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The fascinating, little-known story of the interaction between Islam and the West during the time of Harun al-Rashid, the caliph of The Thousand and One Nights; his Western contemporary Charlemagne; and the Byzantine empire in the late eighth and early ninth centuries.
As Islam spread out of the Arabian peninsula, it quickly conquered lands from the eastern Mediterranean across north Africa all the way to Spain. In the West, the kingdom of the Franks stopped the Islamic advance. In the east, Islam was kept in check by the Byzantine empire, successor to the Roman empire, with its capital in Istanbul.
The Caliph`s Splendor is the story of the interaction among these kingdoms and empires in the 8th and 9th centuries. The central figure of the book is the caliph who built his capital in Baghdad indeed, built the city itself. His name in Harun al-Rashid, and he is the caliph who figures in the most famous book of Arab literature in the West, The Thousand and One Nights (also called The Arabian Nights). His court was the most splendid in the world, far surpassing that of his contemporary Charlemagne or those of the pope or the emperor in Constantinople.
Benson Bobrick tells the story of this period of history, nearly forgotten in the West, when Christianity and the new religion of Islam co-existed, sometimes peacfully, sometimes not, during what we often think of as "The Dark Ages." In fact there was much learning in Baghdad, where civilization flourished under one of the most dynamic rulers in the history of Islam, the central character of this book, who is brought to life here for Western readers.ISBN - 9781416567622
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Pages : 304
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