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A review by aront
In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire by Tom Holland
4.0
Easy reading & well worth it. 2 critiques:
1. He often quotes contemporaries fantastical view of events straight up when it is quite obvious he is slightly mocking them, which is fine once in a while but it becomes repetitious shtick
2. He hints at but doesn't really answer the question he posed at the beginning - what are the origins of the Quran and Islam and who is the Mohammed character?
In the documentary he did and in interviews he is much more forthcoming about his theories on point 2. Anyone reading this book should also watch the documentary and listed to his interview with Robin Pearson from the History of Byzantium podcast (as well as Robin's podcast on the topic of the Origen of Islam). I get that they are just theories and perhaps he was a bit reluctant to be too concrete and explicit in a book so as not to be accused of replacing one fantasy for another.
One last point: for every other major religion existent (and non-existent) today where there are tons of popular science*-based overviews, Holland's book is the first on the shelf for this topic and he does a damn good job. To his credit he's cracked the nut, opening the doors for others to popularize a more scientific approach to the origins of Islam.
* by science I mean critical, skeptical & evidence-based approaches not based on the evidence-free premise that any given religion is the word of God/s
1. He often quotes contemporaries fantastical view of events straight up when it is quite obvious he is slightly mocking them, which is fine once in a while but it becomes repetitious shtick
2. He hints at but doesn't really answer the question he posed at the beginning - what are the origins of the Quran and Islam and who is the Mohammed character?
In the documentary he did and in interviews he is much more forthcoming about his theories on point 2. Anyone reading this book should also watch the documentary and listed to his interview with Robin Pearson from the History of Byzantium podcast (as well as Robin's podcast on the topic of the Origen of Islam). I get that they are just theories and perhaps he was a bit reluctant to be too concrete and explicit in a book so as not to be accused of replacing one fantasy for another.
One last point: for every other major religion existent (and non-existent) today where there are tons of popular science*-based overviews, Holland's book is the first on the shelf for this topic and he does a damn good job. To his credit he's cracked the nut, opening the doors for others to popularize a more scientific approach to the origins of Islam.
* by science I mean critical, skeptical & evidence-based approaches not based on the evidence-free premise that any given religion is the word of God/s