Synopses & Reviews
In this immensely readable history that couldn’t be more timely, award-winning historian Richard Fletcher chronicles the relationship between Islam and Christianity from the time of Muhammad to the Reformation. With lucidity and sound scholarship, Fletcher demonstrates that though there were fruitful trading and cultural interactions between Muslims and Christians during the period when the Arabs controlled most of the Mediterranean world, each group viewed the other’s religion from the beginning as fundamentally different and suspect. Eschewing moral judgments and easy generalizations, The Cross and the Crescent allows readers to draw their own conclusions and explore the implications for the present day.
Review
"A dazzling sprint past the turf wars of Rome and Constantinople, Sunnis and Shi’ites... Genghis Khan and Prester John." John Leonard, Harper’s
Synopsis
The Cross and the Crescent is a brilliant account of the relations between Islam and Christianity from the time of Muhammad to the Reformation, by Englands leading mediaeval historian. Richard Fletcher shows how, despite long periods of co-existence and overlap, religious misunderstanding between the peoples of the book has been present since their earliest encounters. He argues that though there were fruitful trading and cultural interactions between Islam and Christianity during the period when Arabs controlled most of the Mediterranean world, neither side was remotely interested in the actual religion of the other. Christians portrayed Moslems as bloodthirsty pagans and Muhammad as a false prophet, while Islam viewed Christianity as a jumble of sects and conflicting stories. In Fletchers words: Christian and Moslem lived side by side in a state of mutual religious aversion. Given these circumstances, if religious passions were to be stirred up, confrontation would probably be violent.
About the Author
Richard Fletcher is the author of seven books, including The Quest for El Cid, winner of the Wolfson Award, and the Los Angeles Times History Prize. Recently retired from the University of York, where he was a professor of history, he lives in England.
Table of Contents
List of Maps
Preface
1. Ishmael's Children 1
2. An Elephant for Charlemagne 30
3. Crossing Frontiers 67
4. Commerce, Coexistence and Scholarship 100
5. Sieving the Koran 131
6. Epilogue 157
Chronology 162
Further Reading 166
Notes 170
Index 175