Islamic Empires
By Justin Marozzi
Allen Lane, 464pp, £25/$35

To cover 15 cities across 15 centuries might seem a daunting challenge for most authors. But the ambition of this book goes even further: it is to transform our understanding of Islamic civilisation past and present. Ranging from Mecca in the 7th century to Doha in the 21st, Islamic Empires encompasses a breathtaking panorama of human, religious, military and architectural activity and achievement, as well as destruction and decline.

The book includes the acknowledged centres of world civilisation, such as Jerusalem and Constantinople; the jewels of a bygone era, such as Córdoba and Samarkand; and the shining new cities of the modern entrepreneurial world such as Dubai and Doha. In the mix are also those cities that regularly appear in the headlines for all the wrong reasons: Damascus, Baghdad, Kabul and Tripoli.

Although the focus of each chapter is the city in question during the relevant century, Marozzi always has one eye on the present. The chapter on Baghdad in the 9th century, for example, opens with staccato bursts of gunfire and the thunder of American Black Hawk helicopters. We are always connected with reality. This is now; that was then. The “then” of Baghdad under Abbasid rule was a “quintessentially cosmopolitan capital in which art, music, wine-drinking and poetry … testified to the self-confident pluralism of Islam”.

The energy and fascination of this book is partly owed to such contrasts, whereby we are challenged to tear ourselves away from our preconceived views. Mecca itself is an example of contrasts. Situated in the most inhospitable geographical environment, with searing temperatures, it may seem a suitably ascetic centre for a world faith. However, what about the lavish developments and shopping malls that appear to be borrowed from Las Vegas?

Beirut is summarised as “sun-kissed, sybaritic and welcoming, but it is also dangerous, blood-soaked and cruel”. There is the striking contrast of the beauty of Samarkand in its heyday under Tamur (Tamerlane) – a city that took Alexander the Great’s breath away – with the ruination of the cities that Tamur captured, leaving behind him towers of skulls.

Islam flung itself outwards in a startling military expansion. It crossed the straits of Gibraltar in 711 and swept over what would become Andalusia (Al-Andalus). Córdoba, with its great mosque, was the shining ornament of the southern European peninsula and, under Abd al Rahman III, there was a golden age of liberalism and learning. As so often in this book, good things come to an end. Disagreements divided the Taifa kingdoms and fanatical Almohad and Almoravid warriors surged up like a dark cloud from Africa to spoil the party.

We discover that the name for this internal strife is fitna. In Damascus, which reached its peak of power and glory under the Umayyads of the 8th century, division wreaked havoc across the whole country.

It was outside the impressive Umayyad mosque in Damascus that on March 15, 2011, protesters began calling for the overthrow of the Assad regime.

There are transformations of place. Beirut was a “languid little port” before becoming a leading merchant city and cultural capital. Both Dubai and Doha metamorphosed from minor pearl-fishing villages into fabulously rich global cities of the 21st century.

There are also transformations in understanding, some of them ominous. An American delegation met the Tripoli ambassador to London in 1786, bemused by the hostility of Tripoli towards nations that had done them no harm. The ambassador informed them that the faithful had a right and duty to wage war on those who did not acknowledge the prophet and that they would expect to reach paradise if slain in the process.

The author’s achievement is to mix travel writing, history and journalism, and present it  in prose that is at once flowing, engaging, enlightening and incisive. His ability to transport us on a magic carpet from the depths of the 7th century to the present day and everywhere in between, and to capture key moments and shifts in culture and politics, threatens to render other more conventional approaches obsolete.

Our view of Islam is so often rooted in negative associations with terrorism and wars. Read this book and you may discover that Islam was once dynamic, open, liberal, a centre of cultural and intellectual exchange, the builder of architectural marvels and, despite its fervent desire for expansion, capable also of great tolerance. Although we cannot be naïve, the message of this extraordinarily informative and readable work is that we need to take a wider and broader view.

Islamic Empires is not so much a book as a library. Like the scholars who visited the libraries of sun-kissed Córdoba under the indulgent eye of Abd al-Rahman III, we are invited to learn from its treasures.

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