HKSYU Course Resources

In this immensely readable and wide-ranging book the historian Bernard Lewis charts the successive transformations of the Middle East, beginning with the two great empires, the Roman and the Persian, which disputed the region two thousand years ago; the development of monotheism and the growth of Christianity; the astonishingly rapid rise and spread of Islam over a vast area; the waves of invaders from the east and the Mongol hordes of Jengiz Khan; the rise of the Ottoman Turks in Anatolia, the Mamluks in Egypt and the Safavids in Iran; the peak and decline of the great Ottoman state, and the changing balance of power between the Muslim and Christian worlds. Bernard Lewis describes the forces which shaped the history of the Middle East: the Islamic religion and legal system; the traditions of government; the immense variety of trade and the remarkably wide range of crops; the elites - military, commercial, religious, intellectual and artistic - and the commonalty, including such socially distinct group as slaves, women and unbelievers. In the final section of the book Professor Lewis looks at pervasive impact, in modern times, of Western ideas and technology, and the responses and reactions they evoked. Rich in vivid detail and the knowledge of a great scholar, this brilliant survey of the history and civilizations of the Middle East reveals the huge Islamic contribution to European life, as well as the European contribution to the Islamic world.