Michael Conniff

“Ibn al-Zubayr’s genius was to recognise, as Constantine had recognised long before him, that any lord of a great empire who claimed God’s favour must ensure that the basis of that favour stood rock solid. Military action alone would never serve to bring the fitna to an end. Only a framework of doctrines that all the combatants could accept as authentic and bestowed of God had any hope of achieving that.”
― Tom Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire

“The way Guy sees it, he is like one of those aging souls who find themselves the last fluent speaker of an obscure regional language. In conversation, he has a habit of recalling the names of all the blues players who have died in recent years: Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, Etta James, James Cotton, Bobby Bland, and many others. “All of ’em gone.”
― David Remnick, Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music

“Out of the scattered flotsam and jetsam of beliefs left scattered by the great floodtide of Arab conquests, something coherent—something manifestly God-stamped—would have to be fashioned: in short, a religion.”
― Tom Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire

“Ram home the point that he had authentically been a Messenger of God, and anything that could be attributed to him would perforce have to be accepted by the faithful as a truth descended from heaven. “Those”
― Tom Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire