Description
"In this book, John Tolan shows how the youngest of the three great monotheisms developed, not in isolation but in close and constant contact with Jewish, Christian, and other religious traditions in a mixture of cultures: Arab, Greek, Persian, Turkish and others. Covering over 1,400 years of history, Tolan analyzes the foundations of Islam, its expansion across the globe, and its transformations over the centuries. This history-comprehensive without being encyclopedic-shows us that the conflicts between different visions of Islam today, from the puritanical to the legalistic to the mystical, are deeply embedded in Muslim history"--
