a good starting point

I enjoyed listening to this book. It does very well as an introduction to the topics that it presents rather than provided deep knowledge on anything in particular. This is both its strength and its weakness. The benefit however is that many topics are covered so you do establish a breadth of knowledge. In my opinion the narration could have been better at times (at times the author seems to hesitate). I would still recommend this book and it is worth listening to. I will probably use this use the topics mentioned as a basis to direct further reading

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5 people found this helpful

Concise, intellectual and well narrated.

Refreshing change, Nasr is a amongst the great traditional intellectual and rigorous scholars. This history is refreshing and diverted free of sensationalism and biases found in many other histories focusing on the Muslim world. Any serious student of this subject would do well studying Nasr.

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Suffers from consistent pro-Muslim bias

The lecturer is himself a Muslim and that very quickly becomes apparent. There is a consistent pro-Muslim bias running throughout the text. All the usual cliches are trotted out. The Crusades are portrayed as a vicious attack on Islam, rather than a response to Muslim aggression. (Read Rodney Stark's The Case for the Crusades for another perspective.) Islam didn't spread by the sword, he keeps insisting. Somehow lots of non-Muslims all across the Middle East and North Africa somehow just decided to let themselves be ruled by Muslims. Muslim-ruled Spain is depicted as a haven of tolerance, ignoring the degrading conditions that the non-Muslim dhimmis were forced to endure.

Islam should be understood as one of the pillars of western civilisation, alongside its better-known Greco-Roman foundations, he argues. The slender basis for this preposterous claim is the translation of some Arabic texts into Latin in the Middle Ages. Of course he ignores the fact that many of the texts translated were originally Greek works that had been translated into Arabic and that the Greek colonies in Southern Italy provided an alternative source of Greek knowledge.

I would characterise this lecture series as a work of Islamic propaganda, one that is done subtly enough to make it seem superficially fair and plausible. However, it may be of some interest for those who would like to learn more about the Muslim perspective on things.

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10 people found this helpful