Sublime

Despite the common perception in the West, the Muslim conquerors did not force conversion upon the conquered peoples; indeed, they did not even encourage it. The fact is that the financial and social advantages of being an Arab Muslim in the eighth and ninth centuries were such that Islam quickly became an élite clique, which a non-Arab could join

And while it is true that after a few years, Muhammad both changed the qiblah from Jerusalem to Mecca, and set the annual fast at Ramadan (the month in which the Quran was first revealed) instead of Yom Kippur, these decisions should not be interpreted as “a break with the Jews,” but as the maturing of Islam into its own independent religion. Despi

When the forbidden months have passed, kill the polytheists [who are at war with you] wherever you find them.a Take them captive, and besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and take to prayer regularly and pay the alms, then let them go their way. God is forgiving and merciful.

After ‘a few years’ Patrick was able to return to his family. This is remarkable: how on Earth was a young man, stolen from his home at sixteen, able to navigate his way back in a country with no maps or road signs and not much more than local knowledge of place names?

The great upheavals of the Mediterranean region following the fall of Rome, along with the weakening of the Persian (Sassanid) Empire in the seventh century, opened the way for yet another lightning conquest, this time by Arabs on horseback and camel who emerged from the Arabian desert with a new religion. Islam, and a succession of vast Islamic em

When Roe eventually returned to England, after three weary years at court, he had obtained permission from Jahangir to build a factory