The Great Caliphs

Amira K. Bennison
I.B. Tauris

An account of the achievements of the ‘Abbasid age, which challenges popular conceptions about the Arab conquests, revealing significant continuity between the ‘Abbasid caliphate, which flourished between 750 and 1258, and the great civilizations of antiquity which it overran.

Islam’s War Against the Crusaders

W.B. Bartlett (The History Press)

A study of the Crusades from the Islamic point of view, which considers the effect of the crusades on the Holy Land and the response of the Muslim world to the invasions of European Crusaders.

God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215

David Levering Lewis (Norton)

An account of Islam’s collision with Dark Ages Europe and the ensuing political and cultural revolutions, from the fall of the Persian and Roman empires through to the rise of prophet Muhammad and the creation of Muslim Spain.

A Concise History of Pakistan

M. R. Kazimi (Oxford University Press)

A political, intellectual, economic, diplomatic and cultural history of Pakistan, from Mehergarh to Musharraf, which examines contemporary crises in the perspective of the subcontinent’s ancient and medieval history to explain how Muslim nationalism emerged and how the community interacted with other communities in the region.

The Life and Times of the Shah

Gholam Reza Afkhami (University of California Press)

A biography of Mohammad Reza Shah, the last Iranian monarch who ruled from 1941 to 1979, which depicts the unfolding of the monarch’s life against the forces and events that shaped the development of modern Iran.

Saladin

A. R. Azzam (Pearson)

A biography of Saladin, which explores the Islamic world that he lived in, transformed by the Sunni Revival in the 10th and 11th centuries, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the leader himself.

The Ismaili Assassins: A History of Medieval Murder

James Waterson (Frontline Books)

A study of the origins, actions and enduring legacy of the Ismaili Assassins, an underground group of political killers, which provides an insight into the history of the Crusades and the early Islamic period.