A panoramic account of the history of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East from the fall of Rome to the rise of Islam.

Introduction : the making of the historical Muḥammad -- The earliest evidence -- Muḥammad the Arabian merchant -- The Beginnings of the corpus -- The letter

Explores the problems for studying art and religion in Eurasia arising from ancestral, colonial and post-colonial biases in historiography.

'The individual chapters are scholarly and up to the minute, without loss of accessibility or pace. The illustrations are many, apposite and refreshingly unhack

A Palestinian Christian theologian shows how the reality of empire shapes the context of the biblical story, and the ongoing experience of Middle East conflict.