Wow, I don't know where to begin. This book was such a whirlwind ride. But the important thing about it, I suppose, is that it seemed to accomplish its purpose: giving the reader an Islamic lens through which to consider all of history. What I enjoyed most about this book was the writing style. It was breezy and almost conversational, and thus made it much easier to get through. The author is incredibly deft at rendering such intricate threads of history in a highly accessible way. And no wonder, he has been reading history texts since he was a child. This was a book worth the time investment. I highly recommend it!
I know, that is such a pathetic review. I felt like this book would need a rereading from me in order for me to properly review it. But to make up for that, here is my favorite review of it from a fellow Goodreads reviwer who goes simply by Paul:
Right time, right place, right style, this is 100% recommended.This is vast but fast history : you have to hang on to your hat, or whatever you hang on to, which might not be a hat, since the kind of hats which a strong wind might snatch from your head are rarely worn today. In this book a lot of obscure places and people go rushing by, like a speeded up film, like a boiling river. Obscure to a Western reader, that is, but I’m going to hazard that Transoxiana, Khorasan, Ctesiphon, and the exact difference between Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids and Safavids might tax your regular Muslim on the street too.
Tamim Ansary writes in a chatty, slangy, motormouth style. Like a friendly history professor. You’re out for a beer with this guy and you ask the fatal question – what’s up with these Muslims anyhow? What are they all about? Forty hours later, Tamim is still talking. Telling you how, why, all about it, from the top to the bottom, with many glints of humour to get you through some very harrowing stuff.
Sometimes the chat is a little too casual, and he comes across as your uncle trying to prove he’s down with the kids by doing the frug, not the best choice:
One city they attacked in northern Afghanistan was called – well, I don’t even know what it was called originally. P153
For three years he and his band roamed the wilds, looking for a new kingdom : kinging was all he knew, and king was the only job title he was seeking. P190.
Between 1500 and 1800 western Europeans sailed pretty much all over the world and colonised pretty much everything. P217
The sultan never made another attempt on Vienna but his contemporaries saw no sign of weakness in this. “Conquer Vienna” remained on his to-do list always.
P221
But really, I don’t care because this was surely a beautiful change from your usual pompous history writing.
Tamim lays out the usual story we already kind of know for the first half of the book. This is where Islam erupted – is there any other word? – okay, exploded – will that do? – out of Arabia in the 8th century and was all over North Africa and the Levant and on into Persia and Northern/Central India before you could say whatever mild expletive was common in those far-off days. There was a golden age of relative peace. There was art and science. In the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries it was unarguable that the centre of human civilisation was located in the great Muslim empire, and meanwhile, Europeans were illiterate crawlers in the mud (“ooh, some lovely mud over here, Derek!”), and eaters of beetroot and gruel, and had a life expectancy of 23. By the Middle Ages
that early sense of Islam against the world had long given way to Islam as the world
CRUSADER MOSQUITOS
The first crack in this golden period came with the Franji Wars, or as Westerners know them, the Crusades. Before then, Muslims hadn’t noticed the West at all – why would you? So here comes the first real shift of perspective. In Western history the Crusades loom large. They were a big deal. They changed a lot of things. For Islam – not so much. They were annoying, like a swarm of mosquitos. You had to slap them down. There was no sense to the thing but it was purely a local phenomenon and it didn’t last long. One hundred years, then normal service was resumed. The big thing, where the world of Muslims came crashing down, was the Mongol invasion. That’s right, Genghiz Khan. Then after him, Tamburlaine, who was worse. Muslims had to figure out why God allowed pagans to kill them all. But that’s an easy one for religious types. The Jews wrote a whole book about it, it’s called The Bible Part One, or as the Christians call it, Jesus : the Prequel. (And God being just, the Christians got their turn with the Black Death. "Why are you doing this to us??" "Mwaaah-ha-haah!") In each case the answer is the same – God smote you all because you’re doing it wrong. It was a wake up call. Obviously not for the ones smited, they won’t be waking up ever again, but you remnant that’s left, you better get back to where you once belonged, pronto.
SORRY FRANCISCO, YOU'RE REDUNDANT
Tamim does a great job summarising the effects of the Reformation in Europe. For him, this was the thing which kickstarted the whole European project, which he contrasts with the Islamic project. You’d had the Renaissance, but you needed a few other concepts to add to the mix before you could get lift-off, and one of the main components was : the idea of the secular. This does not exist in Islam. Everything is God’s, everything is to be explained by Islamic thought. Luther’s revolutionary act was to proclaim that the Christian can deal directly with God. That there is no need for this complex machinery of priestly intercession. That the priests are actually obfuscatory interlopers when they’re not out and out crooks. That they should go.
In Islam, there wasn’t the superstructure of a church hierarchy, and the idea was always that you didn’t need a priest to speak to God. So Tamim says the Muslims didn’t need a Reformation and never got one. Therefore they never got the modernisation that came out of a reformation. Hmmm.
So Luther’s thought revolution had this extra European twist :
legitimising the authority of individuals to think what they wanted about God implicitly legitimised their authority to think what they wanted about anything.
This did not mean contradicting the faith; it just meant that faith was one thing and explaining nature was another; they were two separate fields of enquiry and never did the twain have to meet.
Tamim tells us that the great revival of Western science which followed had often been anticipated by Muslim scientists. Blood circulation, the spectrum, the experimental method, all had been discovered by Muslims in previous centuries. But nothing had come of any of them.
The steam engine provides a case in point. What could be more useful? What could be more world-changing? Yet the steam engine was invented in the Muslim world over three centuries before it popped up in the West, and in the Muslim world it didn’t change much of anything.
Why ever not?
Possibly because Muslims made their great scientific discoveries just as their social order started crumbling
And also, possibly because of something Ray Bradbury beautifully describes in a story called “The Flying Machine” – a guy during the Ming dynasty in China invents a working flying machine, like the Wright brothers. He hot-foots it to see the Emperor, who observes a demonstration, and is impressed. He immediately orders the man’s execution.
JUST SIGN HERE, HERE AND HERE. THANK YOU.
After the rise of Islam and a couple of golden centuries comes the slow not-so-graceful fall. The Muslim world began to be sliced and diced by the West, sometimes so subtly the empire or khanate or whatever didn’t realise what was going on until they were trussed up like a Turkey. The Western businessmen, government agents and flying-carpetbaggers, along with a few armies here and there, got the Muslims signed up on the dotted line every which way. India, Indonesia, Persia, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, everywhere became either a direct or indirect colony of the West. Muslims could not, finally, refuse the glittering baubles, the manufactured items. They came to the conclusion – some of them, that is – that they had to modernise.
The whole of Muslim history for the last three hundred years can be seen as a complex struggle between the Muslims who think you can modernise without losing your soul, without selling out Islam, without becoming defiled, and those who think this is just a pipe dream. You can see which side of the fence Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and Khomeini were on. You can also see how hard it is to figure what the Arab Spring has produced – modernisers or traditionalists? What happens if you promote democracy in countries which then elect governments who hate you?
AMERICA - WHAT WENT WRONG?
Tamim gives an excellent account of how the USA turned from being heroic in Muslim eyes – yes! Can you imagine that? – it was much admired at the time of the League of Nations, when the USA was coming on strong as an anti-colonialist supporter of liberation for all nations – to the embodiment of evil for most Muslims (I think that’s a fair summary). There were two big ones which turned the whole thing – one, I had barely heard of – this was the 1953 CIA coup in Iran which deposed the democratic modernist who wanted to nationalise the oil industry and installed a King who would give all the oil revenues away to American companies. The second big one was Israel, especially the 1967 war. After that the road to 9/11 was set.
I could discuss many more fascinating points and turn this review into a Grayesque marathon – it’s long enough already, I hear you cry – but I’ll stop now.
Except to say – grab a copy, it’s brilliant!
Tamim Ansary writes in a chatty, slangy, motormouth style. Like a friendly history professor. You’re out for a beer with this guy and you ask the fatal question – what’s up with these Muslims anyhow? What are they all about? Forty hours later, Tamim is still talking. Telling you how, why, all about it, from the top to the bottom, with many glints of humour to get you through some very harrowing stuff.
Sometimes the chat is a little too casual, and he comes across as your uncle trying to prove he’s down with the kids by doing the frug, not the best choice:
One city they attacked in northern Afghanistan was called – well, I don’t even know what it was called originally. P153
For three years he and his band roamed the wilds, looking for a new kingdom : kinging was all he knew, and king was the only job title he was seeking. P190.
Between 1500 and 1800 western Europeans sailed pretty much all over the world and colonised pretty much everything. P217
The sultan never made another attempt on Vienna but his contemporaries saw no sign of weakness in this. “Conquer Vienna” remained on his to-do list always.
P221
But really, I don’t care because this was surely a beautiful change from your usual pompous history writing.
Tamim lays out the usual story we already kind of know for the first half of the book. This is where Islam erupted – is there any other word? – okay, exploded – will that do? – out of Arabia in the 8th century and was all over North Africa and the Levant and on into Persia and Northern/Central India before you could say whatever mild expletive was common in those far-off days. There was a golden age of relative peace. There was art and science. In the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries it was unarguable that the centre of human civilisation was located in the great Muslim empire, and meanwhile, Europeans were illiterate crawlers in the mud (“ooh, some lovely mud over here, Derek!”), and eaters of beetroot and gruel, and had a life expectancy of 23. By the Middle Ages
that early sense of Islam against the world had long given way to Islam as the world
CRUSADER MOSQUITOS
The first crack in this golden period came with the Franji Wars, or as Westerners know them, the Crusades. Before then, Muslims hadn’t noticed the West at all – why would you? So here comes the first real shift of perspective. In Western history the Crusades loom large. They were a big deal. They changed a lot of things. For Islam – not so much. They were annoying, like a swarm of mosquitos. You had to slap them down. There was no sense to the thing but it was purely a local phenomenon and it didn’t last long. One hundred years, then normal service was resumed. The big thing, where the world of Muslims came crashing down, was the Mongol invasion. That’s right, Genghiz Khan. Then after him, Tamburlaine, who was worse. Muslims had to figure out why God allowed pagans to kill them all. But that’s an easy one for religious types. The Jews wrote a whole book about it, it’s called The Bible Part One, or as the Christians call it, Jesus : the Prequel. (And God being just, the Christians got their turn with the Black Death. "Why are you doing this to us??" "Mwaaah-ha-haah!") In each case the answer is the same – God smote you all because you’re doing it wrong. It was a wake up call. Obviously not for the ones smited, they won’t be waking up ever again, but you remnant that’s left, you better get back to where you once belonged, pronto.
SORRY FRANCISCO, YOU'RE REDUNDANT
Tamim does a great job summarising the effects of the Reformation in Europe. For him, this was the thing which kickstarted the whole European project, which he contrasts with the Islamic project. You’d had the Renaissance, but you needed a few other concepts to add to the mix before you could get lift-off, and one of the main components was : the idea of the secular. This does not exist in Islam. Everything is God’s, everything is to be explained by Islamic thought. Luther’s revolutionary act was to proclaim that the Christian can deal directly with God. That there is no need for this complex machinery of priestly intercession. That the priests are actually obfuscatory interlopers when they’re not out and out crooks. That they should go.
In Islam, there wasn’t the superstructure of a church hierarchy, and the idea was always that you didn’t need a priest to speak to God. So Tamim says the Muslims didn’t need a Reformation and never got one. Therefore they never got the modernisation that came out of a reformation. Hmmm.
So Luther’s thought revolution had this extra European twist :
legitimising the authority of individuals to think what they wanted about God implicitly legitimised their authority to think what they wanted about anything.
This did not mean contradicting the faith; it just meant that faith was one thing and explaining nature was another; they were two separate fields of enquiry and never did the twain have to meet.
Tamim tells us that the great revival of Western science which followed had often been anticipated by Muslim scientists. Blood circulation, the spectrum, the experimental method, all had been discovered by Muslims in previous centuries. But nothing had come of any of them.
The steam engine provides a case in point. What could be more useful? What could be more world-changing? Yet the steam engine was invented in the Muslim world over three centuries before it popped up in the West, and in the Muslim world it didn’t change much of anything.
Why ever not?
Possibly because Muslims made their great scientific discoveries just as their social order started crumbling
And also, possibly because of something Ray Bradbury beautifully describes in a story called “The Flying Machine” – a guy during the Ming dynasty in China invents a working flying machine, like the Wright brothers. He hot-foots it to see the Emperor, who observes a demonstration, and is impressed. He immediately orders the man’s execution.
JUST SIGN HERE, HERE AND HERE. THANK YOU.
After the rise of Islam and a couple of golden centuries comes the slow not-so-graceful fall. The Muslim world began to be sliced and diced by the West, sometimes so subtly the empire or khanate or whatever didn’t realise what was going on until they were trussed up like a Turkey. The Western businessmen, government agents and flying-carpetbaggers, along with a few armies here and there, got the Muslims signed up on the dotted line every which way. India, Indonesia, Persia, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, everywhere became either a direct or indirect colony of the West. Muslims could not, finally, refuse the glittering baubles, the manufactured items. They came to the conclusion – some of them, that is – that they had to modernise.
The whole of Muslim history for the last three hundred years can be seen as a complex struggle between the Muslims who think you can modernise without losing your soul, without selling out Islam, without becoming defiled, and those who think this is just a pipe dream. You can see which side of the fence Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and Khomeini were on. You can also see how hard it is to figure what the Arab Spring has produced – modernisers or traditionalists? What happens if you promote democracy in countries which then elect governments who hate you?
AMERICA - WHAT WENT WRONG?
Tamim gives an excellent account of how the USA turned from being heroic in Muslim eyes – yes! Can you imagine that? – it was much admired at the time of the League of Nations, when the USA was coming on strong as an anti-colonialist supporter of liberation for all nations – to the embodiment of evil for most Muslims (I think that’s a fair summary). There were two big ones which turned the whole thing – one, I had barely heard of – this was the 1953 CIA coup in Iran which deposed the democratic modernist who wanted to nationalise the oil industry and installed a King who would give all the oil revenues away to American companies. The second big one was Israel, especially the 1967 war. After that the road to 9/11 was set.
I could discuss many more fascinating points and turn this review into a Grayesque marathon – it’s long enough already, I hear you cry – but I’ll stop now.
Except to say – grab a copy, it’s brilliant!
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