term) have so massaged their histories that one can't trust almost anything they say. I had seen Islam as being somewhat historically accurate about their own past because Mohammed was a real historical figure. But Holland has put that to rest. Wo bist du Mecca mein Herz? Didn't exist and the founder probably came from the Fertile Crescent. Medina was a piddly oasis. My favorite sentence in the book related to these geographical ambiguities. "The suspicion should be then that they are no more likely to reflect authentic tradition than did the nose of Palestinian landowners for previously forgotten biblical landmarks back in the first flush of Christian tourism to the Holy Land." Oh well, Islam made up a lot too, even though the 200 year after the fact codification might have been way more accurate than the half century lapse for Buddhism and Hinduism's couple of thousand year makeover. Who had the truth of the revelations, Christian Jews, Jewish Christians, Talmudists of various stripes, Ariens, Arabs who fought for the Romans or who fought for the Persians, Samaritans, Kharijites, Zoroastrians who killed the apostate Mazdakites und so forth. The fire burning Persians got reclassified as people of the book---to hard to kill them all or maybe for the tax revenues. It is hard not to become a cynic. The Karen Armstrongs and Huston Smiths of the world live in a never never land.

Holland is aching for a fatwa if it is not out there already. Having read a reasonable amount about Islam's history, its slavery (about which he barely mentions), the Sufi's, Al Andalu, etc, I found the details of the early struggles fascinating. I knew the spread of Islam in the century of Mohammed was not so smooth but I forgot how rough it was. And Holland's main point that much of its spread and establishing of its independent turf was derivative of what came before it. From praying five times a day as Persian to all its elements of Christianity and Judaism, even the copying of the rabbis' creating of a tradition more powerful than secular dictates. I am sure the jurists don't like to be reminded that they made up their religion out of others' scrap and claimed Mohammed's authority for which they had little if no evidence. It is interesting to read this all because the solidity of religion from the point of view of believers and popular imaginations seems too simple and set. No there wasn't a Hindu in Buddha's world despite the cliché that Buddhism arose as a reaction to Hinduism. Hinduism was created almost a thousand years after the Buddha if he indeed existed).

Not sure what else to say except that maybe Al-Andalus represented the best of the three religions. Look around the world today. Yes they survived but the author is wrong. It is not the pen that is mightier than the sword, but the very sword that he wrote about for whom the pen is a whore. America's Tea Party, Israeli religio-aparthiedists, and I won't use right wing talk radio's term for the supposed fundamentalists of Islam. Some heritage? Christians killing Muslims who kill unbelievers, who in turn are killed by Buddhists or Hindus. It makes one cry but that has little effect on believers.

Charlie Fisher

The author writes in very esoteric language. The book jumps around centuries without any context. Hundreds of names, places, beliefs, etc. are tossed around with no background information and no attempt to put them in layman's terms . The book is almost entirely about Judaism, Christianity, and other ancient religions (before giving lip service to Islam), so the title is a bait-and-switch. It seems like the author knows the subject matter well, but not well enough to teach it in a remotely coherent manner.

Oswald Spengler's research was notoriously sloppy, while his politics were merely notorious, but he could occasionally come up with a good idea, one of which was that the "Magian" civilization of the middle east was in fact one huge religion divided into sects. Dualistic, apocalyptic, relentlessly political, fatalistic -- they had lots in common. Every "clash of civilizations" thinker of note, and for that matter nearly every "historical Jesus" scholar, takes this for granted, even if he's never bothered with Spengler. We are all Spenglerites now.

Enter Tom Holland. In "Persian Fire" he provided the popular audience with parallel histories of Greece and early Persia, and now he does the same with late Persia and the Byzantine empire leading up to "the forging of Islam." It's all told with near-novelistic verve and laced with a Pat Condell wit, but the many byways he explores actually have a purpose -- to show us that, indeed, there's nothing original about Islam. The Persian God, of Light had his sidekick, Mihr, guardian of Truth -- his favorite color was green, of course. The Christian empire levied special taxes on Jews, and forbade them to build synagogues higher than Christian churches. Holland keeps a straight face, but his tongue is placed in his cheek, of course, as he lets us in on the lurid doings and appalling superstitions of a vanished world that created our own.

Other reviewers have tapped Holland on the wrist with a wet noodle about his lack of specificity about the writing of the Koran, but in his defense there are reasons for this. The "historical Jesus" question has been debated for centuries, but the historical Mohammed question was of interest only to a tiny handful of specialists until after the Rushdie affair, when Ibn Warraq (q.v.) published his seminal underground classic. Then 9/11 happened -- and the bookshelves exploded with books on Islam, most of them polemics or apologetics. But Holland DOES get his point across. There's a pun in the final chapter title, after all. The melodramatic cover suggests that the book will be about the "forging," in the blacksmith's sense, of the sword of Islam, while in fact the last chapter of the book lets you know that Islam was "forged" in the sense that a fake painting is. It was mostly the doing of the ulama, most of whom were "reverts" who were well familiar with libraries full of previous legends and laws, since the Arabs were mostly too busy bloodying harmless people up to bother writing anything of any significance.

And that's the problem. In the case of Christianity, first came the religion, then the state -- in the case of Islam, the reverse was the case. What the ulama really did, as Ibn Warraq himself pointed out years ago, was to create an entirely closed system based on a Big Lie, however well intended it may have been at first -- in effect, a totalitarian system. So where do we go from here, whether we're infidels or genuinely moderate Muslims?

A total neophyte may find this book tough sledding, but it clarified numerous issues for me -- specifically, the "line of development" I'd always suspected between the "Jamesian Christianity" that was the result of the James-Paul split explored by Robert Eisenman, the apocalyptic rants in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the theology and phraseology in the Koran.

The most important reason, though, why all this is not common knowledge is the death-penalty for apostasy and blasphemy tradition that's always been a part of Islam. Holland ruefully notes (p. 451, n. 61) the trials of a couple of scholars inside of Dar-al-Islam, including one who was reputedly thrown out a window. (And Ibn Warraq, BTW, like so many others, is under a death sentence.) So Suliman Bashear, RIP. You didn't die entirely unknown, and your work continues.

Well, you know what Mr. Carr used to say: "History is nothing more than the thin thread of what is remembered stretched out over the ocean of what has been forgotten." from page 43 of WHISKY, CHARLIE, FOXTROT a novel by Perthian author, Annabel Smith.

Tom Holland has written a history of a time and place which no longer exists and which has little in the way of written documentation to provide concrete content to fill the abstractions of what Schlomo Sand has described as 'mythistory'. It's titled, IN THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD. Holland's approach to the history of the 7th century AD requires an anti-authoritarian sense of humour. His book is full of tales to be memorised and re-told over ale and conversation with your mates.

Tales?

Those concerning the mentality, beliefs and actions of members of the human race who existed in the ancient world i.e. before the complete establishment of feudalism in Europe and the Middle East.

Oswald Spengler's research was notoriously sloppy, while his politics were merely notorious, but he could occasionally come up with a good idea, one of which was that the "Magian" civilization of the middle east was in fact one huge religion divided into sects. Dualistic, apocalyptic, relentlessly political, fatalistic -- they had lots in common. Every "clash of civilizations" thinker of note, and for that matter nearly every "historical Jesus" scholar, takes this for granted, even if he's never bothered with Spengler. We are all Spenglerites now.

Enter Tom Holland. In "Persian Fire" he provided the popular audience with parallel histories of Greece and early Persia, and now he does the same with late Persia and the Byzantine empire leading up to "the forging of Islam." It's all told with near-novelistic verve and laced with a Pat Condell wit, but the many byways he explores actually have a purpose -- to show us that, indeed, there's nothing original about Islam. The Persian God, of Light had his sidekick, Mihr, guardian of Truth -- his favorite color was green, of course. The Christian empire levied special taxes on Jews, and forbade them to build synagogues higher than Christian churches. Holland keeps a straight face, but his tongue is placed in his cheek, of course, as he lets us in on the lurid doings and appalling superstitions of a vanished world that created our own.

Other reviewers have tapped Holland on the wrist with a wet noodle about his lack of specificity about the writing of the Koran, but in his defense there are reasons for this. The "historical Jesus" question has been debated for centuries, but the historical Mohammed question was of interest only to a tiny handful of specialists until after the Rushdie affair, when Ibn Warraq (q.v.) published his seminal underground classic. Then 9/11 happened -- and the bookshelves exploded with books on Islam, most of them polemics or apologetics. But Holland DOES get his point across. There's a pun in the final chapter title, after all. The melodramatic cover suggests that the book will be about the "forging," in the blacksmith's sense, of the sword of Islam, while in fact the last chapter of the book lets you know that Islam was "forged" in the sense that a fake painting is. It was mostly the doing of the ulama, most of whom were "reverts" who were well familiar with libraries full of previous legends and laws, since the Arabs were mostly too busy bloodying harmless people up to bother writing anything of any significance.

And that's the problem. In the case of Christianity, first came the religion, then the state -- in the case of Islam, the reverse was the case. What the ulama really did, as Ibn Warraq himself pointed out years ago, was to create an entirely closed system based on a Big Lie, however well intended it may have been at first -- in effect, a totalitarian system. So where do we go from here, whether we're infidels or genuinely moderate Muslims?

A total neophyte may find this book tough sledding, but it clarified numerous issues for me -- specifically, the "line of development" I'd always suspected between the "Jamesian Christianity" that was the result of the James-Paul split explored by Robert Eisenman, the apocalyptic rants in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the theology and phraseology in the Koran.

The most important reason, though, why all this is not common knowledge is the death-penalty for apostasy and blasphemy tradition that's always been a part of Islam. Holland ruefully notes (p. 451, n. 61) the trials of a couple of scholars inside of Dar-al-Islam, including one who was reputedly thrown out a window. (And Ibn Warraq, BTW, like so many others, is under a death sentence.) So Suliman Bashear, RIP. You didn't die entirely unknown, and your work continues.

Well, you know what Mr. Carr used to say: "History is nothing more than the thin thread of what is remembered stretched out over the ocean of what has been forgotten." from page 43 of WHISKY, CHARLIE, FOXTROT a novel by Perthian author, Annabel Smith.

Tom Holland has written a history of a time and place which no longer exists and which has little in the way of written documentation to provide concrete content to fill the abstractions of what Schlomo Sand has described as 'mythistory'. It's titled, IN THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD. Holland's approach to the history of the 7th century AD requires an anti-authoritarian sense of humour. His book is full of tales to be memorised and re-told over ale and conversation with your mates.

Tales?

Those concerning the mentality, beliefs and actions of members of the human race who existed in the ancient world i.e. before the complete establishment of feudalism in Europe and the Middle East.

Flowery, muddled and flaccid come to mind. (It could have been an interesting book.) Holland hops all over. OK history doe not have to be strictly linear but this constantly hops around until the final 3rd. Holland also has an annoying habit here of constantly (and I do mean constantly) riffing off of ancient terms such as "mowbed", "hadiths" or "shirkat". The entire text is an onslaught of ill defined terms. Maybe Holland thinks we will understand ancient terms if he just uses them enough. However in the end one is slogging through a swamp of ill defined terms.

I like Holland's other works but this is not his finest. Even good authors can be brought low by the lack of an editor.

After trudging through more than one hundred pages I am praying that the author get to the point, a point, any point. This book, so far, is an incoherant mess, and I am about to die in a sea of words.

Thesis: War and disease degraded the Persian and Byzantine empires sufficiently to allow the newly invigorated (by Islam) Arabs to swarm into the vacuum. All written by Holland in prose ineptly copied from Lytton Strachey. "News of … [Persian] atrocities, brought to Saint Simeon on his pillar, so appalled the stylite that he promptly lent his prayers to the Ghassanids. Sure enough, in 554, Arethas had been graced with a stunning and climactic triumph. In a great battle fought at Chalcis, in Syria, a Lakkhmid invasion force was annihilated. Simeon, borne from his pillar by the agency of the heavens to a hill overlooking the action, made his own personal contribution to the victory by asking the Holy Spirit to strike down Mundhir with a fireball – a request which the Holy Spirit obligingly met."

The hullabaloo and hoopla over the murky origins of Islam is well worth a nosey. Holland points out that Judaism and Christianity have been exposed as fakes long ago and so why not Islam?

The evidence is overwhelming and this 'clear light of history' business that the muslims keep rubbing in our noses has now hit them where it hurts.

Unfortunately, Tom Holland buries his findings under an unnecessary long and dry history of Rome and Persia and he only gets to the Arabs after 200 odd pages. Thankfully the sparingly 50 page introduction is brilliantly written and here Holland is not frightened to give the religion of peace a thorough Teutonic rogering (Hollands use of word, 'teutonic', is funny). This is a very interesting book.

Given the controversies that this book has already created on the store.uk and to avoid any misunderstandings, I thought it useful to start this (very long) review with a couple of clarifications, before explaining at length why I was so disappointed after finishing it.

First, I am not a "devout follower of christianity, judaism or islam", to quote another reviewer on the store.uk. I both agree and disagree with this reviewer, however. Yes, this book will certainly offend many of those who believe in their faith to such an extent that they do not (or cannot) question any of its components. This, in itself, is a problem and it is entirely Mr Holland's responsibility because of the way he has chosen to tackle the issues he has decided to write about. Although I do not question Mr Holland's intentions, and I am NOT always sure that I have understood the points he really intended to make, despite his 50 page long rambling introduction, his book is much more problematic than being simply offensive for unquestioning believers.

This is where I start disagreeing a number of previous reviewers. I do not believe that Mr Holland's book is "fascinating and readable history". This may be true of his previous books, but it does not apply to this one, unfortunately. It is not the story of "how the East was lost", a title that I have used recently to review another book, which is really about the early Arab conquests, and which another reviewer has applied to this book. Specifically, this book is NOT a history book but it is not exactly fiction either.

Second, my first reason for being disappointed is because this book is not at all what I expected. When I saw its title, read the synopsis and ordered the book from the store, I was eager to read a book retracing and analyzing the final clash of the two great East Roman and Sassanid Empires and the Early Arab Conquests. I was expecting from Mr. Holland's the equivalent of Richard Milne's excellent book (Carthage Must Be Destroyed: the Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization). This is not what I got, although this is definitely what the subtitle of Mr Holland's book published in th UK (The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World) and his introduction were more than suggesting. Note that I do not suggest that Mr Holland, or his publisher, have been "misleading" or have "misrepresented" what has been sold because, in English, both of these words suggest some deliberate intention that I am simply unaware of. However, it is rather hard not to notice the huge gap between the title and the book's introduction on the one hand, and the book's contents, on the other.

Third, so, what did I get? What is this book exactly? To be honest, I find it difficult to tell and this is one of the reasons why this book is so difficult to review. A related difficulty is, of course, that it is extremely difficult to write about the demise of Late Antiquity's major Empires and the rise of the Arab Caliphate as the new, global and sole "superpower" without introducing religion, and Islam in particular. However, I believe that the main problem here arises because the author, perhaps influenced by his previous major successes and certainly because he found the topic of religions so fascinating (and I could not agree more) has tried to "bite off more than he can chew". So, in addition (or even instead) of what could have been (and, in my view, probably should have been) mainly a history book, you get some kind of history and compare-and-contrast exercice of the three main monotheist religions. In a way, this is two books in one, with neither of the two main subjects being treated as they would deserve to be.

Fourth, a related problem when reading the book is that the focus tends to shift. Initially, the book seeks to present the context of the great clashes to come (between the two Empires and then between each of the Empire's and the Islamic forces). To attempt to understand what was happening in the Middle East at the time, this, of course, makes obvious sense. However, quite quickly, the emphasis shifts to the religious dimensions, which seem to be the topic that really interests Mr Holland.

Fifth, the explanations offered are mainly, and increasingly through the book, presented in religious terms. Historical non-religious analysis gets truncated or cut out, leaving a narrative that can become rather biaised at times and also somewhat incorrect, however unintentional this may be. I found this deeply unsatisfactory. To clarify and illustrate this point, here are three examples of the impact that Mr Holland's omissions and simplifications can have on his narrative. These examples are drawn from the sections on Christianity, with which I assume that most readers of this review are likely to be more familiar. These examples (just three among several dozens and I stopped counting after having reached my fourth dozen!) also show that this book's problems are not limited to the sections on Islam.

- The first example is the author's presentation of early Christian martyrs. Mr Holland very correctly presents the motivations of some of the early christians (although probably not of most of them - one of the numerous distinctions that he fails to make) to seek martyrdom and the reactions of non-Christians to them as being totally at cross purposes. The most determined among these martyrs - some would perhaps say the most fanatical ones - were more than willing to die publicly (when an emphasis on the word publicly) for their faith. This would, in their mind, allow them to capture the moral high ground, to present themselves as victims and to make a point. A modern equivalent today would be something like a "political prisoner" (and regardless of whether he is portrayed as a "freedom fighter" or as a "terrorist") going on a wildly publicized hunger strike thzat makes Prime Time news on CNN, Fox News, or whatever equivalent information channel you can think of. The way these martyrs have been presented by the so-called "Fathers of the Church" in their writtings, and the way these martyrs have rather systematically been turned into Saints, shows how these sacrifices have been used for propaganda purposes. Historians do not even know how many people were executed by the Roman Emperors for being christians - another point that Mr Holland fails to make - although these "Fathers of the Church" are certainly eager to give you the impression that they were huge crowds of martyrs and Mr Holland does not dispel, or bother to even assess, this impression. However, historians do agree that these martyrs failed in their objective: they did not at all convince non-Christian Romans of the righteousness of their cause. As Holland shows very well, it was quite the opposite in fact: they were viewed as demented - out of their minds. I would add to this two other points, which are missing. These martyrs were also viewed by ordinary Romans with a mixture of fascination (the usual attraction for blood and gore) and repulsion. The latter point is because martyrs' self-sacrifice smacked of human sacrifices, something which, by that time, had been beyond the pale for Romans for a number of centuries. The second point is that for non-christian Romans (I dislike using the term "pagan" because the word itself is part of the early Christians propaganda) and for the imperial authorities, Christians were viewed as trouble-makers, at best, blasphemers, traitors and criminals, at worst. This is a bit similar to the Romans' views on the Jews, but with a crucial difference: the Christian s seem to have been much more active in proselytizing and converting "non-believers". Why this was the case is just another interesting point that Mr Holland fails to even consider.

- A second example arises when Mr Holland goes on to explain the reasons for the Emperors to persecute the Christians. The reasons are only provided in a strictly religious context, with Holland stating that this was part and parcel of a fight for religious supremacy. This kind of explanation is both partial and truncated. For Roman Emperors, who, at least until the end of the fourth century, had to be soldiers and generals, first and foremost, the issue was not religion per se, but power and unquestionable domination, with religion - or, from their own perspective, Imperial ideology - being one of the tools to achieve it. Rome was eternal (Roma Aeterna) and the Emperor was ever victorious and unvanquished (the two - slighly different - senses of the word Invictus). The Emperor was supreme and the source of All Power. Given this, Christians' refusal to swear allegiance to the "God-Emperor" was not only offensive. It was also blasphemous, treasonous and criminal because its breached Rome's conception of "law and order". It was even worse in times of war and when such behaviors came from soldiers so that this is one of the reasons why a relatively large proportion of early Christian martyrs were, in fact, Christianized Roman soldiers. This is the kind of politico-religious analysis that I was expecting to find, but it is glaringly absent from the book

- Also absent is any kind of analysis and explanation as to why, by around the year 300, Christians, regardless of which sect they belonged to, had become a majority throughout the Empire despite having to compete against dozens of other religion. A similar element and analysis is missing in the part on Islam. There is no explanation provided in either case, although such explanations would have been, in my view at least, among the most valuable components of this book. For instance, I would have been fascinated to learn in detail the history of how Islam spread across and conquered the Arabic Peninsula between 622 to 632. This is also something I was expecting and it is almost totally lacking.

Sixth, as you read through the book, the relative importance of the historical sections seem to decline. This happens to such an extent that the events of the very, very long (more than 25 years) war to the finish between Persia and the East Roman Empire are dealt with in a rather off-handed way in some 20 pages or so. The Arab Conquests of Palestine, Syria and of the whole Sassanid Empire are not treated much better. I found this absolutely astonishing. This convinced me - once and for all - that this book was not history, although perhaps it was telling a story that was slanted by the author's prejudices.

Seventh, this book is not a piece of theology or a comparative analysis of the three religions and cannot be so, although this is perhaps what it was really intended to be. The story includes so many "details", dramatic effects and the (supposedly) "telling anecdotes" that these tend to crowd out substance and content and come at the expense of the clarity and the accuracy of the narrative. One typical example is the interesting anecdote about this king of Himyar (in current Yemen and a kindgom that was formally known as Sheba, apparently) which keeps popping up throughout a large part of the book. This king was a Jew, who had displaced his Christian predecessor and was displaced by an Ethiopian Christian king with the help of the Romans. In turn, the Ethiopians were kicked out by a Sassanid invasion. So, interesting piece, of course, but what is the point being made here and how relevant is all this to the rise of Islam? I am still not sure. If this anecdote was meant to illustrate the "global" scale of the conflict between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Persian one, then fine, but then why does it have to pop up half a dozen times across the book? A case of "overkill" perhaps? However, if this anecdote is somewhat related to whatever point the author ias trying to make on religions in general, and Islam in particular, then I do not understand. If the purpose is to show that the Peninsula's populations included Christians and Jews, and not only Pagans, before Islam emerged, then this is "overkill" again. It is also quite unnecessary because the point is already made a number of times across the book.

Number eight, the author's tendancy to over-use quotations. This happens throughout the book with multiple quotations taken out of their context, extracted from the various religious texts and from multiple primary sources and inserted as part of the narrative. When done on a large scale and systematically, they take up a huge amount of space while providing very little substance. They come at the expense of in-depth historical or religious (exegesis) analysis. So, instead of substance, you get treated to what X,Y or Z may have thought about such and such an event at such and such a time. This is certainly interesting. At times, it is even fascinating, but it is certainly not history.

Nine, use on anecdotes and quotations may have served Tom Holland very well in some of his previous books, according to multiple reviewers (although this is the first of his books that I have read). In this book, however, I believe that these components, instead of being assets, have mostly become liabilities. For instance, when reading the book, you can easily become swamped with details and so-called "telling anecdotes", which, too often, act as distractors and may not be "telling" at all when you look at them a bit too closely.

Ten, another consequence of Mr Holland's methods is that anyone who knows a bit about the period already is at risk of ending up by being disappointed, as I have been. This is because privileging details, anecdotes and "dramatic effects" over facts, events, their analysis and their explanation runs the risk of making the whole "story" into something superficial, simplistic, inaccurate, slanted or offensive, even for readers that are not "devout followers". I believe this is exactly what has happened with this book. Again, to illustrate, here are some examples drawn among six or seven dozens of them (I stopped counting at one point):
- Reducing Emperor Anastasios to a bureaucrat turned "bean-counter" emperor is a caricature that gets close to misrepresentation for anyone that knows his long reign and his multiple achievements
- It is plainly offensive and disparaging to qualify the Lakhmids (Pro-persian) and the Ghassanids (Pro-Roman) as "attack-dogs" of the respective Empires. Apart from being inaccurate, it is also unnecessary and provocative. So, after portraying these Arab tribes as "attack-dogs", is anyone still wondering why any contemporary Arab might feel offended by this book? Who, by the way, would appreciate being called a dog, even if only by implication? Calling someone a dog, even of the attack variety (as opposed to a puddle, for instance), is not exactly a compliment, is it? And I am afraid it may be even worse in Arabic, by the way. The least one can say here is that Mr Holland has been somewhat insensitive and clumsy in his use of terms and I am quite consciously making a significant effort to remain mild and polite here.

A final unintended consequence related to Mr Holland's use of such features is, unfortunately, a personal note. Regardless of however Mr Holland really is and what he may believe, the tone he uses (somewhat patronizing and lecturing, at times) does not show him up well. It even can make him sound rather unsufferable and unpleasant. Although I am quite sure that this was not his intention, this was how I perceived it and, once again, I am a secular Christian, not at all a "devout follower" of any of the three monotheist religions.

Some quick final points, to conclude this over long review:
- is this book "good" or "bad"? In my view, it is neither. It is fascinating at times, but it is also superficial, often incorrect and often annoying
- is this book and the thesis (or rather, the bunch of more or less fashionable ideas that it conveys) "groung-breaking" in any way? The answer here is absolutely not. It summarizes, often in an superficial way, a collection of theories developed mostly by Western academics over the last 2-3 decades
- is this book worth reading and would I recommend it to anyone? Here the answer is Yes and Yes, but I ONLY recommend it for someone that is NOT a "devout follower" of any of the three religions, that is not looking for a history of the end of Late Antiquity and that already knows quite a lot about both the history of this period AND the three main religions involved....

Finally, would I recommend this book for someone wanting to learn about the Early Moslem Conquests? Here, the answer is definitly NO. Hugh Kennedy's book (among others) is, for instance, infinitely preferable, even if it is mainly a military history.

So, for me, this book is a miss. The dominating feeling is disappointment, with the related feeling that this is a pity because the book could have been so much better if it had prilegied history (like Hugh Kennedy's book on the Early Arab Conquests, for instance), rather than pseudo-theological comparisons that are bound to offend someone. However, because this book still has value, despite everything else, I believe it is worth 3 stars, but certainly no more than that.

One last thing: my sincerest apologies if, when reading this review, anyone's religious feelings get hurt. This is totally unintended. Believe it or not, and unlike the author of this book, I took great trouble to try to avoid this.

The book should have been named 300+ pages regarding the Christian and Jewish religions and 50 pages barely touching on specifics of the beginnings of Islam. Tom Holland spends over 300 pages freely espousing on the fantasy of other religions but takes great pains to not offend the fantasies of Islams birth. You still may see a Fatwa Tom, even what you said would get you a life sentence in any of the Middle Eastern countries. A complete misnomer of a book, so disappointed in you Thomas the doubter.

I bought the book believing the title: it will inform me about how a group of so called barbarians built this big empire in such a short time. But the main focus of the book is to drive Holland's notion that the prophet (sw) was not from Mecca and Quran was written somewhere else. In the process he only refers to few so called scholars who asserts his view and totally disregards all other scholars. His approach is similar to the 'nay-sayers' approach to climate change issue. His writing is more of an activists rather than that of a researcher.

He really has little knowledge of Islamic texts and history. Most of his claims regarding the lack of written references to the prophet is lie. He forgot that the last pope created a stir by quoting writings from clergymen of the late antiquity regarding the prophet. He is either ignorant or intentionally did not mention of the volumes of letters that are available from the time of Hz, Umar (ra) the 2nd Khalipha (within 3 years of prophet's death). There are lots of written text from Hz. Ali (ra) the 4th Khalipha.

There are so many issues that it is really a waste of time to read his. His biased approach really kills it. Reza Aslan or Karen Armstrong are much better objective writings.