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What is a caliphate? What is the history of the idea? How is the term used and abused today?
In the first modern account of a subject of critical importance today, acclaimed historian Hugh Kennedy answers these questions by chronicling the rich history of the caliphate, from the death of Muhammad to the present. At its height, the caliphate stretched from Spain to the borders of China and was the most powerful political entity in western Eurasia. In an era when Paris and London boasted a few thousand inhabitants, Baghdad and Cairo were sophisticated centres of trade and culture, and the…mehr

Produktbeschreibung
What is a caliphate?
What is the history of the idea?
How is the term used and abused today?

In the first modern account of a subject of critical importance today, acclaimed historian Hugh Kennedy answers these questions by chronicling the rich history of the caliphate, from the death of Muhammad to the present. At its height, the caliphate stretched from Spain to the borders of China and was the most powerful political entity in western Eurasia. In an era when Paris and London boasted a few thousand inhabitants, Baghdad and Cairo were sophisticated centres of trade and culture, and the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates were distinguished by major advances in science, medicine and architecture. By ending with the recent re-emergence of caliphal ideology within fundamentalist Islam, The Caliphate underscores why it is crucial that we know about this form of Islamic government to understand the political ideas of the so-called Islamic State and other Islamist groups in the twenty first century.
Autorenporträt
Kennedy, Hugh
Hugh Kennedy is Professor of Arabic in the Faculty of Languages and Cultures at School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He studied Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies before reading Arabic, Persian and History at Cambridge. He was formerly a professor of history at University of St. Andrews, a position he had held since 1972. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2000.
Rezensionen
[Kennedy] traces the history of this important, much-misunderstood concept from the death of the Prophet Muhammad in AD 632 to the present ... [The Caliphate] wears its profound erudition lightly Jason Burke Literary Review