| Title | : | In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0385531354 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780385531351 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 526 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2012 |
No less significant than the collapse of the Roman Republic or the Persian invasion of Greece, the evolution of the Arab empire is one of the supreme narratives of ancient history, a story dazzlingly rich in drama, character, and achievement. Just like the Romans, the Arabs came from nowhere to carve out a stupefyingly vast dominion—except that they achieved their conquests not over the course of centuries as the Romans did but in a matter of decades. Just like the Greeks during the Persian wars, they overcame seemingly insuperable odds to emerge triumphant against the greatest empire of the day—not by standing on the defensive, however, but by hurling themselves against all who lay in their path.
In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire Reviews
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What a controversially exciting book for the Muslims of the world. Its an honour to get a serious scholar like Tom Holland actually researching the history of the Muslims and presenting theories that help fill out many gaps in the known Muslim history. Read on if you are slightly concerned about the various claims put together by the Ulema about the authenticity of the Quran
guaranteed by Allah; read on if you want to know why there is a period of almost 200 years of literacy silence after the death of Muhammed; read on if you are naive enough to believe that there were no factions during and after the life of Muhammed; keep reading to learn about the great Ummayid dynasty and the machinations of their most illustrious Khalifa Abd Al Malik, enlighten yourself if you think that Islam is any different from the Roman, Persian or Christian empires preceding it; read and learn about the concept of jihad; absorb the effects of what a serious piece of historical history should look like. I wish we had one historian within the Islamic domain with balls enough to tackle such interesting issues instead of hiding behind the huge and comfortable but undefinable 'wall of faith'.
This book is the serious version of Salman's Rushdie's Satanic verses, with a lot of conjecture but without any cheap or dirty fantasy analogies. Is there any scholar in the Muslim domain who can stand up and issue a serious rebuttal to this book or are we going to have to rely on some Western scholar to help us out yet again? I have asked Zia Uddin Sardar to reflect.
I have just read a pretty damning review by Zia Uddin Sardar in which he tries to take Tom's effort apart. But the issue is that history is not Zia's area of speciality. What is badly needed is a Muslim historian adept in global history and then handling these questions with some level of respect.
Tom concludes in the end that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword. I think Muslims have to rise to the challenge again. -
I appreciate Holland gift for telling history but, most of the book is about other empires and other faiths. The research is excellent and writing fine. I agree on the importance of context. But, the part about Arabia seemed weaker than generously represents sections on Rome and Persia.
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After hearing an interview with the author, I decided to read this, not out of any particular interest in Islam, but because of my curiosity for the origins of things. In that respect, In the Shadow of the Sword did not disappoint. As best I can tell, Tom Holland deserves to be commended for his research. His writing, on the other hand, leaves a little to be desired.
The book spans thousands of years, and in presenting his history, Holland often weaves together events that occurred many, many years apart. In doing so, he often left this reader confused about the timeline. While the book progressed in more or less a linear fashion, it often felt a little disorganized and disjointed. The same could be said for many of Holland's lengthy, twisting and winding sentences. By the time the end of a sentence was reached, so many clauses had been introduced that it was no longer clear what it was trying to convey and had to be read again.
Despite its flaws, In the Shadow of the Sword is a rewarding read for those who don't mind slogging through the history. -
I've read all of Tom Holland's books to date, but this one has proved the most controversial by far. It recounts the birth of the three great Abrahamic religions in late-antiquity, but predictably, given the current intellectual climate, it's his musings on the third, Islam, that has attracted the most ire. I read one review in particular, from a distinguished scholar that derided Holland's book in such excoriating terms as to make me take particular notice.
That review struck me at the time as having a more political agenda than its author was prepared to admit, and now, having read Holland's book I feel sure of it. I am no historian, nor yet an Arabic scholar, but one thing I do know: '...Shadow Of The Sword' is far from the sensationalist, Islamophobic tome that Glen Bowersock suggests. On the contrary, all of Holland's assertions seem well researched, fair minded and posed neither dogmatically nor idealistically. In short, Holland comes across as the historian, whereas Bowersock's review reeks of somebody afraid to rock the boat.
Besides all of that 'ITSOTS' is a fascinating history of a little-known (for me anyway) period. Holland's treatment of the religions is never less than respectful. The only point where he parts company with the faithful is in his refusal to accept divine intervention as history. Fair enough, I'd say. -
"In the Shadow of the Sword" by Tom Holland is an overview of the predecessors of Islam and Islam's first hundred years. The first 75% of the book covers the centuries immediately before Islam (up to about the year 610) and the last 25% covers Mohammed, the Quran, and the first century of Islamic expansion. Holland's premise is that Islam's birth was more of an evolution than a revolution - that Islam was in continuity with what went before and around it.
Given his premise, Holland focuses on the Roman and Persian Empires, on Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity, and, somewhat, on the local religious practices in Arabia. The implication is that Islam is a unique, hybrid mix of all these influences. In contrast to Christianity - which had Judaism as its primary source - Islam had multiple sources.
This book would have been better if Holland had done a better job "connecting the dots" between Islam and its preceding influences. It's mostly left to the reader to make the connections. A reader (like myself) who is not very familiar with Islam will be unaware of those influences and connections.
It also would have been better if more details about Mohammed had been included. After reading this book I still don't have a clear picture of Mohammed.
Holland attributes the success of Islamic colonialism to the declines of the war-weary Roman and Persian Empires, as well as, to the Black Death which had decimated the Indigenous peoples prior to Islamic invasion.
Overall, a decent, if somewhat dry, overview of the evolution of Islam.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Notes:
Audiobook:
Narrated by: Steven Crossley
Length: 18 hours and 11 minutes
Release Date: 2015-05-12
Publisher: Tantor Audio -
A book of two halves, both equally compelling. The opening chapters give us the overview of the Roman and Persian worlds in the closing centuries of antiquity, told with Tom Holland's usual flamboyant narrative style which few history writers can match. It seemlessly blends big picture analysis with fascinating detail to give a highly enjoyable romp through the period. The conventional history of Islam's origins is laid out in similar style along with a valuable insight into the Jewish experience of this turbulent time.
We then move into the more critical second half of the book which re-examines and asks probing questions about the existant sources for the beginnings of Islam. It is an analysis which in the author's own words leaves more questions than answers and if the alternative view of Islam's origins is a little unconvincing, it is nevertheless plausible. The final chapters which chart the first century of Islam under the Umayyad Caliphs give a great insight into the battle for the spirtual and political legacy of the Prophet between those who sought to rule in his name.
All in all - a stonking read. -
I expected much better from Tom Holland!
I don't have enough background in history to comment upon the exact coloring of the text but I got the feeling that the author was not entirely objective in the historical account. I found that the author was too critical of the actions of Muslims. E.g.
While on the other hand, there is a subtle, yet evident and pervasive, sense of praise of the actions of the Roman Empire. E.g.
Raids by Muslims are "vengeful and savage" while those by Romans (Christians) are "stunning military comebacks". These are but a few examples that hint a more biased account than one would come to expect from a renowned historian.
The author is quick to denounce the claimed miracles of Islam or any other non-Christian faith in the book. However, the story of the seven Christian sleepers is presented in a different light. The author does not claim the story to be true, but just presents the story as a popularly known fact in those times. Clear bias would have come out if the author would have provided clear comments supporting the story. There is a more implicit bias here. By not critiquing the story, the author gives an impression of accepting the story to be true. Actions of the Romans during the time of Decius are described as "persecution of the Church had attained a veritable peak of savagery" while the Church's own actions are treated in more sympathetic terms "The notion that there existed such a thing as “paganism” gave to Christians what any great army of conquest marching into enemy territory, trusting to its size and its superior fire-power, will always looks to find: a single body of adversaries that could be pinned down, brought to battle, and given a decisive knock-out blow."
To mimic the author's tone in the book - Can we then treat this as a reliable account of the origins of Islam? Apart from the obvious flaws (of spending too much time in setting the stage than in actual perusal of early years of Islam) the real fault of the book lies in the biased presentation of the stories of different faiths. The book fails, not due to the facts that it purports to present, but due to the questionable intentions of writing the book. -
A history of the Middle East in late antiquity: the decline and fall of the Roman empire, the rise and fall of the Persian ditto, the spread of Christianity, survival of Judaism, and origins of Islam. (The marketing of my copy is completely different to the subtitle here and neither is entirely accurate.)
Well written and told with verve but also a *lot* of jumping around the timeline. I mostly gleaned that it would have been a pretty shitty time to live tbh, all very end of days. Extremely interesting on the creation of religion though, and the way writings have shaped and altered reality. -
Not to be confused with a modern history of Islam!
In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire describes the rise of the Muslim movement in the context of history from Late Antiquity through the 8th Century AD. Author
Tom Holland documents the rise of the Arab Caliphate with the co-dependent development of Islam as a religion, filling the power vacuum left with the decline of Roman and Persian Empires. He does this using what we know from secular historical facts, stripping away the many times distorted hagiographies of famous religions personages. Those interested in a historical look at how Islam evolved in its earliest years without the religious influence of ahistorical facts this is a good account. -
”...помнете, че вратата към рая е в сянката на меча”.
Религия и история са неразривно свързани и неразривно враждебни. Вероятно въпросът какви са историческите предпоставки за възникването на исляма, кой е написал Корана и каква в истината за първоначалното му разпространение би възмутил дълбоко силно вярващите. Но пък е страшно интересен. Е, рискът за твърде любопитния не е малък, а източниците са строго ограничени и под контрола почти единствено на последователите на Пророка. Затова е похвално, че - с цел да предостави отговори - Холанд прави опит да изследва късната античност и ранно средновековие по земите от Рим до Персеполис.
Някои факти са любопитни и интересни и навяват асоциации за влиянията, вплетени в исляма:
🔥 зеленият цвят някога е бил цветът на бог Митра;
🔥 зороастрийците също имат пет молитви;
🔥 обожествяването на камъни е доста разпространено сред арабите в предислямски време - самата Кааба е подслонявала почитани многобройни идоли, преди да я “прочистят”.
Куп загадки ще чакат търпеливо деня за разрешаването си и най-вече за смелия правоверен, върху когото да не се стовари вечното проклятие на едноверците му:
☪️ Кога е писан Коранът? Има податки за ранния 7-ми век, но тъй като в словото на Аллаха, за разлика от Библията, липсват каквито и да е геополитически ориентири, датировката е крайно трудна.
☪️ Защо най-известните хадиси и коментари датират най-рано два века след Хиджра и съдържат факти, които по никакъв начин не се съдържат в Корана? Там самият Мохамед (Мухаммад) се споменава всичко на всичко четири пъти, да не говорим пък, че негова “биография”, както е позната днес, там просто липсва.
☪️ Наистина ли Мека е имал предвид като средоточие на новата религия Пророкът, или съвсем друго място с реално съществувал древен храм?
☪️ Защо откритите в Йемен ранни записи на Корана моментално са укрити и нито един западен учен повече не е допуснат до тях, след като един германски специалист ги определя като “коктейл от влияния”?
Както отбелязва Холанд, ислямският свят е още далеч от дързостта на християнската мисъл от 19-ти век, която започва да задава куп неудобни въпроси за произхода на Новия Завет, и даже да намира някои смущаващи отговори.
Обаче самият Холанд доста е оплел конците със своето изложение по тази прелюбопитна тема.
Първо, личи си, че е много по-добър познавач на християнството и античността, отколкото на исляма. Анализът му на силните центробежни процеси през първите 5 века от новата ера в двете велики империи (Римската и Персийската), дали възможност арабите и една нова религия бързо да завладеят все по-големи територии, е разхвърляно-досадно-обстоятелствен. Стига чак до основаването на Рим и троянската война, което съвсем ме разконцентрира. По отношение на Сасанидска Персия пък набляга на драмата, вместо на хронологията, поради което връзките между събитията се губят за сметка на търсена сензационност. “Комунисти” в Персия? Хайде де! Или не разбира комунистите, или не разбира персите - и в двата случая говори лошо за историческата му компетентност.
Второ, склонността му към силни определения и спекулация при мъгляви факти е повече от обичайното. Твърде гръмки твърдения при недостатъчна обосновка.
И трето, ислямът се появява чак на последните страници. Първите две трети от книгата са Рим, Византия, Юдея и Персия с всевъзможни разхвърляни отклонения. И когато най-сетне се появи, спекулата се засили драматично и зрънцата интересни факти взеха пак да се губят. Фактологията изтече в пясъците, и останах с впечатлението, че Холанд просто пълни с баласт оставащите му страници, за да не излезе, че съвсем е подвел читателя за темата на книгата.
С две думи, такова проучване все още чака истинския си автор.
⭐️ 2,5 звезди ⭐️ -
“In the Shadow of the Sword” by Tom Holland, published by Doubleday.
Category – History
Tom Holland takes on a daunting task of tracing the rise of Islam. He traces the beginning from antiquity to the present. It is far reaching in scope and gives new insight into present day politics and religion.
The book starts with the founding of Rome and how it was able to rule the known world to the how and why Rome failed. It takes on the rise of the Muslim world with the teachings of Muhammad to its present day position in the world and world affairs.
This is very heavy reading, especially when the author explains the socio/political aspects of each ruler and how it rose to prominence and finally its own destruction. This was true not only the rulers but the different religions being professed during each of these periods in history.
As the Roman Empire seemed to just materialize overnight, it was the same with Islam and the Arab Empire.
“In the Shadow of the Sword” is history at its best, but written for those who have a deep interest in history. The book is very detailed and will have the reader referring back to the Timeline, Dramatis Personas, and Glossary until the final page. -
I found this an invaluable account in a single volume of how the monotheistic religions on the Middle East developed and inter-related. Each influenced the others but each retained and retain their own view as being the right passage to eternity. Theologians and ancient history specialists may quibble about the book or parts of it but this general reader liked and likes it.
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Actualizing out of the mists of the Arabic desert, the history of the Arabs, the prophet Muhammad, and their sacred text the Quran is lacking in historical documentation. Tom Holland does an amazing job sifting through the mists to present to us a well researched and informative read.
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At first glance, this is just a new history of the start of Islam, and how the Arabs came to dominate such a large area, one of those parts of history that often defies analysis. And Holland loops this book around that subject a couple of times just to show how and why this is traditionally a tough subject to tackle.
There's a fair amount of myth surrounding the foundation of Islam. And it's so well presented that even when an outsider looks at it, and starts wondering just how likely some of it is, the weight of evidence comes down on the side of that myth. General Western views of this period aren't much more critical of the story than Islamic scholars are; that's an amazing intellectual achievement right there.
At the same time, this also is a marker of the change from late Antiquity, where Middle East is dominated by the superpowers of Rome (/Byzantium) and Sassanid Persia, to the early Medieval period where its the Christian world vs the Islamic one. Looking at AD 500 and AD 800, things look very different, and the source of changes seems invisible in AD 500.
Of course, the Middle East was traditionally a bubbling cauldron of different religious beliefs. Things like the Dead Sea Scrolls are the merest tip of the iceberg of religious debate; a snapshot of one place and time. Other sources talk of various other cults, and groups, that were obviously stealing the better ideas from each other. I really wish Holland had gone into that a bit more, and maybe tried to trace some of the currents of religious thought in the area, the groups that were slowly pushed to the fringes by the state-backed power of Christianity and Zoroastrianism. He goes into some, and lists a few oddities from the 5th and 6th Centuries. Oddities that sound really familiar in a religion that was supposed to spring full-formed from the mouth of a person touched by God.
And looking into the history of the Quran and the haddith, things don't look so clear. Despite the claims made, the earliest known examples, and the first biography of Mohammad, which codifies a lot of this story, date to nearly two centuries after his life. Now, these are based on earlier versions, but there's a fair amount of drift possible in that time, and the early history of the Quran is not looking any clearer that the early history of the Gospels. Holland doesn't go into it, but the later parts shows that there is something about the birth of a religion, possibly something forever unknowable. The codified institutions come later; events swept people along, caused a passionate belief... that doesn't get written down in all the excitement.
After that, a closer look at what was actually going on with Rome and the Sassanians helps bring things into focus. The Islamic irruption into the world stage happened at the end of a long conflict between Rome and Persia, and Holland not only points out how this had drained available manpower on both sides, but he goes into a plague that swept through the region just recently, and like the better known Black Death, it was devastating to world population as a whole. He then goes into the current generation of Arab mercenaries, whose sources of money are drying up....
And from there, the rest of the book is a familiar story, but with the emphases changed. He posits, from what is in the Quran, and a few other places, that Mohamed, and his closest companions, were far more aware of the Roman world than is generally understood, and move on to the struggle to define just what had happened over the next few generations, as events of the 630s slipped out of memory, and into history.
Its a well-written book all the way through, and really shakes up the normal perception of this period. I'd say this is among the top 'must reads' for anyone interested in this part of history. Parts of it are a bit vague, and pro tem, but it does reference much more current research than you normally get to hear about. -
Holland is really good with his narrative, but just as in Millenium (I have not read his other books so far) I think this book shows that he struggles slightly with "the big picture". The scope of this book is very broad - Holland attempts to show the links early Islam has with the other religions it came into contact with: Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity in particular, and how these religions influenced the hadith and the Qu'ran itself. It works well...but not perfectly. He builds up well in describing the struggles of Zoroastrian Persia and Christian Roma, and the minority faiths, Judaism as well as others. He also does good work on the little we know of early Islam and the arabs, and is good at presenting the different hypotheses on the origins of the Qu'ran and its relation to the other religions. But at the end, he loses track ever so slightly as he keeps the narrative going, and the book peters out rather than ends with a bang.
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An interesting book, but you will likely learn much more about pre-Islamic Persia and Byzantium than about early Islam...this is not Tom Holland's fault, there is just less material out there (or at least, less material that is not part of the official hagiographical and semi-mythical accounts written by Abbasid era Muslim historians), but it does mean that some of the riddles about early Islam (what was it really like in the beginning, where was the beginning, who did what in the beginning, etc etc) are introduced as riddles, but then not really answered. And when it comes to the conquests, there are better books out there that cover the same territory ("In God's Path" and "The war of the three Gods" for example).
The Persian section was specially enlightening for me. Someday, I have to read more about Persia.
Worth a read. -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/...
Voltaire: Often quoted advocate of freedom of expression.
Historian Tom Holland was one of those who tweeted Charlie Hebdo's cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad in the wake of the deadly attack on the magazine's office.
Here he explains the ramifications of defending free speech. -
I wanted to like thıs book a whole lot more than I did. I have been looking for a book that will present a (relatively) unbiased look at the real history of Arabia and the rise of Islam on the world stage. Unfortunately, it seems like I must keep looking.
When it comes to the history of Arabia from the sixth through eighth centuries, there are really only two options available to us. There is the Muslim mythology created whole cloth in the mid 8th century (or later) and there is a deconstructionist critique that demonstrates how this mythology purporting to be history cannot possibly be true. I was hoping that this would be the popular narrative that can square what we do know of the history of that time with what we are far more certain of in the centuries that followed.
To be fair, Tom Holland does provide hints of this. His forte is the decline of the late Roman and Persian empires and we receive another telling of this time with the specific outlook on how it impacted the Arabian Peninsula. Unfortunately, the second half of this book was not a cut and dry narrative of the historical events that saw Islam come into existence and take over huge swaths of the known world of that time. Instead, it was just a dry commentary on a timeline he seems to assume everyone already knows and a bit of speculation on how the core elements of Muslim faith (the biography of Muhammed, the pseudo-history of Mecca and Medina, and the creation of the Quran, the Hadiths, and the Caliphate) might possibly have fit in.
This style might have worked well for Rubicon because everybody knows the history of Rome at the time of Julius and Octavian Caesar. That is an integral part of Western culture. The early history of the Arabian Peninsula and the elements of the Muslim faith most certainly are not. There is some good stuff here and definitely food for thought for those very familiar with traditional Muslim history, but I can't think of a single English speaking friend to whom I would recommend this book.
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Postscript: As I have come to learn more and more of the real Muslim history, I find I have less respect for Tom Holland's work. Rather than read it again to find and point out some of the errors he surely makes, here are some obvious errors he made about Christian history which is much more documented and should be much easier to get right. If he did such a poor job researching and sharing what I am familiar with, should I not also expect the same for the rest as well?
Holland: "The Council of Chalcedon struck the Christians of both the West and Constantinople as eminently reasonable - so much so that never again would they attempt to reverse it." -
Ummm. No. Tens of thousands of Christians set up an alternate church in Egypt to avoid having to endorse it. There were also many, many more who migrated from Byzantium to Persia to do the same. And there were still others remaining in the empire who were still contesting it as much as two hundred years later.
Holland: "As for Justinian... he never doubted for a moment his ability to secure Christian unity."
Again, no. Justinian's wife was a monophysite and it was believed by many that this union was a polity decision so that even as he appeared orthodox, those outside of orthodoxy would still have a voice in his court.
Holland: "'Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?' So Paul, berating the Athenians for their idolatry had asked."
Strike three, and you missed this one by a mile. Paul was berating the Corinthians, not the Athenians. And it was their pride, not their idolatry that he was addressing with this scripture. -
However clearly this is extremely well researched and painstakingly put together, for me this was just too intense a historical read. Unlike other of Holland's books I have read
Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic and
Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar I enjoyed this the least. It was at times very hard to read and keep track of whatever was going on, who was who and where was where. That's just me though, I am not arguing this book is filled with information but just not the information I was expecting. I am a novice when it comes to historical reading so this may have been too advanced for me. I will say however I liked how the author does not hold back with some fairly controversial views and stating the facts however uncomfortable they be to some religions and their respective followers. I plan to read Persian Fire next as I said earlier I am an overall fan of the author just not this book so much. 3 stars for the mount Everest of research that went into the this book. -
Absolutely brilliant and highly recommended reading for anyone interested in Islam and its true origins. One quibble, I wish the author wouldn't introduce really important characters by backing into them, so to speak, so only after three paragraphs, do you get an aha! moment when you recognize the historical figure entering the scene.
Otherwise, clear writing, entertaining presentation of complicated historical material and rich depiction of a place (post-Roman Near East) and centuries (7th and 8th) that aren't exactly on most people's immediate radar screen.
Worth reading for the explanation of the plague's effect on geopolitical balance in that region alone. Devastation on a scale that left the Arabs, formerly bandit clients buffering two mega powers of East and West, blinking in the dust as they realized the Roman and Persian empires were eviscerated by disease and now little more than rotting corpses and roads covered with weeds. Makes you read of novovirus threats today with a freshly minted fear.
Despite its length, this book was the read of a very enjoyable week. Thanks, Tom Holland and bravo! -
I think the marketing for this book was a little misleading, I was expecting the focus to be on the collapse of Roman and Persian power in the near east in the face of the Arabs, but the book actually focuses little on this event. Instead the book focuses on the interplay between religion and empire and how it shaped the events we now mark as the end of antiquity, as well as their aftermath.
There is also tantalising and very well researched scholarship in here about the historicity of the Koran, early Muslim historiography, etc, but while the author presents these very compellingly he doesn't weave it well into the overall direction of the book.
Overall a grand sweep of the late antique near east and what became of it, very well researched and entertainingly told, though in the end the narrative lacks focus while the conclusion felt weak and abrupt. But well done to Holland for venturing off the beaten path. -
Definitely not what I expected! Much of the book is setting the scene for the origins of Islam. But then it becomes apparent why that was necessary as Holland builds his thesis that Islam didn't just happen but was the product of all that was going on throughout the Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian nations and tribes. Controversial, but timely, fascinating and thoroughly convincing.
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I've given this 4 stars, but I wish my rating could've been a bit more nuanced. The writing is excellent, and there are parts of "In the Shadow of the Sword" that are fascinating--- Holland's account of the controversies about the first century of Islam, the account of the first intrusions by the new Arab power into Byzantine and Persian territory. Holland does highlight how little we actually know about the early 600s in northern and northwest Arabia, and how very, very few contemporary accounts there are of the first generation of Islam. Despite how much the narrative of the life of the Prophet and the formation of an Islamic state seems to be clearly historical, Holland reminds us that, in the end, we can't even be sure that today's Mecca was the Prophet's hometown and later capital and that we have very little evidence for how the Qu'ran in its present form came to be. Holland presents those mysteries--- questions originally raised by scholars like Patricia Crone ---very well.
Yet...his account of Persian politics in the century or two prior to the coming of the Arabs is a bit shallow and superficial, and he relies on very thin sources to construct his picture of Persia. He can be equally casual about Byzantium, the Rome-in-the-East that still ruled the eastern half of the old Empire, and he does sometimes settle for very superficial explanations of events. Though in Holland's defense, he is trying to do two things--- discuss the development of early Islam and present a political history of the Near East from c. 500-800 ---each of which could require its own 800pp. book.
"In the Shadow of the Sword" is worth reading--- let's not think I didn't read this and learn a great many things, or that I didn't enjoy the topic and the presentation. I'll stand by the 4 stars, but I will say that Holland's book is an introductory sketch that often falls back into narrative that should have far more analysis behind it. It's worth reading, though--- except for the material on the new issues and controversies about the origins of the Qu'ran and Islam ---its political and military history still can't match what Sir John Glubb did half a century ago. -
For some reason, in spite of repeat disappointments, I continue to return to the work of Tom Holland. While Rubicon and Persian Fire both helped stimulate my academic interest in ancient history, I have come to realize the problematic approach Holland takes to historical study. Dynasty, Holland’s half-baked precis of Suetonius and Tacitus, finally convinced me that popular narrative history is not much worth my time, which would be better spent with primary sources complemented with serious academic commentary by more credible historians than Holland. Still, I finally decided to read In the Shadow of the Sword, Holland’s helter-skelter foray into late antiquity in the Near East and the rise of Islam. In the Shadow of the Sword differs considerably from Rubicon, Persian Fire, and Dynasty in that it offers a kind of thesis rather than a pure narrative: that the traditional Muslim account for the life of Muhammad and the rise of Islam is not a reliable historical source for the roots of the Arab conquest, and that historians must look elsewhere to weave a barely coherent explanation for the sudden rise of the caliphate. More constructively, Holland maintains that historians should understand the loosely articulated set of beliefs of what would come to be known as Islam as influenced by and emanant from a richly diverse and complicated late antique milieu. The imperial ambitions of the Eastern Roman and Sassanid empires, the persistent evolution of Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism in the late antique period, and mercantile and military relationships between the Arab tribes and their Roman and Persian sponsors each underpin the inimitable social and cultural context, Holland contends, from which Islam derived and which it would ultimately overtake. Now, for those firmly committed to the idea that God’s revelations to Muhammad as communicated by the Prophet to his followers in no way derived from his prior familiarity with Judaism and Christianity or the late antique Near Eastern world, but came solely from the numinous mouth of Gabriel, this may be a predictably scandalous thesis from yet another secular historian. For most others, however, such a claim should not come as much of a surprise. In fact, Holland’s thesis is not exactly new: he simply repeats a set of claims made by a coterie of revisionist historians of Islam who first published their conclusions in the seventies. And, while some scholars skeptical of the traditional Muslim account of early Islam have certainly strayed into potentially Islamaphobic territory, revisionist scholarship of this period need not be wedded to modern anti-Muslim sentiments. All of which is to say, despite the fact that Holland frequently implies that a cabal of cowardly non-Muslim historians and Muslim scholars blindly committed to the truth of the traditional account have muddled the historical reality of early Islam, there has been plenty of sober academic work on the subject for many decades. What Holland offers here situates many of the conclusions of that work in what he hopes is a coherent historical narrative, rife with all the drama one expects from a Tom Holland book. The result is a convoluted mixture that oscillates wildly between semi-fictional narrative and ostensibly serious historical analysis.
While Holland opens the book with a whole host of questions with respect to the traditional narrative of the birth of Islam, he does not pursue these questions until its final third, once he has canvassed the late antique histories of the Byzantines and Sassanians and contextualized the cultural milieu in which the Arab conquests took place. For most readers, I suspect, this is the most anticipated part of the book—how does Holland answer major questions about the historicity of the Qur’an, the existence of Muhammad, the location of Mecca, and the influences of Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism on what would come to be known as the Islamic faith? Unfortunately, Holland’s narrative style of history is ill-suited to this task. That is, while Holland is famed and praised for the vividness of his historical narrative approach—he strives with mixed success in all his books to relate history as a literal story, with all the drama of fiction—that approach falters when he must plumb lacunae in the historical record with no obvious solutions. More to the point, Holland is at his best when the historical record is cohesive, linear, and more or less unproblematic. When this is the case—as it mostly is for the fall of the Roman republic, for instance—Holland can deploy his laudable ability to inject the historical narrative with dramatic flavor. When this is not the case, however—as Holland himself insists it is not for the birth of Islam and the Arab conquests—his attempt to collate questions, evidence, and plausible theories into a coherent narrative simply confuses matters. Holland’s solution to the dilemma raised by the dearth of evidence for his narrative style is to cast fairly mundane historical lacunae as eerie mysteries unplumbed by historians and Muslim scholars hitherto. He then presents himself as some kind of sleuth ready and able to venture into historical territory few others have had the audacity to explore. Of course, Holland relies heavily on prior academic work from Patricia Cone, Andrew Rippin, and other revisionist academic historians for how he answers the particular questions he poses, and he himself would be the first, I am sure, to humbly concede his debt to these scholars. Stylistically, however, Holland presents his theories as if they materialized out of thin air—or perhaps were revealed to him by God. Holland never refers to scholars by name in the main text of the narrative, never interrupts his narrative to canvass why one theory from a particular scholar is more persuasive than another from a different scholar, and buries his footnotes in the back of the book. Evidently, this is because In the Shadow of the Sword is a popular history—lay readers are supposedly uninterested in these baseline academic formalities, despite the fact that Holland’s task in this book is an explicitly academic one.
In the Shadow of the Sword is problematic less because Holland’s skepticism of the traditional Muslim narrative for the birth of Islam is unwarranted—in the same way historians question Exodus or Acts of the Apostles as reliable sources for the roots of Judaism and Christianity, respectively—but because Holland so clumsily traverses hotly debated academic territory in his effort to create a coherent historical narrative. No amount of rhetorical flourish or vivid description can do the same work that slow, careful, and sometimes tedious historical scholarship can accomplish. Ironically, the lucidity of the solutions Holland offers to a series of vexed questions on the birth of Islam comes at the expense of his bombastic narrative style. To cite just one example, Holland questions whether Muhammad initially lived in Mecca and, even further, questions whether Mecca existed an important commercial center prior to the Umayyads. His reasons for this skepticism are sufficiently articulate—other than a sole mention in the Qur’an, the earliest textual reference to Mecca is from 741, where it is located in Mesopotamia, “midway between Ur and Harran”; its location in a desert valley far from the coast renders it an unlikely center of commerce; and a major road that connected Himyar with Roman markets bypassed the supposed location of Mecca entirely—yet his explanation for why the fifth caliph, Abd al-Malik, ultimately chose what would become Mecca as the site for the House of God, the now-famous Ka’ba, is muddled and all too brief. Perhaps a ka’ba had stood there before, scattered as such sites were across Arabia, and perhaps it was associated one way or another with Muhammad. Perhaps Al-Malik, due to his connections to the area around Mecca, was familiar with such a shrine, and randomly selected it to become the holiest site in all Islam. These are unsatisfactory answers to a problem Holland himself raises. That is, while there may be reasons to call into question the centrality of Mecca in the traditional Muslim narrative, one cannot simply accept the conclusion that pre-Umayyad Mecca never existed without a persuasive answer for why Al-Malik so honored the site. This is because a far simpler answer to the latter question is that, per the traditional narrative, Mecca did indeed exist and was the birthplace of Muhammad, and thus held a sacred status well before Al-Malik’s rule. Yet Holland either discounts the Occam’s razor solution or is so wedded to the coherence of his narrative that he refuses to entertain a very different story at odds with the drama that has unfolded up to this point in the book.
In the end, In the Shadow of the Sword demonstrates why popular narrative history is deeply ill-suited to the task of serious historical scholarship. At the same time that Holland expresses typical academic skepticism of a time-honored historical narrative—a standard move in revisionist history that has led to important scholarly developments—he trades in cultural stereotypes of Romans, Persians, and Arabs, and relates a whole host of deeply implausible anecdotes to add color to the story he seeks to tell. It is deeply ironic that, in a book that aims to call attention to the implausibility of the traditional Muslim account for the life of Muhammad and the birth of Islam, Holland’s first chapter starts with the story of the death of Yusuf As’ar Yath’as, the Jewish ruler of Himyar who is said to have ridden his horse into the Red Sea, never to be seen thereafter. While Holland concedes later that other sources claim that Yusuf lost his life in battle, not amidst the waves of the Red Sea, he has already shown his cards: In the Shadow of the Sword does not posture as a serious work of historical scholarship and, thus, should not be taken as such. Readers sincerely interested in questions about the roots of Islam would do better to turn to the back of Holland’s book, peruse his footnotes and references, and read Patricia Cone instead. -
This is an illuminating, well-researched, and historically-fascinating book on the empires and religions of the near-east and Mediterranean in Late Antiquity. There is a wealth of information on the Romans/Byzantines, the Persians, and the Jews, but the main focus is, of course, the foundation, birth and progression of Islam and the Umayyad Caliphate.
Shadow is a gem of 'popular history' for people, like me, who are really interested in this period. I studied Byzantine history (as I, but not Tom Holland, call it) in university and am endlessly fascinated by the Byzantines and the world around them. I also always wanted to know more about the Persians of Late Antiquity and just how the Arabs became Muslims and Islam spread and developed, from more than military perspectives. This book does not disappoint in those areas. Holland's explanation for the rise of Islam, built on the backs of preceding religions and empires (and heavily influenced by them) is fascinating and deeply-researched. Likewise, his delving into the nitty-gritty of the Quran and its relation to Hadiths, and the forging of Islamic law and religion by lawyers and bureaucrats versus the aspirations and actions of worldly autocrats is very interesting, albeit lengthy. I learned that Islam, like pretty much everything, did not just appear out of a void, and that the history of its early empires was just as full of in-fighting, religious debate, good and bad leaders, controversy, betrayal, disaster and blind luck -- just as full as the empires and religions around and before it.
Shadow, despite being a 'popular history', and despite the wonders it conveys, may not hold everyone in its sway. It certainly lost my attention various times. Holland has crafted a well-researched tome here and a tome much closer to an academic text than anything 'popular' and well-paced. This book can drag on, and the chapter-spanning deep forays into the minutiae of religious debate, not to mention the constant use of 'And yet...' 'None of which, of course...' and other such monotone-history-professor phrases are bound to cause less dedicated or interested readers to fall unconscious, the over-thick paperback slipping from their grasp and hitting the floor. While exciting battles and intrigue are mentioned, they are given a tiny fraction of the space that topics like possible Rabbinical views of aspects of Islamic thought are.
In sum, if you are someone patient, quite interested in history and interested in this period of history, or specifically in Islam, Persia, Judaism, or Byzantium (probably in that order), this could be the book for you.
3.6 Stars
Notes and quotes of note, by my vote
Quote from Eusebius, Introduction: "I shall include in my narrative only those things by which first we ourselves, then later generations, may benefit."
- Intro: Himyar -- a Jewish kingdom in modern Yemen that fell to Ethiopian Christians encouraged by Byzantine agents in the 520s AD
- Pg 13, Holland notes that Late-Antiquity is important because: "The main Monotheistic religions and interpretations of religion itself were crafted and reconstructed by L-A scholars."
- He also notes that religion and historical fact were intertwined and inseperable
- Pg 44: There are almost no reliable sources for the founding and early centuries of Islam
- Pg 60: Partial book thesis: "...the 7th century Caliphate the most enduring, last, and climactic empire of antiquity..." So, in essence Holland argues that the Umayad Caliphate (at least?) represented the final ancient world empire? Perhaps because of how much it owed to ancient empires, cultures, religions etc? He doesn't really finish the book on this note.
- Pgs 70s or so, interesting rambling about Persians and Parthians. I didn't know much about the Sasanian Persians before this book. Holland teaches that ancient Parthian dynasts still held considerable power during Sasanian (and even later into the Muslim conquest) days, and Persian 'Shahansha's were forced to treat them with respect.
- Pg 78: Iran = 'Aryan'
- Pg 83: 'Drug' = 'the lie'. In Zoroastrian religion, there is a constant war of good vs evil, truth vs lie, and in the end everything will cataclysmically finish, like Ragnarok, The Flood, etc.
- Jews were everywhere in the Sasanian Persian empire, and they even had two important religious schools (in Sura and Pumpedita). They were, compared to Rome etc, generally well-treated and sometimes rose to power (though some Shahs would decide to crack down on them from time to time)
- Pgs 146-147: Interesting section on the founding of Constantinople emphasizing its insecurities and need to be legitimate in the face of the long pedigree of Rome.
- Pgs 173-174: Nice section on the origins of Bishops. They began as record-keepers, scribes, bureaucrats and organizers. Eventually they became abnormally holy leaders and quite powerful.
- Pg 198: Arianism explained.
-- I enjoy Holland's helpful translations of important ancient words and terms
- Pg 212: From the 530s AD, the 'Holy Wisdom' (Haghia Sophia) was all that mattered. Justinian closed the schools of philosophy in Athens as incompatibly pagan.
- Pgs 216-220: Good section on those crazy religious extremists: the stylites (and monks). Their main home, before the Muslim conquest, was the deserts of Syria and Palestine.
- Pgs 220 -- In-depth, but rambling look at Jerusalem, including its Jews, Christians, and Samaritans -- an interesting case of their own.
- Pgs 260-265: The Roman-Sponsored Ghasanids and the Persian-sponsored Lakhmids
- Pg 281: Belisarius is mentioned and painted as flawed...
- Pg 289: If only Justinian had stopped at North Africa and bolstered his defences in the East
- Pg 295: THE PLAGUE. In case you didn't know, the plague that hit the Med and Near East in the 540s and continued to smite it decades later was a major factor in the weakening of both the Persian and Eastern Roman Empires.
- Pg 305: The plague and new invasions of barbarians (the Avars, Slavs and Lombards) all lead to prophecies of doom and the end of days
- Pg 317: Polo is Persian. After further research, it seems it was invented by the Ancient Persians.
- Pg 320: More insight into Heraclius' great campaign. His was a desperate, all-in offensive against a seemingly-triumphant Persia. He gambled Constantinople itself, using it as bait and hoping it could hold out against a combined Persian/Avar siege, while he targeted Persian religious sites, palaces, Khusrow's prestige, and convinced the Parthian warlords back-stab him.
Heraclius' victory and strategic abilities seem even more amazing than they did before, and it's even more tragic that the Arabs trounced the east soon after. Holland does a good job of showing how they could have, except for the battles involved, which he glosses over (though which seem to have little to no sources to describe them anyway).
The Arabs, long-accustomed to dealing with, working for, or raiding the 'Romans' and Persians, now had strong, competent, leaders under the uniting force of a birthing religion and they took advantage of lands absolutely decimated by years of plague and warfare to 'overcome incredible odds'. In short, though very capable warriors and tough cookies, and although shrewd, they got really, really, really lucky -- so lucky with their conquests that they themselves did not believe it for a long time.
- 'More questions than answers' -- a very plodding chapter on the origins of the Quran
- Pg 353: Manichaeans: Mani was a progressive 'prophet' who combined Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism -- and the leaders of all three faiths absolutely hated him and had him crushed. He even seems to have followed some Buddhist principles.
- Somewhere in here Mazdak is mentioned too. He was a progressive Zoroastrian priest who became a religious activist and 'proto-socialist' who espoused communist ideals and was thus crushed.
- Pg 394: Good quote on the survival of imperial bureaucracy, whatever the empire. Kind of like today: bureaucrats don't necessarily care which party is in power.
"Officials of the two decapitated superpowers, seasoned as they were in the arts of extortion, and eager to maintain their positions of authority, had every incentive to work hard for their new masters. Vast and implacable, like a kraken of the deep undisturbed by storms raging across the ocean surface, the apparatus of empire still coiled its prodigious tentacles, ready to flex and squeeze its victims tightly, as it had ever done."
- 'Mosque' = place of prostration
- Pgs 420 -- Abd al-Malik, in Holland's interpretation, seems to have virtually created Islam! This is crazy and I need to do more research, but, what I get from Holland is that al-Malik: elevated Muhammad as his prophet, had mosques and prayers face Mecca, and built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. He also re-minted Imperial coins in Arabic instead of Greek and had Arabic become the defacto language of administration. He seemed to be the first Caliph of a united Islamic Empire.
- Pgs 456-457: Greek Fire saves Constantinople from the Arabs -- and gives George R.R. Martin a plot for the siege of King's Landing by Stannis -
A QUOTE FROM THE BOOK:
“The supreme achievement of the Jewish and Christian scholars of the age was to craft a history of their respective faiths that cast themselves as its rightful and inevitable culmination, and left anything that might have served to contradict such an impression out of the story altogether.”
― Tom Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire -
This one was a bit harder for me to get into compared to The Forge of Christendom, but I still liked it! I think it’s a unique approach (at least of books I’ve read or talks I’ve listened to) at exploring the beginning of Islam. Honestly I didn’t realize how little we know about the early years of Islam… But long before Holland gets to that, he sets the stage of what was going on in Rome/Byzantium, Persia, and Arabia leading up to the beginning of Islam, which was really interesting. If I understand it correctly, Holland’s goal is to show Islam has having sort of evolved into being rather than exploding onto the scene as something radically different. He shows how many much of Islam is a rather hodge-podge grouping of pieces from other faiths (notably Christianity & Judaism). At the end of the day, I think this book sort of raised more questions than provided answers when it comes to the earliest roots of Islam, but then perhaps that’s what we need. I think Holland may be right in his argument that we need to radically reshift how we see the emergence of Islam, and he makes a good point that few to no Muslim scholars are willing to look at these things critically (compared to Jews & Christians). I appreciate secular historians looking at things critically, but I also appreciate reading the insights of people critically assessing their own faith. After all, secular historians completely rule out the existence and intervention of the divine, and while I believe Islam is false, I can at least appreciate the arguments of those who believe Mohammad really did receive the Quran from Gabriel. I don’t know if that makes sense… but I think it’s possible to look critically at one’s faith while still operating within the bounds of it and not automatically ruling out things such as divine intervention. For example, I think Christianity does hold up, but I do have to start with the assumption that God could exist and could choose to interact with humanity. Again, some snarky comments here and there, but I really think Holland treats Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Zoroastrians alike with a good deal of fairness and an overall lack of snobbery.
