(++) Islam: A Short History (2000 Armstrong), non-fiction

Islam: A Short History (2000) is a non-fiction book by Karen Armstrong.

Abstract

"No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular Western imagination as an extreme faith that promotes authoritarian government, female oppression, civil war, and terrorism. The author's short history offers a vital corrective to this narrow view. The distillation of years of thinking and writing about Islam, it demonstrates that the world's fastest-growing faith is a much richer and more complex phenomenon than its modern fundamentalist strain might suggest. This book begins with the flight of Muhammad and his family from Medina in the seventh century and the subsequent founding of the first mosques. It recounts the origins of the split between Shii and Sunni Muslims, and the emergence of Sufi mysticism; the spread of Islam throughout North Africa, the Levant, and Asia; the shattering effect on the Muslim world of the Crusades; the flowering of imperial Islam in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries into the world's greatest and most sophisticated power; and the origins and impact of revolutionary Islam. It concludes with an assessment of Islam today and its challenges."--Publisher description.

Editions

Published in New York, NY: Modern Library, 2000.

Translations

• L'Islam = Islam: A Short History (2001 @2000 Armstrong / Cossiga), book (Italian ed.)

• El Islam = Islam: A Short History (2001 @2000 Armstrong / Ramos), book (Spanish ed.)

• Kleine Geschichte des Islam = Islam: A Short History (2001 @2000 Armstrong / Tree), book (German ed.)

• Islam: geschiedenis van een wereldgodsdienst = Islam: A Short History (2001 @2000 Armstrong / Lachmann), book (Dutch ed.)

• Sepintas sejarah Islam = Islam: A Short History (2002 @2000 Armstrong / Rini, Abdullah), book (Indonesian ed.)

• Krótka historia islamu = Islam: A Short History (2004 @2000 Armstrong / Włodarczyk), book (Polish ed.)

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Table of contents

• 1. Beginnings : The prophet (570-632) ; The Rashidun (632-661) ; The first fitnah
• 2. Development : The Umayyads and the second fitnah ; The religious movement ; The last years of the Umayyads (705-750) ; The Abbasids: The high caliphal period (750-935) ; The esoteric movements
• 3. Culmination : A new order (935-1258) ; The crusades ; Expansion ; The Mongols (1220-1500)
• 4. Islam triumphant : Imperial Islam (1500-1700) ; The Safavid empire ; The Moghul empire ; The Ottoman empire
• 5. Islam agonistes : The arrival of the west (1750-2000) ; What is a modern Muslim state? ; Fundamentalism ; Muslims in a minority ; The way forward -- Key figures in the history of Islam -- Glossary of Arabic terms -- Suggestions for further reading.