The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the 6th to the 11th Century, 2nd Edition

Based on original Arabic sources, the new edition of this well-established text has been comprehensively revised. The book covers the life of Muhammad and the birth of Islam, through the great days of the Ummayad and Abbasid Caliphates (8th-10th centuries), to the period of political fragmentation which followed it when Islam lost its core unity, never to be recovered.

1:The matrix of the Muslim world: the near East in the early seventh century
2: The Birth of the Islamic State
3: Conquest and division in the time of the Rashidun Caliphs
4: The Umayyad Caliphate
5: The early 'Abbasid Caliphate'
6: The Middle 'Abbasid caliphate
7: The structure of politics in the Muslim commonwealth
8: The Buyid confederation
9: The Kurds
10: The Hamdanids
11: Bedouin political movements and dynasties
12: Early Islamic Egypt and the Fatimid empire