Brendan’s Reviews > A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity > Status Update
Brendan
is on page 105 of 960
“Mu’awiya’s achievement was to reestablish the empire created by the conquests on a foundation sufficiently viable for it to last for two full centuries. As we have seen, the key geopolitical change was that the state was now ruled from a center outside Arabia, from one of the conquered territories [Syria] where fiscal and military power were concentrated. This shift accelerated a gradual evolution in the
— Aug 08, 2026 05:07PM
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Brendan
is on page 175 of 960
“As the language of the conquerors, Arabic was the language of power and prestige, and sooner or later it became the language of opportunity for anyone aspiring to political, military, bureaucratic, cultural, or commercial success. And yet at first it was only the language of a small minority in comparison to the masses speaking Persian, Aramaic, Coptic, and the like. [The later coming of the Arab nomads], in turn,
— Aug 10, 2026 09:00PM
Brendan
is on page 76 of 960
“We have indirect but telling evidence of the imaginative impact of Muhammad’s religion on the Arabs. After his death, and perhaps even before, one form taken by the short-lived rejection of Islam in Arabia was the appearance of no fewer than five false prophets—false, that is to say, in the eyes of our Muslim sources. There was one in the Yemen, one in Yamama, two—including a woman—among the nomads of
— Aug 05, 2026 08:19PM
Brendan
is on page 30 of 960
“It was the lowlands of Mesopotamia, irrigated by the Tigris and the Euphrates and inhabited by Aramaic-speaking peasants, that provided the [Persian] empire with its fiscal sinews—its tax power. Mesopotamia lived on borrowed rainfall brought to it by rivers rising in eastern Anatolia. As long as it lasted, this combination of highland manpower and lowland tax power provided a firm foundation for an empire based
— Aug 03, 2026 08:36PM
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Aug 08, 2026 05:08PM
character of the state that had already begun under the caliphs in Medina, as it became less like the polity that Muhammad had ruled and more like the imperial states that the Muslims had defeated.”
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“The relative stability of the Caliphate in its first couple of centuries is also evident in the decline in the proportion of caliphs meeting violent deaths and the consensus that the realm they ruled was indivisible. These precious centuries before political disintegration set in were crucial for the future of the Muslim world. As we will see, they provided a framework conducive to the spread of Islam and Arabic and to the formation of Islamic civilization around them. By the time the initial political unity of the caliphate came to an end, this new civilization was already firmly in place, its future as secure as anything can be in human affairs.”