God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215

by David Levering Lewis

Hailed by critics as an essential book, God's Crucible is a bold, new interpretation of Islamic Spain and the birth of Europe from one of our greatest historians. David Levering Lewis's narrative, filled with accounts of some of the greatest battles in world history, reveals how cosmopolitan, Muslim al-Andalus flourished—a beacon of cooperation and tolerance—while proto-Europe floundered in opposition.At the beginning of the eighth century, the Arabs brought a momentous revolution in power, religion, and culture to Dark Ages Europe. David Levering Lewis's masterful history begins with the fall of the Persian and Roman empires, followed by the rise of the prophet Muhammad and the creation of Muslim Spain. Five centuries of engagement between the Muslim imperium and an emerging Europe followed, from the Muslim conquest of Visigoth Hispania in 711 to Latin Christendom's declaration of unconditional warfare on the Caliphate in 1215. Lewis's narrative, filled with accounts of some of the greatest battles in world history, reveals how cosmopolitan, Muslim al-Andalus flourished—a beacon of cooperation and tolerance between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—while proto-Europe, defining itself in opposition to Islam, made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, religious intolerance, perpetual war, and slavery. A cautionary tale, God's Crucible provides a new interpretation of world-altering events whose influence remains as current as today's headlines.

Genres: History, Islam, Nonfiction, Religion, Middle East, European History, Medieval

512 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

David Levering Lewis is the Julius Silver University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at New York University.

Reviews

[Madeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a very long time to finish this book. I would stick with it for a few weeks, and then take a break from the book to read a novel or something. All together, I think I read five or six other books while trying to get through God's Crucible. The problem wasn't that the material was boring - I've been wanting to read a good, detailed history of pre-Crusades Islam for a long time, so I was really excited to find this - but it's dense. Important historical figures appear and disappear from the narrative with very little notice, and Lewis expects you to keep up with the scores of characters and locations contained in this history. I don't recommend trying to read this book on your morning train ride, is what I'm saying.

A quick note before getting into the meat of this review: prior to reading this book, I knew almost nothing about Islam or the history of the Muslim empire except what I was able to glean from biographies of white Christian conquerors like Isabella of Castille or Gertrude Bell. So I'm not in a position to evaluate how well Lewis presents this history; I can only give you my impressions of the book from the perspective of someone who was getting most of this information for the first time.

Lewis starts his book with a quick history of the origins of Islam, and this was fascinating to me - coming from a childhood of Catholic catechism classes, it was amazing that so much is known about Muhammad (I'm spelling the name as Lewis does in his book) as a historical figure, and I was excited and fascinated by all the information Lewis provides about the founder of Islam. His first wife was an older widow who owned her own business, and was one of Muhammad's strongest supporters! The schism between Sunnis and Shiites first arose out from the question of who would succeed Muhammad after he died! One of Muhammad's later wives was once involved in a scandal involving a necklace, and it reminded me so much of Marie Antoinette's affaire du collier that I wondered if the former story really happened at all!

Once Muhammad dies, Lewis has to widen the scope of his book considerably, especially after the Muslim empire starts extending into what would eventually become Spain and France. This is where things start to get dense, but it still kept me interested. The most fascinating part of this section is when Lewis is discussing how the Muslim invasion prompted the Franks to make uneasy alliances with other scattered tribes, leading to the entire concept of a single, unified European identity. He focuses on one battle in particular, the battle of Poitiers, which for a long time was described by historians as The Battle that decided Europe's future forever. Not exactly true, says Lewis, but he spends some time discussing what would have happened if the Muslims had been able to maintain their stronghold in Europe. What would it have meant for the future if the Frankish king, Charles Martel, hadn't been able to beat back the Muslim invaders? Spoiler alert: we might have been better off.

"Had 'Abd Al-Rahman's men prevailed that October day, the post-Roman Occident would probably have been incorporated into a cosmopolitan, Muslim regnum unobstructed by borders, as they hypothesize - one devoid of a priestly caste, animated by the dogma of equality of the faithful, and respectful of all religious faiths. Curiously, such speculation has a French pedigree. Forty years ago, two historians, Jean-Henri Roy and Jean Devoisse enumerated the benefits of a Muslim triumph at Poitiers: astronomy; trigonometry; Arabic numerals; the corpus of Greek philosophy. 'We [Europe] would have gained 267 years,' according to their calculation. 'We might have been spared the wars of religion.' To press the logic of this disconcerting analysis, the victory of Charles the Hammer must be seen as greatly contributing to the creation of an economically retarded, balkanized, fratricidal Europe that, in defining itself in opposition to Islam, made virtues out of religious persecution, cultural particularism, and hereditary aristocracy."

Lewis's book is at it's best when he's discussing how much more advanced the Muslim world was in comparison to early Europe, and how a continuation of the Muslim empire (but to be fair, they were pretty powerful for a good long while) might have advanced Europe by decades, if not centuries. Sure, this is mostly opinion and speculation on the part of historians, but you can't deny that the Muslim empire was lightyears ahead of Europe in almost every aspect, and then the Pope was like, "Yes, but they don't like Jesus, so let's go set everything on fire." Ugh.

Although it took me a long time, and I don't feel like I fully absorbed all of the information Lewis was presenting, I'm ultimately glad that I read this. Even though a lot of what was presented went over my head, I learned so much from this book. It gave me good background information on the history of Islam and the founding of Europe, as well as insight into the current political climate. Long, occasionally tedious and overwrought, but important, and an interesting exploration into what could have been.

"But al-Andalus, notwithstanding its fractious mixture of Arabs, Berbers, Goths, Hispanics, and Jews, and the splintering cordilleras, was an intact creation by the end of the tenth century. By contrast, the seams of Charlemagne's Europe - once it was deprived of its animating, aging genius - began to loosen badly. The center failed to hold and the avaricious parts turned on one another while even more fierce Scandinavian and Slavic intruders tested their defenses and ravaged the countryside. If anything, the situation in 976 portended a long, antipodal continuity of the two Europes - one secure in its defensesm religiously tolerant, and maturing in cultural and scientific sophistication; the other an arena of unceasing warfare in which superstition passed for religion and the flame of knowledge sputtered weakly."

[Jennie · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story of the early spread of Islam is very interesting to me, and I was looking forward to reading this. However, David Levering Lewis, the author, seems to be more concerned with showing off his vocabulary and tossing out ridiculous analogies than he is with telling the story. It's a fascinating story that doesn't need fancy vocabulary and stupid analogies.

I forgave this:

"Yet, as much as the eudaemonia experienced in the hearing and the reading of its scriptures, as much even as the confidence-building of their clarity and rigor, the unique balm of Muhammad's message was that it lifted the Arabs out of an aged inferiority complex." (pg 56)

I even forgave this:

"It was then that the Arabian Peninsula disgorged an enormous portion of its people from Yemen to the perimeter of Mesopotamia: a demographic belch of historic volume." (84)

Got a little more impatient with these:

"The awe and adulation Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan's name once evoked were to be replaced by contumely and silence in almost equal portions." (93)

"Damascus, marvelously irrigated and arborescent, grew with the empire." - Arborescent, according to my dictionary, means "treelike". I think he meant "arboreous", which means surrounded by trees. (95)

"It was an ecumene in which [various goods from all over the place:] moved on camel backs and in ships' holds...." - I looked up "Ecumene" in the American Heritage dictionary, and couldn't find it. Dictionary.com didn't have it either. I don't know. (99)

Also impatient with the author's reminding us over and over and over again that he's giving CE (Common Era) dates. I get it. Please, just stop with the CE nonsense. If you suddenly switch to hijra dates, tell me. Otherwise, again, I get it!

Finally, had to abandon it entirely with one of the dumbest analogies ever (and I'm ignoring the part where he actually references Sherman's March in the American Civil War):

"Looming above Jerusalem like some divine Rubik's Cube, the Umayyad Dome of the Rock symbolized Islam as God's capstone." (100)

A Rubik's Cube? Are you friggin' kidding!?

[Toonvanelst · Rating 2 out of 5]

God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe is not a very good history book. Read it only when you have a deeper knowledge of this period of history or you will end up with a biased view of the 700 years described.

My 'danger' flag went up from the moment I read the part titled 'about the author'. D.L. Lewis previously wrote a book about antisemitism in France and British/European Imperialism/Colonialism vs African/Muslim resistance. With a background like that, you can't seriously write about the crusades or the Reconquista, or you should be a very conscious and objective historian and forget all about the other periods, make tabula rasa and start all over again. Lewis seems to mix up eras, and that is unacceptable for any historian, certainly when you tackle a touchy subject like this.

Other than this serious flaw in historical practice, the book is also very dense and even an engaged reader might lose the narrative very easily through the endless summary of facts and names. Even a trained historian like me struggles to keep track of the main characters and events. That Lewis wants to bury his reader under learned words and crafty sentences does not help at all. Except for the lesson that the Christian West supposedly was backward and the Muslim East religiously tolerant and sophisticated, the other lines of thought don't come across clear.

I couldn't shake of the feeling that the author was completely siding with the Muslim occupation (something you tend to forget when reading this book: the Muslims are the aggressors in the conflict, not the other way around). For example, when Christian kings would remove a competitor, or even indulge in fratricide, Lewis opens up his full register of condescending words. When a Muslim ruler has his opponents beheaded -and yes, they did kill off family too-, it gets nothing more than a dry notification. It gets even worse, violence by a Muslim ruler is often considered a necessary political instrument, but how is it different than what the Christian rulers did? The act is the same, but the description is not. One is political astute, the other a base murderer. To me both acts are what they are: political murder. And as a historian, I wisely keep my personal opinion to myself. Lewis makes it a very black and white account of a much more subtle history.

My advice: Read other books first (like A vanished world. Medieval Spain's golden age of enlightenment by Chris Lowney). Then, when you read this book, keep the bias in mind and don't get overwhelmed by Lewis' Chrysostom speech.

[Elijah Meeks · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the book suffers in its early history of Islam, God's Crucible does an excellent job of describing Muslim Spain and the effect it had on the formation of modern Europe and the Catholic Church. What I find most appealing about this book is that it places Islamic history within the existing framework of Medieval European history. What's especially useful in understanding early Islam is Lewis' referral to the state of contemporaneous European and Christian history and theology. Most interesting is his juxtaposition of early Christian kings, such as Charlemagne, with their Muslim contemporaries, such as Abd-al Rahman, the Caliph of Cordoba. The weakness of the book comes with the aforementioned early Islamic period as well as the late, post-Convivienca Islamic Spain, where Lewis tacks on Moses Maimonides and his philosophical fellows without properly contextualizing their contribution and place in society and instead using them as exemplary victims of Muslim fundamentalism introduced by the North African Berbers that replaced the moderate Umayyad caliphs and Taifa emirs. Still, the main lesson of the book is that fundamentalism begets fundamentalism, and as such is a timely historic text.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

What could have been did not happen. What did happen should not have been.

There is a keen sense of historical disappointment that David Levering Lewis weaves through "God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215." If only the barbaric French Christians lost the Battle of Poitiers (Tours) to those advanced Arab invaders!

OK, this probably got your attention. Many narratives that look at "the sweep of history" are unabashedly "pro-Western." No matter how barbaric Medieval Europe was, a case is made that this "conflict of many smaller states" was the competitive incubator of technological and cultural advancement while Islam could only offer stasis and eventual backwardness. Lewis doesn't buy it. He contends that cultural, commercial and scientific advancement, as well as tolerance of religious minorities, were the advantages Islam had to offer. His lab for this proof: Medieval Spain. His basis for comparison: Merovingian/Carolingian France.

Rather than succumb to "linear history," Lewis likes to dwell at its "hinge points," when things could have turned out differently if a factor was present instead of absent. Had a more assertive Ethiopian power maintained its grip on the Red Sea coastline of Arabia, perhaps islam never would have gained its first, fragile foothold when Mohammed experienced his revelation. But no greater power was there to enforce a religious orthodoxy, so in the barren desert a seed with portentous consequence was planted and took root.

The explosive rise of Islam had less to do with Arab ferocity and more to do with power filling a vacuum. Byzantium and Sassanid Persia were exhausted after a century of constant warfare, providing no force to contain the Moslem sweep coming out of the worthless wastes of Arabia--a land both "superpowers" ignored. Here Lewis lays down several chapters on Mohammed's life and the early history of Islam, the Ummayid Caliphate and the schism between Shiite and Sunni. The fact that Islam could not build a "second Roman empire" ringing the Mediterranean had more to do with political conflicts within the Caliphate and less to do with any valiant defense by a fragmented and barbaric "Christendom."

With the presence of this foreign "other" pushing into southern France, the birth of European identity came at an unpromising time. The more able strongmen who really ruled Merovingian France were able to hold their own against Islam's waning tide, but Lewis grants them little credit. The Arab failure to conquer leaves France and Church enough breathing space to make common cause, and in the simple act of building a polity turn a speed bump into a low wall.

Might makes right as Charlemagne spreads Christianity at swordpoint through Germany. (It was easier than trying to do the same in Islamic Spain.) But the peaceful pursuit of knowledge becomes a barren sprout in Charlemagne's court, while across the Pyrenees it reaches full flower under a kinder, tolerant, more multi-cultural Islamic caliphate.

Nothing lasts forever. Eventually orthodoxy and intolerance will hobble the strength of Islamic Spain, just as surely as it strengthens the petty Christian kings in the Iberian north country. The rest of the story goes downhill from there.

Lewis writes his book with a rich prose style deeply laced with well-chosen metaphors that describe much in a phrase or a sentence. Just the quality of his writing is enough to tempt a reader out of his complacent field of favorite books to try something new or different.

But Lewis will challenge the reader to reconsider the "Cross vs. Crescent" argument. Taken from the Western view, Christianity's survival against the Islamic tide is a cultural as well as a religious victory, seemingly inevitable. But history is a long and twisted path with many branches where the tale could have turned left instead of right if something different happened at the right moment. Maybe Europe would have been better off under a caliph instead of a king. Lewis raises this question with a skeptic's courage. Sadly, readers may answer this question with an understanding of today's headlines rather than yesterday's facts, making Lewis' book a hard sell indeed.

[David Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

The anti-Christian bias of Pulitzer-prize winning David Levering Lewis in his God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 is so thick that it mars the objectivity of the history, converting it into a polemic. It is so pronounced and continuous that it is safe to say it is an organizing principle of this work. The author, for example, early on reserves the term "ideology" for Christianity; rationalizes Zoroastrian persecution of Christians; and calls St. Augustine's The City of God a "great work of Christian therapy." He always finds ways to favor Islam in comparison to Christianity, and revels especially in unflattering anecdotes from Christian history. He assures the reader, for example, that Christians had already destroyed the library in Alexandria before the Muslim commander allowed it to actually be destroyed. Another example is his chosen juxtaposition of descriptors: in one breath he refers to. "Muslim purists and Catholic fanatics." Which would you rather be called, a purist or a fanatic? He dehumanizes the Christians and Westerners in his narrative. The term "housebreaking" applied to bloody conquest by the Islamic imperialists implies the Europeans were dogs being given a necessary lesson. Extreme bias for a professional, acclaimed, supposedly objective historian!

He also dismisses the technological, scientific, and cultural accomplishments of the West, assuring his readers that the Muslim civilization would surely have attained all that the West did, given a little time. At one place, the author attempts to lead the reader in a kind of contemplative reflection on Poitiers and the victory of Charles Martel against the Muslim foes, a reflection which is meant to bring us to the conclusion that Martel's victory, rather than being a true victory for the West, condemned the West to backwardness for 200 and something years. When he refers to the Arab marauders' leaders, he describes them as 'lordly' and 'distinguished.' When he describes the Europeans with whom they were doing battle, he contemptuously says the invading conquerors were 'housebreaking' the Europeans, thus lustrating Islamic imperialism. Does he really, as he claims, I wonder, find his reflection "disconcerting"? I don't think so. He bases his speculation on recent French historians. I am inclined to take this book as an instance of substantiation of what Pascal Bruckner examined in the book The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism, an exercise of civilizational self-loathing and implosion.

When I kept encountering the author's biases, I thought of laying the book aside, but then it occurred to me that history is full of polemical histories, and that we may need them in order to construct our own more "objective" histories.

Several times the author compares and contrasts what he views as Pauline Scriptural teaching on slavery versus Islamic teaching on slavery. He at one place says Paul and Augustine embrace slavery while Muslims limit it to non-Muslims captured in war. He faults the Visigoth Arians for practicing slavery, but is for the most part silent about the booming slave trade practiced by the Arab conquerors, even though slavery had for the most part died out in Europe before they encountered the dazzling sophistication of their Arab nemesis, with their booming slave trade, and were drawn into mimetic rivalry. By his treatment, the reader would little guess this.

Is Islamic doctrine morally superior to Christian doctrine on the subject of slavery? Paul classed slave-traders with those who kill their parents and he famously wrote, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus", clearly teaching ontological equal standing, doctrinally undermining any mythological ontologies that subordinate subjugated peoples as lesser beings. Paul also in Philemon interceded for Philemon's runaway slave Onesimus in the most forceful terms to personally persuade Philemon to exonerate and free Onesimus and treat him as a brother in Christ, without using ecclesio-political power to coerce Philemon to do so. Paul in this way set a greater example of non-coercive religious persuasion than Muhammad. Later, Onesimus apparently became a bishop in the early church, if we may so conclude from a reference by his contemporary, Ignatius of Antioch, and so he held the highest position of leadership in the church at that time (other than apostleship). The Christian Scriptures at least doctrinally exalt love of neighbor as yourself which also undermines erection of mythological superstructures to support institutionalization of slavery. Islamic teaching doctrinally enjoins political imposition of dhimmitude and enslavery by warfare. It is averred that "There is no coercion in religion," and yet declaring non-Muslims en-slaveable, second-class citizens, forbidden to proselytize (no free exchange, no freedom to converse and to choose for oneself), etc. is surely a form of flagrant coercion, even if the author doesn't mysteriously seem to notice that. It is strange how liberalism allies with Islam on this point of coercion against proselytization.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

We are constantly bombarded by extreme portrayals of Islam, and associated references to the "perennial" conflicts among Islam, Judaism and Christianity. When I heard about "God's Crucible" and its promise to explain the history of Islam and depict a period of cooperation among religions in Europe, I was very enthusiastic. I finally got a library copy of it, and have now managed to plow through it.

For the first third of the book, I felt like I was reading prosopography - it is dominated by a listing of names and places that can only be of interest to period scholars. The middle third picks up a bit and gets into the development of the various forces involved. Skim the first, quickly read the second, and then enjoy the last third of the book in which we learn about the dynamics behind the Islam ascendancy in Andalusia, how Charlemagne built and then squandered a proto-European confederation, and what happens when Military minds and the Catholic Church choose to rule together (not pretty).

This was not an easy read, and yet I am really glad I did finish it. A better editor would have cleaned up the sometimes jarring transitions between chapters, and might have clarified the intended audience: the book seems originally to have collected lectures addressed to academics, and then to have been repurposed and expanded for a more general audience. It ends up feeling a bit muddled, which is too bad because there is some very interesting material in there, and it could have been a more effective book. Read it anyway.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will be a review of the CD version read by Richard Allen. Hence no references to maps and a few words about the reading
Professor David Lewis' God's Crucible represents an important effort to report the history of Muslim and European contact in the 500 years between 570 and 1215. This is not intended to be an easy read. The tone is academic and the reader should be able to handle academic style and graduate level vocabulary.

The typical Western Canon implies that Western Civilization flows from the Middle East with the beginnings of farming in the Fertile Crescent, plus Egypt and continues in a near linear fashion to present day. Middle East to Greece to Rome, take slo mo for the Middle Ages (no longer Dark Ages) then Columbus, America and Voila! Here we are: Space Exploration and Smart Phones, No problems. Something of a historic version of Baseballs' Tinker to Evers to Chance only more inevitable.

Except t'were not necessarily so. Prof. Lewis makes it clear that it could have been different and that the progress was far from lineal. We could have been another outpost of the Dar el Islam. If this cosmic coin toss left us the winner or the looser is another question. Prof. Lewis may seem to be uncertain, but I do not think he fully believes that an Islamic Europe would have made for a better modern world.

Let s return to this question later.

The initial rise of the Arab/Muslim Empire is tied to the collapse of both the Roman European and the Persian Asian Empires. Into the vacuum of power came a philosophy and an army representing the peoples of the Middle East. They had learned military skills from their predecessors and took advantage of their withdrawal to build something new.

Like religious/national movements before them the new Arab/Muslim empire builders built their initial borders and added to them, ultimately coming to believe their myth and believing it their destiny to rule all.

Initially there was little to draw their attention to Europe. Europe was a cold place, peopled with a scattering of non-untied self-proclaimed kingdoms. This was a place of peoples of little or no learning, less culture and no image of themselves as the people of Europe. Europe was perhaps suitable for providing slaves and for some raiding parties but not worthy of a major invasion.
Eventually Ottoman Muslim armies would move into Eastern Europe as far as Vienna, but that is a process that would end 1000 years later and is the subject of another book.
Professor Lewis will take us through a number of smaller and mostly unsuccessful invasions along the med and the eventual over run of Spain. Ultimately the Umayyad forces would complete the construction of a Muslim Spain and crossing the Pyrenees would continue until defeated at the Battle of Tours by the Franks in 732. There is a suggestion that in the earlier portion of his study period, the Caiphate was in operational charge of these military advances. Later because of lines of communications, bureaucratic inefficiencies or competition between emerging local powers, this central control would weaken, becoming symbolic or inoperative. Hence later Muslim movement in Western Europe would have ties to intermediate capitals, the Maglev in North Africa, ultimately Moorish capitals in Spain. This break down would contribute to instabilities as Arab/Muslim Empire would go into its decline.

The Umayyad's would build Al-Andalus, Moorish Spain- a religiously tolerant, intellectually open, sophisticated culture.

From here the God's Crucible tells the story of emerging countries mostly lead by religious intolerance and greed but also by a people finding itself and making its power known. The Europinsians would become the Europeans. Their new book would be The Song of Roland, mostly a pack of lies, but such is allowed in a national myth.

The leadership of these new people would include Charles Martel and younger son Pippin the Short and his oldest son: Charlemagne, founders of the Carolingian line ruling the Franks. Perhaps the most famous of these being Emperor Charlemagne, who forcibly Christianized much of Europe as well as united it. Pippin's wife: Bertrada with the goose-foot or more simply Broadfoot Bertha will also get a substantial essay within God's Crucible with the related discussions of the issue of incestuous marriage and her role in placing Charlemagne at the head of the Carolingians.

One of the strengths of Professor Lewis's history in the number of and detail included as he gives us biographies of both Muslim and European leaders Each biography is expanded to discuss issues and problem complicating the rise or influence of the person so highlighted.. Generally we get better biographies of the Europeans.

As this 15 CD set comes to its close, there is the recounting of the collapse of Muslim Spain preceded by the end of the Umayyad's and the rise and fall of several Muslim lines, alternating between religiously tolerant and murderously minded rigidly religious. The Al-Andalus that would give way ultimately to Ferdinanad and Isabellah's forced expulsion of all Muslims (and Jews) in 1492 had long since stopped being a land tolerant college of learning.

And this brings back the question of a counterfactual Muslim Europe. The Spain of the 8th Century Visigoths and the Franks and Lombards of Europe was a squalid and unhappy place compare to the wealth and sophistication of the Visigoth. However, as Lewis's narrative rushes into what felt like an accelerated finish, he is not as clear about the benefits had there been a Muslim victory at Tours.

Al-Andalus would be the entry place for a Europe to gain a more exhaustive pharmacopeia, a number system that included a `0' and the return or Aristotelian logic. But there was no certainty or consistency in the Muslim application of power. Religious tolerance is only important to the religious minority. This tolerance would have its season under either leadership. As the Europeans came to see themselves as a Christian people, and to draw their heritage from the Greeks and Romans, the Muslim could only be invaders. People of a nation tend to be more tolerant of native tyrants than of ones belonging to an invader. The Muslim Spain that slowly fell before the returning Christian Armies was one that would repeated switch between tolerance and strict rule by Sharia and active suppression of `outsider' influence.

The later years of Al-Andulas would produce a flowering of Neoplatonist that would spread across Europe. Ibn Rushd, AKA Averroes would The Incoherence of the Incoherence wherein he argues against mysticism and in favor of strict adherence to Cause and Effect.These and other work would earn him the title of The Commentator and more graphically: "founding father of secular thought in Western Europe". Initially embraced and honored, the rise of the Ash'arite Muslims a sect that rejected modern thought and outsider influence- reduced his influence and ultimately his would leave Spain for Morocco.

Initially there was little to recommend an autonomous Europe, but as the Arab/Muslims began to collapsed into a large but only symbolically central power, the leading edge in learning, banking and weaponry shifted to the still evolving Europeans. By the 12th Century, the symbol of European power would be the steel encased knight. Something the Muslim Army did not field. Again in 1571, at Laplanto a barely organized Europe would take into the fight a technically superior Navy.

The European tradition of learning would have periods of tight control and leaps of freedom, but this new Europe would became a place of ideas and innovations even as the Arab/Muslim word ceased to be one.

Much of God's Crucible is a history of military action. Yet there is little discussion of military tactics or technology. The `Steel Encased" Knight would be his symbol for the European Armies but what of the balance between Horse and foot soldier- innovative deployments and systems of command, logistics and intelligence? My copy was read to me, so I can make no comments about maps. It is known that the Ottoman Turks would come to admire and copy both European tactics and technology. Was the history of these admirable qualities apparent in the Spanish Reconquista?

Professor Lewis' God's Crucible does have a certain romance for the potential of a Muslim Europe. As rushed as the ending is it is also clear that the potential represented by the best in Muslim dynasties' was never more than one new call for a return to the ways of ancient worship. The result of these cyclical returns to the stricter interpretations of Sharia was never a liberal, open or forward moving society.

[nusaybah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Annoyingly pretentious and the author seems mildly self-obsessed, more concerned with florid sentences than factual accuracy. There were huge sections of the book where every sentence followed the structure of ‘Name-Date-Action-Name-Date’, which made it quite dry and dense. I think this book suffered from an identity crisis, swinging between scathing pop-history in some sections and dry reference books in others. I find myself left wanting more.

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The creation of Europeans as a concept that started to crystalize very early in the middle ages note it wasn't a real thing to the Romans. Good History of another problematic concept. The argument is an updating of the 19th-century thesis that the imagined community of Europe found its origins in reacting to Islam in the early and high middle ages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6UTt...

[Alex Telander · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a time when Western involvement in the Middle East seems almost certain to last for the rest of this generation's lives, it is more important than ever to understand why. The Middle East is still a very misunderstood place, of whose deep and complex history most have little inkling; a history without which the development of disciplines like medicine, mathematics and astronomy would be severely retarded. God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 by David Levering Lewis, a professor at New York University, is a book that takes readers back to the very beginning of Islam, and the specific instances that led to its creation.

Lewis begins with the fall and breakup of the Roman Empire, explaining how the western known world devolved from a seemingly unstoppable empire to crumbling and divided countries. Lewis sets the stage with the western chunk of the Roman Empire being overrun by invading barbarian hordes, and the more successful eastern part consisting of Byzantium and nearby Persia. At a time of growing interest in Christian and Jewish beliefs, along with the less popular Zoroastrian faith, as well as other smaller cults, the Middle East seemed ready for a new prophet. In the beginning prophets are rarely seen as the great, world-altering people that they are, and Lewis points out that such was the case with Muhammad. He gives us a fascinating look into a religion and culture that has captivated and converted the hearts and minds of a considerable portion of the world population.

Along with the development of the growing faith of Islam, Lewis goes into detail on the genesis of the Muslim Empire, as it swept across the western world country by country, converting and conquering, ruthless in its unstoppable pace. Lewis does a good job of providing a quick history lesson of each people that the Muslim army faced in its conquest, but fails somewhat in going into depth on the complex culture of the Muslim Empire as it grew and developed over the centuries, focusing more on the important battles, winners and losers. Nevertheless, God's Crucible is a very important book to the modern world, one that at the very least gives some context to the status quo.


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[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate walking away from a book, but I finally had to admit defeat today. Lewis clearly knows his stuff; this is well researched material. But this book is DENSE, and more effort than I felt I wanted to give. He expects the reader to keep track of an endless host of historical figures who disappear and reappear through the narrative, and I have to say it: his writing is DRY.

“Not only were the Jews not amenable to voluntary conversion, their religion exerted more than a negligible appeal among the kingdom’s common folk. Their existence outside what the church fathers called the societas fidelium was both an affront to the consolidating exigencies of the monarchy and a troubling encouragement to recalcitrant Arian nobles, of whom there remained a considerable number after the Third Toledo Council.” (Pg115)

Seriously? I know what all those words mean, thankyouverymuch, but putting them all in one sentence had me struggling to stick with the narrative. The worst kind of academic writing.

So the research is thorough and I wish I’d even made it to the part where he starts drawing some conclusions, but 115 pages in and I’m bored out of my skull.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

So many of the negative reviews implied revisionism. I don't see it. Everything in the book is something I've seen plenty of times in other books. It's no revelation, for instance, that the Islamic world was generally in advance of most of the Christian world at this time. It is certainly not a revelation that the Muslims were far more tolerant of the believers of other faiths. That these things have changed does not mean they did not exist. I didn't love the book. I found it confusing at times. But I definitely did not see Lewis as the supposed bigot some reviewers saw him as. He speculates about what might have happened if the Muslims had "won." Many things would have changed including, perhaps, the never-to-exist religious wars. But we can never know. They might have become intolerant. He certainly doesn't wish for mass conversion of the Christians! He just believes that perhaps the world would have been a more tolerant and a more enlightened place.

[Jeff Rudisel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great history, from a perhaps somewhat different perspective than you are used to.

[Mollie Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lewis tries to look at the clash between Islam and Christianity during the Middle Ages from a new (non-Western) perspective. According to European myth-makers and France's epic The Song of Roland, Christianity valiantly and miraculously repelled the barbaric, heathen Saracens and rescued Europe from Islam. According to Lewis, Europe and Dark-Age Christianity stood to gain quite a lot from the tolerant, thriving, accelerated culture of al-Andalus. Arab scholars maintained and translated countless Classical works that would have otherwise been lost forever, and they introduced Europe to such concepts as algebra, medicine, pharmacology, rational skepticism, and paper. It's undeniable that Muslim Spain was centuries ahead of Christian Europe. But it's also indisputable that the tables did eventually turn. The reason, Lewis hints, is militarism. Just as the Crusades and blood-thirsty expansion retarded Christian civilization, so did jihad eventually lead to the demise of a tolerant and intellectually curious Islam.

Lewis perhaps simplifies things and overstates his case on several occasions. For example, al-Andalus also introduced the concept of sumptuary laws, which kept Jews repressed and in ghettos throughout Europe for hundreds of years. Also, the Roman Catholic Church was a force for good as well.

I picked up this book after returning from Morocco, where I was inspired and intrigued by Moorish culture. I wanted to learn more about Islam and about the events that brought the Moors to Europe in 711 (and turned them away again 500 years later). This book definitely succeeded on both counts.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lewis sets the stage for the explosive growth of Islam by placing it in the context of 800 years of almost unbroken warfare between the Greek/Roman/Byzantine and the Sassanid/Persion/Iranian Empires.

There is perhaps a Western Judeo-Christian tendency to view Islam as a young, perhaps immature religion since it only began in 622 CE. But this does not reflect the complicated early history of Christianity which only began to have a significant place in world history after Theodosius made it the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380. It still went through centuries of strife before anything even faintly resembling a monolithic religion was formed. Nestorianism, Monophysitism, Arianism, and other forms could have become the predominant flavor; only in retrospect do these other varieties of Christianity seem like trivial heresies but any could have easily become predominant and this is not to mention what became the Orthodox vs Catholic divide. So Christianity was in flux until around 800 CE when Charlemagne defeated the Arian Lombards and obliterated the pagan Saxons. Islam suffered less from political divisions and religious schism (though not completely) and quickly became a major unified force in world history.

[Andrew Rothstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

How did Europe and the Islamic world as we now recognize it come to be? How did they influence each other's evolution? What are the roots of competition between Islam and Chritianity? How did they interact with Judaism?

These driving questions are addressed in this extraordinarily researched book. Some of the best sections describe Mohammad and the rise of Islam, the Islamic occupation of Iberia, and the rise of Charlemagne and he relationship with the Catholic Church.

The battles are horrible, but the insights important.

I would have rated the book a 5 except for two aspects: Lewis writing approach is over stylized and he is too fond of rarely used words (thus sending the average reader to the dictionary; sometimes he bogs down his story with minor players and with so many names that it loses focus.

Good for speed readers.

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in the 1990s when imagined communities as an idea was still a little inchoate. The book spends a lot of time on skirmishes in Spain and France between Christians and newly unified Abassidds and Ummayids over Al Andalus. The battle of Poitiers being a turning point seen from hindsight as the high watermark of Muslim expansion into Europe. Lewis is fascinated by the hypothesis that European identity (later white identity) was formed in reaction to this incursion. Muslims were the first other to define Europeans as an imagined community and oddly enough became a trope of the far right because a scary other is an easy trope to whip up some in-group cohesion for an imagined community. Works every time. A fascinating book in the 1990s and relevant today in imagined communities everywhere and their bogeymen.

[Fred Kohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the first 300 pages or so of this book, and had it stopped here I would have given it 4 stars. The author's florid writing style, which bothered some reviewers, for me made what could have been otherwise dry material more interesting. The last 100 pages or so I felt was rather disorganized. Throughout the book I was wondering about the lack of mention of the philosophical and scientific influences of Islam in Europe, only to find them all crammed in a single chapter towards the end of the book. It was as though the author suddenly realized he'd forgotten to say anything about al-Kindi and had to make up for it. It did work (sort of), but I wish I'd gotten a heads up about the author's intention to organize his material in this way earlier in the book.

[Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

It started out interesting, but then started feeling a little too stuffy and dry. While the subject is of critical importance today, the way in which the history is told is also critical. Gave up before getting halfway.

[عبد الله القصير · Rating 3 out of 5]

لم أعرف بالضبط ما الذي قصده المؤلف باسم الكتاب! بوتقة الرب؟ هل يقصد بها البحر المتوسط وما يحيط به من دول إسلامية ومسيحية بالعصر الوسيط؟ أو يقصد بالبوتقة الأندلس وخليط سكانها من مسلمين ويهود ومسيحيين. على كل، قبل ما أقرأ الكتاب كنت اتوقع أن الكتاب سيتكلم عن علاقة العالم الإسلامي بأوروبا على طول السبع مئة سنة الأولى، لكن لم يكن هذا مقصد المؤلف، أو لم يكن الكتاب بهذه الرحابة. الكتاب يبدأ من الحروب البيزنطية الفارسية التي حصلت في بداية بعثة الرسول عليه السلام ثم يواصل مع الفتوحات الإسلامية وعلاقة الفاتيحين مع البيزنطيين حتى يأتي على فتح الأندلس. فتح الأندلس وعلاقة الدولة الأموية بالأندلس مع الأوروبيين هي التي أخذت الحيز الكبير من الكتاب.
المؤلف يرى أن هذه العلاقة هي التي عرفت أوروبا بنفسها من خلال اختلافها مع الأندلسيين وثقافتهم. فهذه العلاقة وضحت الاختلاف بينهم وبين الأخرين والتي بدورها ساعدت على تكوين الشخصية الأوروبية من خلال شخصيات أوروبية كبيرة كشارلمارتيل وشارلمان والدولة الكرولنجية. ومعارك كبيرة مثل بلاط الشهداء .

المؤلف يفصل بعركة بلاط الشهداء ويرى أنها ليست بتلك الأهمية كما يقول بعض المؤرخين الغربيين فهي معركة من كثير من المعارك التي دارت بين الطرفين . ويقول أنه حتى لو انتصر المسلمين وتغير حال أوروبا بذلك الوقت فالتغير سيكون للأفضل وليس الأسوأ باعتبار تحضر المسلمين بذلك الوقت وثقافتهم المتطورة.
يعيب الكتاب بالنسبة لي هو تفصيله للأحداث والشخصيات سواء من جهة الأندلس أو أوروبا والتي جعلتني أرتبك وأتيه بين العدد الكبير من الأسماء والأحداث.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

The interesting subject matter is the reason I've been wanting to read this book for a while, and it's the reason I finished it, but unfortunately the book itself is poorly done. It's littered with small factual errors, which makes it hard to trust the author, and the book is full of long sentences with unnecessarily flowery verbiage. By my count the word "panjandrum" appears four separate times. The book is also a bit unfocused: after several chapters of background on the Roman/Byzantine era and the birth of Islam in Arabia, the rest is mostly about the first 500 years of Muslim Spain, plus the 8th century Frankish state(s) nearby. It's an interesting topic and potentially worth reading for that reason, but unfortunately it's not a great book.

[Moataz Alabdullah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is hands down the best historical analysis I've ever read!

[Elliott Bignell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a striking case of a writer sympathetic to Islam but not lending tacit credence to supernatural explanations of its origins. It is also one of the small crop of books finished since 9-11 but conceived before. As such, it is a refreshing and rational examination of the explosive rise of Islam and the circumstances which permitted its success, the weaknesses which led its expansion to stall at the Pyrenees and Bosphorus, and the legacy of Russell's "brilliant civilisation" in Iberia. The writer has a vocabulary and is not afraid to use it, and the language is fresh and immediate, sometimes daunting in its descriptive fluency. It is not boring, but at the same time it is not neutral. We meet the Hammer and the Falcon, feral tribes of Saxons and the Almoravids, before whom even fellow Berbers quail. The author writes with force and authority, but not for academics. This book was written for you and I. (And I'm not sure about you...)

Lewis's account of Muhammad (pbuh) is not the usual hagiography but a cool look at the Prophet and statesman and the circumstances of his ascendance. Lewis informs us that the People of the Elephant were thwarted not by supernatural birds but by a Persian intervention. At the same time, the constraints on Arab expansion were collapsing as the Ghassanids weakened and the Byzantine and Sassanid empires fought each other to the point of collapse. Muhammad arrived at the right time for the Arabs to expand into a vacuum. Islam was a revolutionary creed that arrived in a society due a revolution, and an empire that was birthed as two empires on its borders failed. All it needed was an invitation, and it received that at the pleasure of Jews, Zoroastrians and heretical Christians who knew a better deal when they saw one. All the same, Lewis does not wrap the Caliphs in pink candyfloss. Three of the first four "rightly guided" Caliphs died violently, and the exclusion of females from public office and common prayer space, never stipulated by Islam, was interpreted into it in the earliest years.

Lewis's Ummah, therefore, is virtuous by comparison rather than in principle. While the Muslims used the example of A'isha to proscribe women in politics, the Franks used Plectrude to the same end. While the Muslims taxed dhimmi, Charlemagne was conducting a genocide against the animistic and ferocious Saxons, burning the totemic Irminsul and confronting an entire people with conversion or the sword. Here we see the birth of the Crusading spirit. Charlemagne's legacy was a Frankish hegemony martially competent to resist further expansion by Islam, but Lewis rightly asks if that did not leave it the worse off.

It occurs to me that without the Muslims and the Americas we would have nothing to eat or perhaps wear. Aside from Aristotle and Plato, Islam also brought to Spain the iconic Merino sheep and henna for their hair, plus dates, citrus, almonds, apricots, saffron, mulberry, sugar cane and rice. In place of paella one would today have a bowl of marine invertebrates. Considering that the later Almoravids were prone to eating nothing but barley and meat, this largesse seems fortunate as well as generous. Spanish, compounding the cultural debt, contains roughly 10% words of Arabic origin today. And this only scratches the surface - the connection is disputed by other historians, but were it not for the transmission of Greek thought and the philosophy of ben Maimon, ibn Rushd and ibn Sina there would most probably have been no Scholastic movement, no Renaissance, no Reformation and no Enlightenment. Europe overhauled its moribund Islamic rival several centuries ago, prior to its own bout of suicidal madness in the last century, but it did so by standing on the shoulders of the Muslim and Jewish giants of ha Sefarad.

Hroswitha of Gandersheim referred to Muslim Cordoba as the "Ornament of the World". Lewis brings a powerful, modern voice to harmonise with her. The flowering of Muslim Iberia was short, degenerated into fundamentalism and the insanity of intra-Islamic fratricide and finally yielded to the horror of the Inquisition. The confrontation across the Pyrenees does much to explain the spitefulness and inferiority complex of Latin Christianity. Yet Lewis's Toledan conveyor belt brought us more of civilisation than we like to remember. Its passing is a tragedy, for all that it also made way for the modern world.

[Mariah Oleszkowicz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've always wanted to visit Spain, now I really want to go to Cordoba specifically.

I really enjoyed this book and I would have given it more stars if Lewis had included some more maps and perhaps a timeline. So much happens, it would be nice to see a quick visual for reference.

There is so much history and vocabulary in this book that I was unfamiliar with so it was a bit of a hard read with a lot of googling between paragraphs. It also started off with a bit of a thesis vibe but transitioned into more of a history which made it hard to get into at first. However, there is so much I learned or things that he condensed nicely that I need a place to write down my favorites. So I'm going to use this as the place to do it. A list of my favorite things I learned from this book:

Muhammad's wife, Khadija, was a wealthy and independent businesswoman whom Muhammad respected for her economic insight before they were married. She handled their business affairs (though with Muhammad as a front often bc of the status of women) and he was happy with that. The subjugation of women came later. She believed in his visions and provided for him so that he could seek guidance.

Zoroastrianism was a monotheistic religion concurrent with Judaism that was prevelant

Like the Bible, the Qur'an was written after the prophet's death.

Shi'ism - Fatima (Muhammad's daughter) and Ali's descendants as the true upholders of the faith. Solidified when Husayn (their son) was killed (p97).

Sunnis - Leadership belonged to the most qualified, regardless of family heritage (p93)

The battle of Poitiers in 732 was won by the Franks. Had it been the opposite, "...astronomy, trigonometry, Arabic numerals, the corpus of Greek philosophy. Europe would have gained 267 years...we might have been spared the wars of religion." (p174)

Muslims were tolerant conquerors. They did not believe in forcing converts (plus non-muslims paid more in taxes, and muslims could not enslave muslims... unlike Christians). They allowed the cities they conquered to go on, even the churches continued, they just shared or built their own mosques and implemented their tax system.

Berbers held an even more strict version of Islam that Sunni and Shia - Kharijism. "The stem of Islamic fundamentalisms to come" (p189)

The decline of the Arab empire in Spain had to do with ethnic and religious differences between Muslims; and less taxes as conversions to Islam increased.

An interesting side note: due to the hardening of Catholic tenets: polygamy was outlawed. Although still subjugated, women gained more power in this system bc divorce was also difficult. On the Muslim side, women had to be more careful with their power because they could be divorced or replaced.

Overall impressions:
Muslims were more about education all people - the written word.
Both Islam and Catholicism were very fractured.
The pope did not have a lot of power until Charlemagne.
So much opportunity and learning was lost with the destruction of Arab libraries on the Iberian continent.

I would like to become more familiar with the tribes of Europe before 700. There are so many names for the same groups of people, its hard to keep them straight. I also need to read up on Charlemagne. I liked learning about the history of his family and where they came from. I didn't really know much about Pippin at all before this.

And again, I would like to go to Cordoba.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of the book implies an overarching thesis about a clash-of-civilizations encounter between Islam and Christian Europe resulting in « the making of Europe ». But what the book really is is a compendium (though an impressive one) of previously told and well-rehearsed histories (some reaching back into the 19th, and even 18th-c., hello Gibbon), primarily regarding the birth of Islam in Arabia and the history of al-Andalus. It is dense in facts but lacks a unifying focus.

Lewis emerges as a powerful synthesizer of widely available information, but not as an original mind. His historical sweep is too broad to allow him any precise and innovative exposition, and he is also unable to conceptually limit his scope in any useful manner, touching upon intellectual history, military history, dynastic struggles, and theological debates from a bird’s eye perspective and in equally hurried ways. As a result, the book reads like several Encyclopedia Britannica entries patched together.

And yet, despite Lewis’ attempt to condense everything known about Islam and Europe, there are many holes and blind spots in the plot: because of Lewis’ focus on al-Andalus, he almost entirely ignores the Abbasids and their successors in Baghdad during the same period, including the famed Salah al-Din (Saladin), who appears once in the entire book. Similarly the First Crusade — certainly a defining event in the history of Muslim-Christian conflict — is only referred to in passing.

The book would have gained to be edited and reframed as a history of Muslim Spain - itself a complex and multilayered subject (though not a new one).

[Kaiser Dias · Rating 5 out of 5]

A história do Islã clara e detelhada
O livro é muito bom. O autor explica desde a guerra entre o Império Romano Oriental (Bizantino) e o Império Sassânida (Persa) até o colapso do Império Árabe, passando pelo declínio de Constantinopla, a conquista e ocaso da Espanha muçulmana e a fundação da França.
Tudo é descrito em detalhes mas com clareza e simplicidade.
O único porém é o capítulo final que é bastante corrido em comparação com os outros. Fica parecendo que o escritor se encheu do tema e quis finalizar logo.
Em certo ponto também há uma atenção exclusiva à história de Al-andaluz enquanto os acontecimentos no resto do Império Árabe são deixados de lado, particularmente durante o período Abássida. Como o subtítulo é "a formação da Europa", esta abordagem até se justifica, mas com todo o plano amplo que era mostrado até então, ficou um gostinho de quero mais.

[Genni · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to return this book, but basically it would seem that Lewis has a problem with Poitiers. He wants to show that Islam was culturally "higher" and when the tide turned in favor of the West, the West consequentially lost out when they were not conquered. This is entirely subjective, and as such, provides an interesting take on history, but "proves" nothing really.

Aside from this, it is a fairly straight-forward account of Islam's presence in Europe and contains some writing worth reading.

[Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you're truly interested in this period of Islam and Europe, this book is fine. The audiobook edition suffers from an absence of maps to visualize the areas being discussed, and many of the names of Muslim leaders and long gone historical areas were unfamiliar to me, and therefore sections of this book were difficult to retain. It reads like a history textbook, and in audiobook form, a lack of supplemental information and visual aids makes it more difficult than a text version.

[Rose Zamy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took a while to get into. And then, to my astonishment. . . it became a page-turner! I was fascinated, wanted to know how things turned out for the states, the leaders involved. I did find it fascinating, and highly educational. In fact, it has prompted me to begin reading "HOuse of Wisdom", since we are talking about the same subject to a great degree.