The key to understanding the problems with David Levering Lewis is in the following paragraph:

"Had 'Abd al-Rahman's men prevailed that October day, the post-Roman Occident would probably have been incorporated into a cosmopolitan, Muslim regnum unobstructed by borders, as they hypothesize - one devoid of a priestly caste, animated by the dogma of equality of the faithful, and respectful of all religious faiths. Curiously, such speculation has a French pedigree. Forty years ago, two historians, Jean-Henri Roy and Jean Deviosse enumerated the benefits of a Muslim triumph at Poitiers: astronomy; trigonometry; Arabic numerals; the corpus of Greek philosophy. 'We [Europe] would have gained 267 years,' according to their calculations. 'We might have been spared the wars of religion.' To press the logic of this disconcerting analysis, the victory of Charles the Hammer must be seen as greatly contributing to the creation of an economically retarded, balkanized, fratricidal Europe that, in defining itself in opposition to Islam, made virtues out of religious persecution, cultural particularism, and hereditary aristocracy."

There are crucial errors:

1. "Muslim regnum unobstructed by borders". There is no historical basis for this. Anyone that studies Islamic history knows that not long after the 732 AD the Islamic world broke into regions that fought with each other for centuries.

2. "One devoid of a priestly caste, animated by the dogma of equality of the faithful". If Lewis is referring to the equality of the Islamic faithful then this has a modicum of truth, but most of the Islamic world after the initial conquests were populated by Christians and Jews, and Islam has a dogmatic policy inscribed in the Koran and Hadiths to treat them as second class citizens. Unless you come from an Orthodox Christian or Jewish family that lived in the Middle East you can't imagine the horror of the daily life of being non-Muslim in an Islamic controlled society (still true today). A society devoid of a priestly caste? What is he thinking of? The Imams are not a priestly caste? With a few sentences David Levering Lewis shows he is either very ignorant or practicing anti-Western deceit.

3. "Respectful of all religious faiths". This is the opposite of the historical actuality. Islam is not respectful of any religious faith other than its own. It oppresses Christians and Jews (a daily living hell), and all others (such as Zoroastrians) that must convert or be killed. Note that the greatest mass murder in all of human history was committed by the Islamic armies in India; 80 million were massacred. There are many other examples: 1.5 million Armenians, 1 million Assyrians, and others. No Islamic authority has ever apologized for any of this. The Koran and Hadiths justify mass murder so the Imams can't apologize.

If the Islamic armies had won the field in 732 AD then Europe would have become a cultural back water like the Middle East. Islamic societies only thrive while there is a high percentage of subject Christians and Jews, but after Islamic oppression has dissipated those communities then the Islamic majority society shows itself to be uncreative, backward, and turns inward against itself. Don't waste your money on this book.

The author writes from a strong political and social perspective of portraying the occupiers of Andalus as a peaceful and sophisticated civilisation and the Europeans and Christians as coarse and brutish. Handle this book with care. It's a good read but the historical analysis is questionable.

I'll quote from a review by By Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times - "Lewis sets out to show that the failure of what he calls "the jihad east of the Pyrenees" is "one of the most significant losses in world history." He argues that the ... In other words, the West would be better off if it had been incorporated into an all-conquering Islamic empire in the early Middle Ages.

OK.

Still, it's fair to wonder why, if that's true, the West ended up with the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Revolution and the Islamic world got chronic underdevelopment, a pervasive religious obscurantism, Al Qaeda and the trust fund states of the Arabian peninsula? It's also fair to point out that both the Muslim philosopher Averros and the Jewish philosopher-physician Maimonides were sent fleeing for their lives by Islamic fundamentalists and not the Christian Reconquista. Moreover, the Carolingian incursion into Spain -- over which Lewis frets so forcefully -- was undertaken in response to an invitation by Saracen grandees fearful of Abd al-Rahman's expanding hegemony.

Moreover, Lewis isn't the first "big picture" thinker to go down this road. As the formidable historian of fascism Stanley G. Payne pointed out in his recent study of wartime relations between Spain and Germany, Hitler mused that Europe would have been much better off if the Muslims had won at Poitiers because a German state possessed of a "warrior" ideology, like Islam, rather than a crippling Christianity would have conquered the world long before.

The only thing the Fuehrer and an impeccably democratic, humane scholar like Lewis have in common is an understanding of the origins and failures of European civilization that far surpasses their knowledge of Islam Take, for example, the chronology with which Lewis begins his book. At the date 610, a reader finds: "Angel Gabriel visits Muhammad."

Right.

At 650: "Definitive Qur'an produced."

In fact, we know comparatively little about the origins of the Koran because Islamic hostility to the kind of source criticism to which the Hebraic and Christian scriptures have long been subjected has made scholarly research into the evolution of Muslim scriptures -- and they evolved as surely as the Bible did -- physically dangerous. Even today, efforts by German scholars to produce a critical edition of the Koran proceed almost in secret out of fear of reprisal.

Somehow, that ought to be factored into Lewis' reckoning of what flowed from the Frankish victory at Poitiers."

And look at the review in the New York Times - google it - by Eric Ormsby who write " Occasionally he goes even farther astray; in discussing the Prophet's views on women, he writes, "Muhammad's comparatively enlightened ideas (as explained by Allah) about gender roles positively distinguished the Koran from its misogynistic Mosaic and Pauline analogues." It's hard to know what disturbs more here, the factual inaccuracies or the personal opinions inserted under cover of jargon."

And look at the review by Ed Voves in the Californian Literary Review. - google it

And a centrpiece of the book is that the Chanson de Roland - epic poem or oral history - was falsified to portray Roland as killed by forces of the Caliph of Cordoba instead of being killed by Basques. However "according to the thirteenth century Arab historian Ibn al-Athir, Charlemagne came to Spain upon the request of the "Governor of Saragossa", Sulayman al-Arabi, to aid him in a revolt against the caliph of Cordoba. Arriving at Saragossa and finding that al-Arabi had had a change of heart, Charlemagne attacked the city and took al-Arabi prisoner. At Roncevaux Pass, al-Arabi's sons collaborated with the Basques to ambush Charlemagne's troops and rescue their father."

I have no problems with opinions, it's part of the clash of ideas and civilisations. But read this not as an impartial history, read this in the knowledge that it will be a political narrative from the perspective of 'the West and Christianity are bad/doomed/failed/never any good'.

IMHO all the civilisations of that era were bloodthirsty and there's no black and white as this book attempts to portray.

Professor Lewis has offered us a meditation on the contrasts and interactions between Islam and Europe in the wake of the Islam's spectacular advance from out of the Arabian peninsula. Professor Lewis is able to distill some of the events into pithy statements which I carry away as means by which to retain an understanding of history. He means us to think about the early confrontation between Islam and the West in comparison to what is happening now. When it comes down to it, I as a blood Jew, would have chosen to live in the Islamic world (except for some moments of terrible persecution) than at almost any time in the post-Roman, Christian world whether under the Visagothic non-Catholics of Spain or the tighten noose of the Trinitarian Vatican. During the Umayyad's two and half centuries of al-Andalus, the one per cent of the population who were Jewish may have had one of their best times in history. And that may also apply to both Catholics and other dissenting Christians. (Which fits with the comment in other histories that Christian peasants in Ottoman Europe were probably much better off, at least until the mid-19th century, than their counterparts in Christian Europe.)

Some of the almost poetic summaries which have stuck with me include, referring to Charles Martel's halting Islam's advance at Poitiers: Charles' victory, "[greatly contributed" to the creations of a economically retarded, balkanized, fratricidal Europe, that in defining itself in opposition to Islam, made virtues out of religious persecution, cultural particularism, and hereditary aristocracy." Or "The New Carolingian order...was religiously intolerant, intellectually impoverished, and economically primitive." The effects of which were felt until the commercial revolutions and Enlightenment. Unlike Islam, which theoretically did not coerce people of the book to convert (in fact was reluctant because it denied the state the special taxes on non-Muslims), Charlemagne put both heathens and their sacred trees to the torch and axe, killing those who "scorned" baptism. Charlemagne's Saxon Capitulation kept Saxony in a state rebellion and repression for a century. A scholar Prof. Lewis quotes says, "[the Capitulation] stands as a blueprint of the comprehensive and ruthless Christianization of a conquered society." Would not Europe have been better off had Islam been able to complete its manifest destiny, circling through Europe to conquer or isolate Byzantium from the northwest.

Of course, Islam had its depredations and rivalries. That intellectual freedom barely survived the defeat of the Umayyads in Spain is testament to puritanical Islam's inefficiency. Nonetheless, a reasonable a amount of Prof. Lewis's book is forgettable rivalries of princes and battles. Islam had them as much as Europe. Regional lords sallied forth to upset central powers and the conflict over succession produced epigones and the collapse of empires. Kings and battles, how dismal is human history. I used to think the medieval Indian history was unreadable because of its confusion of kingdoms and warriors. But it is the same in Prof. Lewis' book. Somehow I could have held more of his themes in my mind if he had stuck more to the bigger picture. Islam slipped through battle exhausted Byzantium and Persia and spread itself from India to the Frankish kingdoms. That miracle is never quite explained. By the end of the tenth century the barrier to expansion across the Pyrenees had disintegrated but by then Spain also had concerns other than jihad. I would like to think it was their intellectual curiosity and mercenaries because they no longer were interested in conquest but it seems more likely it was competing interests both among principalities that had never been integrated and the usual palace politics.

While reading Prof. Lewis' book I have also been listening to lectures on the Vikings by Prof. Harl of Tulane. He hardly mentions Spain except as a destination for Viking slaves and other goods. Unlike the wreck of Charlemagne's empire, Spanish Umayyads built fortifications at river mouths eliminating the great scourge that ran from France down the rivers of Russia to the Black Sea for several centuries. It was simple for a together society which was much more enlightened that any that followed it for six or seven hundred years. But then Islam was able to undo its own achievements and sink into religious rigidity and finally economic stagnation in the face of rising European imperialism and the industrial revolution.
Prof. Lewis has offered us the opportunity to think anew on these matters. Listening to President Bush defame Barak Obama in front of the Israeli Parliament by equating the desire to find a more peaceful route in the Middle East to appeasement to Nazism at Munich, makes one wonder whether people ever change. Humane, enlightened self-interest so often takes a back seat to narrow-minded self-righteousness. If the battle of Poitiers had only turned off differently! No, no chance! People would not have messed things up in another way. Thank you Prof. Lewis. Keep thinking big.
Charlie Fisher, author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World

I wish I had this book when I was in college. The history of western civilization, as American colleges describe it, leaves a terra incognita between the fall of the Roman Empire and Geoffrey Chaucer - with the Pippins and Charlemagne and the rescue of the West at Poitiers in 732 as only obligatory high points. Now here is David Lewis's wonderful book filling in not only the emergence of Muhammad and the rise of Islam but also, with the greatest clarity, the succession of Goths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Lombards, Visigoths, Franks and various intermediary tribes of northern and eastern Europe that, first, destroyed the Roman aqueducts, then the empire itself, then appropriated and occupied the ruins for centuries afterward. Lewis shows us Muhammad's followers and successors and the origins of the blood hatreds between the Sunnis and the Shiites that have lasted until our own times. We see Islam's conquest of the Eastern Roman Empire, North Africa, Spain (al Andalus), all within Lewis's finely woven tapestry of brilliant threads. For a student or a scholar, Lewis puts it all together in 379 pages of text and another 94 pages of notes, glossaries, genealogies, bibliographies, credits and index. There are, besides, useful maps and beautiful illustrations. I have followed Lewis's career and enjoyed his work all the way back to Prisoners of Honor: The Dreyfus Affair in 1974. In that time, he has won two Pulitizer Prizes (for his two-volume biography of W.E.B. Du Bois), a MacArthur Foundation award, and many other honors including his term as president of the Society of American Historians. God's Crucible, The Making of Europe, 570-1215, is an illustrious addition to his career.
Robert Phillip Bomboy
Author
Smart Boys Swimming in the River Styx

One of David Levering Lewis' themes in this brilliant book is that Western Europe would have been far better off if the highly cultured Moslems had won the Battle of Poitiers in 732 over the barbaric Franks. Instead, Lewis argues, it took several more centuries for knowledge and culture to filter north from Islamic Spain.

While its subtitle is "Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215" most of the book is about Spain under Moslem rule, from the first invasion of 711 through the Christian capture of Toledo in 1085. At its best it was a golden age of philosophy, great libraries, and toleration among Moslems, Jews, and Christians. But enlightened Caliphs were succeeded by intolerant tyrants, and civil war split the caliphate into squabbling principalities that were vulnerable to the small Christian states expanding southward.

An attempt to find Moslem allies in Morocco to block the Christians opened Spain to an Islamic fundamentalism that was only matched by the intolerance of the Christian kingdoms.

There are interesting chapters about the final confrontation between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Persians (in which they exhausted themselves enough to be vulnerable to the Arab invasion) and about Mohammad, the rise of Islam, and the jihad that captured the world from Morocco to the edge of India.

What there isn't is any kind of discussion of the Crusades or later confrontations between Byzantium and the Islamic world. Once the focus moves to Spain it rarely leaves it.

The sections about the Franks in Europe, from the first barbarian kingdom of Clovis to the empire of Charlemagne, are fascinating.

The author attempts to cover a wide-scope of Islamic/European history. He succeeds quite well in including this vast amount of information, however, I found some portions of the book quite overwhelming. For instance, he tears through what feels to be an endless barage of names, places and dates, which renders the nonastute somewhat lost. Granted, I have a minimal background in Islamic history (1 college course). I feel that this book would be perfect for someone with a deep foundational knowledge of Islamic/European history because Lewis's work would build from that, providing rich detail and further understanding. This book would also serve well as a collegiate course reading. Student/Professor discussion throughout the readings would clarify/enhance the experience profoundly. Bottom line: if you aren't well versed in this history to begin with, the book may fly over your head.

Positive Notes: The books includes a glossary for many of the Arabic terms used by the author.

The book "God's Crucible" presents what it bills as genuine
and unbiased scholarship from a Pulitzer Prize winning author.

Regrettably the scholarship is inaccurate and the stereotyped
portrayal of history in this book is more myth than accurate history.

I will take just one example where the scholarship of this book is
inaccurate to the point of fraud:

The destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria , this book without
sound scholarship exonerates Islam of and blames Christianity for.

While the evidence is that the library went through myriad threats
and suffered various fortunes, there is no evidence that the Library
was either destroyed or that its holdings were largely affected before
Islam.

The few comments by Orosius about the smaller Temple Library are not
conclusive even here let alone about the Great Library at Alexandria
regarding the Christians of the 4th century.

Further, we have detailed Islamic accounts of the destruction occurring
after the Islamite conquest.

Thus the book's inaccurate claim "that the library had been all but
destroyed in the last decade of the 4th century by fanatical Alexandrian
Christians" is inaccurate and not scholarly to the point of fraud.

This book then portrays:

"that Amr and his officers neither knew of the Library of Alexandria nor seem to have heard talk of it is important to note because it was later claimed by some Christian divines and scholars that the Arabs destroyed the library" page 83

This inaccurate polemic of this book is hardly unbiased nor sound
scholarship.

This author ignores the fact that the first account of the Islamite
destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria was by a respected Islamic
judge and that the original still exists.

The infamy of the Islamite successor to Mohammed's very words to destroy
the great library are preserved: to the effect that if the library
contains works in accord with the Koran it is unneeded and should be
burned, and if it contains works at variance with the Koran again the
library should still be burned.

Further, it is noted that it took 6 months of burning books to heat bath
water before they were all destroyed.

This unscholarly book ignored this earliest account from an Islamic Judge
and pretends that the destruction by Islam is merely a fabrication of later Christian divines.

Further, this book ignores the myriad destructions of libraries all the
way from Alexandria to India by Islam as well as the later destruction
of the main library at Constantinople with 250,000 books by Islam.

This book and its Pulitzer Prize winning author is inaccurate to the point of mere polemic and fraud in these matters of detail.

**********************************************************************

The overview of history that then follows is again inaccurate and
without serious scholarly effort.

1
The second class status of Jewish and Christian kaffirs under Islam
or the intolerance where such philosophers as Maimonides and even the
great Averroes have to flee are hardly signs of a great utopian and
tolerant paradise in Islamite Spain. Such a portrayal is myth not
accurate history.

2
The role of Islamite Spain as a conduit for learning to the west
while of great importance is overplayed by this author. Islamite Spain
was one of many sources through which the surviving great wisdom of
antiquity was transmitted ; not the only one nor even the largest one.

Further, the destruction by Islam of other such sources of transmission
is again completely ignored or without serious scholarship denied by this
author; such as at Alexandria and Constantinople.

***********************************************************************

This book's mythic portrayal of history is thus undeserving of true
trust.

Regrettably Islam over its 1400 year history has destroyed far more wisdom than it has ever produced. An estimated 90% of Greek culture
has been lost to us directly as a result of Islam. The greatness of
this western heritage is of far greater significance than anything
Islam has ever come close to producing.

We cannot allow this author's political agendas and wishful thinking
to sweep under the carpet or pass lightly over such wanton destructions;
nor should we remain in ignorance of Islam's infamous history in blinding
the world for 1000 years anymore than we should absolve Christianity of the destruction of the works of Mayan culture.

Robert William Mosimann

I ordered this book in its audio version in an effort to fill my travel time to and from work. I must say, that I think the book form would have been more enjoyable.

The narrator is very good, however the plethora of Arabic personages and place names was virtually impossible to follow. It was a good history of the foundations of Islam, from the rise of the prophet Mohammed to the various Caliphates of the early Middle Ages. The various clashes between the Moslem rulers of 8th century Spain and the rising power of the European Germanic tribes under the Carolingian rulers was fascinating.

I could see this as a four star effort in book form, however three stars was the best I could muster in audio form. It's just the kind of history that you need to read in order to fully appreciate.

While I am only half-way through the book, God's Crucible is great history (I would ignore some of the negative reviews written here in Amazon, as they are agenda driven-e.g. Seth Franzman's reviews are consistently negative about any book that even credits Islam and Muslims. Reading his review, I question whether he even read the book). God's Crucible is wonderfully written with great prose.

As a matter of history, I find the book very well balanced. It points out the flaws, as well as the achievements, of the early Muslim empires; as it does for the early Christians and contemporaneous Jews. It is interesting to see that all empires, regardless of religious orientation (Christian, Jewish, Islamic) are subject to the failings of human nature. So you read of leaders displaying great heroism and compassion, and others of cruelty and ignorance. One interesting historical note, is the cooperation among Jews and Muslims in Muslim expansion into the holy lands and beyond, as well as Muslim expansion into Spain. Driven twice from Spain (we know of their expulsion from 1492 and beyond), but also from Visigothic spain (pre-Al Andalusia). Once I finish this book, I will write a more complete review.

An unfortunate aspect of Political Correctivism is its intellectual arrogance that denies the existence of alternative, valid interpretation, and the first paragraph of Notes on Usage in God's Crucible is PCism at its most chauvinistic. Beyond this paragraph, however, the book is one of the most rewarding histories I've read.

The historical narrative is compelling, from the rise of both the Muslims and Islam through the imposition of their empire around the non-European Mediterranean. The parade of unfamiliar personages and names is managed with skill. The principle participants are invested with personality, reflecting insightful reading and understanding of what I imagine to be dry sources. Only occasionally does the author seem to lose himself (and the reader) in minor, convoluted episodes as if a favorite person or event just couldn't be sacrificed. While the superiority of Islamic culture during the so-called Middle Ages is not news, discovering the full range of its sophistication and accomplishments in architecture, literature, math and science was the gem of discovery between these covers.

The author has also corrected two personal misconceptions. First, I had always believed that the purpose of Islamic conquest was to spread Islam. Au Contraire! It was pure naked imperialism -- the desire for, referencing one of the author's recurring phrases, power, wealth and women. Second, I had always thought that the conquest extended over several centuries. Wrong again. The Christian East and Sassanian Persia were conquered at a meteoric speed that must have seemed divinely ordained.

There are speed traps, however. The author insists that the Battle of Poitiers had little to do with the "saving" of Europe, insisting instead that it was due to a breakdown within the Islamic empire. Why can't both be true? He also spends what seems an inordinate amount of energy debunking the Roland myth while appearing to have an unjustified respect for the Cid (why was he incomparable?: p.378). When Christian forces massacre and pillage and carry off women the behavior is condemned as characteristic of a primitive and brutal society. The same behavior in Muslims, however, escapes such censure.

The analysis of religious differences (Shi'ites and Sunni) and the ebb and flow of tolerance vs persecution (the latter particularly by Christians) is effectively interwoven in the narrative, but important questions are glossed over. While it is true that Muslims were tolerant of non-believers, the religious, political and economic restrictions imposed upon those non-believers meant they were 3rd and 4th class citizens. I suppose that is tolerance of a kind. Worse, on several occasions the author comes within a hair's breath of stating that Christian Europe would have been better off under the domination of al-Andalus because of its superior culture -- a sentiment that would have undoubtedly warmed the hearts of all good 19th Century European colonialists. I doubt that a Muslim Europe would have inspired the traditions of individual rights and modern democracy.

In spite of its shortcomings I recommend this book. The reader can easily sift through the author's biases in reaching his own conclusions. And in the final analysis, one never learns by reading only what one wants to believe. One learns only through exposure to the widest possible spectrum of interpretations. From that perspective, this book has broadened my knowledge and understanding.

GOD'S CRUCIBLE BY DAVID LEVERING LEWIS: In a time when our involvement in the Middle East seems almost certain to last for the rest of our lives, it is now more important than ever to understand why. The Middle East is still a very misunderstood place, with a deep and complex history that many haven't an inkling about; a history without which the knowledge and existence of many modern day marvels like medicine, mathematics, astronomy, classical literature would be severely retarded. God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 by David Levering Lewis, a professor at New York University, is a book that takes you back to the very beginning of Islam, and the specific instances that led to its creation.

Lewis begins with the fall and breaking apart of the Roman Empire, and how the western known world went from a seemingly unstoppable empire to crumbling and dividing countries. Lewis sets the stage with the western chunk of the Roman Empire being overrun by invading barbarian hordes, and the more successful eastern part consisting of Byzantium and nearby Persia. Coupled with the growth and growing interest in the Christian and Jewish religions, along with the less popular Zoroastrian beliefs, as well as other smaller cults, the Middle East seems set for a new prophet. Much like Jesus, or any prophet in the religions of the world, from the beginning they are rarely seen as the great, world-altering people that they are, and Lewis is clear to point out such is the case with Muhammad. It is a fascinating look into a religion and culture that has captivated and converted the hearts and minds of a considerable number of the world population.

With Muhammad, along with the Qu'uran, firmly on the path of the growing faith of Islam, Lewis goes into detail with the genesis of the Muslim Empire, as it sweeps across the western world country by country, converting and conquering, ruthless in its unstoppable pace. All the important battles and places show themselves in God's Crucible, and Lewis does a good job of providing a quick history lesson with each "people" that the Muslim army faces in its conquering, but fails somewhat in going into depth about the complex culture of Islam and the Muslim Empire as it grew and developed over the centuries, focusing more on the important battles, and its winners and losers. Nevertheless, God's Crucible is a very important book in our current world, which at the very least will give one some answers to the status quo.

For more reviews, please to go www.alexctelander.com.

The subtitle of this work indicates that this is a history of Islamic influence on Europe from the birth of Muhammad in 510 to the Pope Innocent III's 1215 decree that all Muslims should be expelled from Iberia. That it does in a rough outline; the main focus of this story, however, is about Arab civilization on the Iberian Peninsula -know as Al-Andalus - from 711, when Arab armies intially crossed the Strait of Gibralter, to 788, with the death of Abd al-Rahman - who is in fact the main character of this narrative.

Students of the Middle Ages know this period as the golden age, a period of relative enlightenment in a long stretch of darkness. David Levering Lewis chronicles the achievements of this period. Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in functional harmony known as "convivencia." It was a time of robust commerce and open-minded inquiry. Averroes (Ibn Rushd) wrote his works on Aristotle and Moses Maimonides his "Guide For the Perplexed." (Read also Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages by Richard Rubenstein.) This was in fact the gateway through which the classics of Ancient Greece and Rome entered Europe. Lewis takes this a step further and makes the claim that Europe would have been well served if the Muslims had conquered the entire continent. He argues that this would have given Europe a 300 hundred year headstart on the path of development.

Such claims of course are pointless unless one has an agenda, and apparently Lewis does. The point he's trying to make is that Western historians have misrepresented Islam. Taking a page from Edward Said's playbook countering Western orientalism, Lewis argues that Islam was superior to Western culture. This view naturally will not be very popular with Western audiences. It may have been true for a brief period during the Middle Ages, but it certainly hasn't been true in the modern period. Islam, as well as Christianity and other religions, went through periods of tolerance and intolerance, depending on historical circumstances. It is not by nature tolerant or intolerant. The Koran, which is a collection of writings, speaks both ways on the subject.

And when one looks more closely at the so-called golden age, we see a variety of ethnic and religious groups forced to live together, not by choice but of necessity. Jews and Christians lived more restricted lives than Muslims. They were forced to pay taxes. The only way to avoid taxation was to convert to Islam - which many did. In 732, with the tax base shrinking, the Arabs decided to cross the Pyrenees to increase their revenues. They were stopped, however, at Poitiers by Charles Martel and his ragtag band of warriors. The Arab defeat was due not so much to the superiority of the Franks but rather to the discord within Arab ranks. The Arab march into Europe had come to an end and the golden age with it.

Lewis never misses an opportunity to extol Muslim civilization and to denigrate the European. Europeans were always ignorant, rude, unwashed, violent, and they lived in makeshift settlements and encampments. Although Charlemagne was a brief bright spot in the narrative, things went into futher decline for Europe with the Viking invasions of the 9th century.

Lewis' attempt to show that Islam was a religion of tolerance and prosperity in the Middle Ages was correct as far as that period was concerned. He is not convincing when he claims that it is by nature tolerant, for it was and is many things to many people. What it becomes in the 21st century is still an open book.

"God's Crucible" covers critical parts of world history that the general public has overlooked (i.e. among other things, how blacks contributed to the evolution of what became Europe). This is a great book for junior high (or middle) schools, although it is also worthy for college programs.

In general, the historical information contained within this book could help remedy some of the deeply rooted racist ideas in this land of genocide, rape, slavery, torture, and lies.

"God's Crucible" covers critical parts of world history that the general public has overlooked (i.e. how blacks contributed to the evolution of what became Europe). This is a great book for junior high (or middle) schools, although it is also worthy for college programs.

In general, the historical information contained within this book could help remedy some of the deeply rooted racist ideas in this land of genocide, rape, slavery, torture, and lies.

"God's Crucible" is Pulitzer-Prize winning scholar David Levering Lewis's contribution to the ever-growing body of literature that seeks a better understanding of Islam and the roots of its long and complicated struggle with the west. Unlike other scholars of Islamic and Middle Eastern history who have dashed off books in the wake of September 11 -- Bernard Lewis (whom the author consulted) and Michael Oren are among the best known -- Levering Lewis's prior books have focused on Martin Luther King Jr, W.E.B. DuBois, and the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance. This gave Lewis a fresh perspective in writing "God's Crucible" as he was not burdened by what he might have written in earlier books. Still, it is clear that Lewis himself did not really know where his research would take him, what his main points would be, or even what to call this book before he started (a friend, Sandra Masur, suggested the eventual title, "God's Crucible"). With that said, this is a useful and thoughtful book.

"God's Crucible" refers to al-Andalus, or Muslim Spain, as the site of the first clash of civilizations between Islam and the Christian west. Lewis's "God's Crucible" emphasizes three major themes: (1) the rise of Islam was enabled by perpetual conflict between the Roman Empire and the Iranian Empires (Parthian, Sassanian, Persian); (2) Islam and its Caliphates almost immediately were infected by the inevitable power struggles that plague all such institutions, and even in the so-called glory-days of the first Caliphate, Islam was not monolithic; and finally (3) coexistence between Islam and Christianity in al-Andalus (if not entirely peaceful) engendered the transmission of knowledge and ancient texts from the more-advanced civilization of the caliphs in the east to the backward, medieval Christians of Europe.

The first theme is that the centuries-old imperial struggle between Latin Rome and Persian Iran created the conditions for the disunited Arab tribes living in the deserts of Arabia to unite, found a new religion, and create a greater Islamic Empire. This "Caliphate" subsequently encompassed Arabia, all of modern Iran, and stretched west across North Africa to the pillars of Hercules and north into Europe up to the Pyrenees. Perpetual conflict arguably began in 53 BC when Marcus Crassus infamously brought an invasion force across the Euphrates River Valley. Crassus's expedition met with disaster at Carrhae, resulting in his own destruction and that of seven legions. The Roman Emperors never entirely lost their thirst for expansion into the east however, and Emperors such as Trajan, Severus, Justinian, Constantine, and Heraclius would all bring armies into the fertile crescent in an effort to subdue this troublesome region. This perpetual warfare fatally weakened both the Roman and Persian Empires to the point that although Khosrow II of Persia had thought he won a decisive victory in Jerusalem in 615 AD by bringing back the relics of the Holy Cross, his victory was largely Pyrrhic. A new force led by Muhammad was emerging from the barren sands of Arabia.

Muhammad was born in Mecca, a small town on a popular Roman trade route, in 570 AD. In the month of Ramadan in the year 610, the 40-year old Muhammad began to hear messages from God that he spread to others through his teachings. By the time he died in 632 AD, Muhammad had united all of the tribes of Arabia into a powerful military force that rapidly expanded into the vacuum left by the militarily exhausted Roman and Persian Empires. Riddled with internal decay, the Persian Empire was soon swept away by Islamic forces while these same forces concurrently spread like wildfire across formerly Roman North Africa and into Spain. By 711 AD, Islamic Armies had advanced into and established a firm foothold in Spain, or al-Andalus. But this newly created Islamic Empire was hardly united.

Lewis's second theme is that Islam itself was never monolithic, and that while the caliphs did not distinguish between church and state, both church and state suffered major cleavages early in the first Caliphate. Almost immediately after Muhammad's death, conflict arose over who his legitimate successors should be. One faction argued that it should be Muhammad's familial descendants, who became the Shi'ites, while another faction thought the community of the faithful should choose their own rulers to follow Muhammad, who became the Sunnis. These factions remain locked in perpetual conflict to this day. On the state side, the Umayyad caliphs ruled from 711-750, but suffered defeat at Poitiers (in southern France) in 732. While not catastrophic, this defeat weakened the Umayyads at a time when they were also plagued with rebellion from the North African Berbers. The Abbasids eventually took advantage of this Umayyad weakness and overthrew the caliphate, establishing their own in 750 and moving its capitol from Damascus to Baghdad. But this story gets more complicated. An incredible 19-year-old Umayyad named Abd al-Rahman I escaped from certain death in North Africa into al-Andalus, eventually establishing a power base there that enabled him to rule for 25 years. Nicknamed "The Falcon" for his cunning, and with survival being the mother of all necessity, Rahman I cooperated with Christians to defeat Abassid armies dispatched to bring him to heal. With these dynamics at play, the conditions were created in al-Andalus for Islamic and Christian coexistence in "God's Crucible."

This brings us to Lewis's third theme: that important knowledge from the center of Islamic civilization in Baghdad made its way across North Africa, onto the "conveyor belt" of Toledo, and into Christian Europe. Lewis argues that this knowledge provided critical building blocks for the Renaissance and western awakening centuries later. He also seems to lament how the Christian response to jihad, which became officially sanctioned Holy War, gradually erased the "middle ground" that had existed in al-Andalus that allowed the transmutation of such valuable knowledge. al-Andalus deteriorated into extremism on both sides. In this lament, he seems to be speaking directly to the modern world of the dangers and lasting harm caused by extremism.

In conclusion, this is a useful and thoughtful book that sheds much-needed light on a period of history that is rarely examined or understood. The book contains abundant maps, a glossary of terms, and a genealogy of both Muslim and Christian rulers. Still, I would hesitate to recommend this book to everyone as it often wanders a field, is dense with difficult names and places, and reads as if it were written for an academic rather than a general audience. Lewis himself says that this project started out as a small book that became a large one, and the reader is left to wonder if the abundance of Lewis's research and the complexity of his subject caused him to write a book that surpasses the reach of those he likely intended it for. In a larger scope though, "God's Crucible" is an important contribution to understanding Islam's long struggle with the Christian west, which is a topic that will remain with all of us for some time.

"God's Crucible" is Pulitzer-Prize winning scholar David Levering Lewis's contribution to the ever-growing body of literature that seeks a better understanding of Islam and the roots of its long and complicated struggle with the west. Unlike other scholars of Islamic and Middle Eastern history who have dashed off books in the wake of September 11 -- Bernard Lewis (whom the author consulted) and Michael Oren are among the best known -- Levering Lewis's prior books have focused on Martin Luther King Jr, W.E.B. DuBois, and the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance. This gave Lewis a fresh perspective in writing "God's Crucible" as he was not burdened by what he might have written in earlier books. Still, it is clear that Lewis himself did not really know where his research would take him, what his main points would be, or even what to call this book befor he started (a friend Sandra Masur suggested the eventual title, "God's Crucible"). That said, this is a useful and thoughtful book.

"God's Crucible" refers to al-Andalus, or Muslim Spain, as the site of the first clash of civilizations between Islam and the west. Lewis's "God's Crucible" emphasizes three major themes: (1) the rise of Islam was enabled by perpetual conflict between the Roman Empires and the Iranian Empires; (2) Islam and its Caliphates almost immediately were infected by the inevitable power struggles that plague all such institutions, and even in the so-called glory-days of the first Caliphate, Islam was not monolithic; and finally (3) in Al-Andalus coexistence between Islam and Christianity did exist (if not entirely peaceful) which engendered the transmission of knowledge and ancient texts from the more-advanced civilization of the caliphs in the east to the backward, medieval Christians of Europe.

The first theme is that the centuries-old imperial struggle between Latin Rome and Persian Iran created the conditions for the disunited Arab tribes living in the deserts of Arabia to unite, found a new religion, and create a greater Islamic Empire. This "Caliphate" subsequently encompassed Arabia, all of modern Iran, and stretched west across North Africa to the pillars of Hercules and north into Europe up to the Pyrenees. Perpetual conflict arguably began in 53 BC when Marcus Crassus infamously brought an invasion force across the Euphrates River Valley that met with disaster at Carrhae and resulted in his own destruction and that of seven legions. The Roman Emperors never entirely lost their thirst for expansion into the east however, and Emperors such as Trajan, Severus, Justinian, and Constantine would all bring armies across the Hellespont in an effort to subdue this troublesome region. This perpetual warfare fatally weakened both the Roman and Persian Empires to the point that although Khosrow II of Persia had thought he won a decisive victory in Jerusalem in 615 AD by bringing back the relics of the Holy Cross, his victory was largely Pyrrhic. A new force led by Muhammad was emerging from the sands of Arabia.

Muhammad was born in Mecca, a small town on a popular Roman trade route, in 570 AD. In the month of Ramadan in the year 610, the 40-year old Muhammad began to hear messages from God that he spread to others through his teachings. By the time he died in 632 AD, Muhammad had united all of the tribes of Arabia into a powerful military force that rapidly expanded into the vacuum left by the militarily exhausted Roman and Persian Empires. Riddled with internal decay, the Persian Empire was soon swept away while the forces of Islam concurrently spread like wildfire across formerly Roman North Africa and into Spain. By 711 AD, Islamic Armies had advanced into, and established a firm foothold in Spain, or al-Andalus. But this newly created Islamic Empire was hardly united.

Lewis's second theme is that Islam itself was never monolithic, and that while the caliphs did not distinguish between church and state, both church and state suffered major cleavages. Almost immediately after Muhammad's death, conflict arose over who his legitimate successors should be. One faction argued that it should be Muhammad's familial descendants, who became the Shi'ites, while another faction thought the community of the faithful should choose their own rulers to follow Muhammad, who became the Sunnis. These factions remain locked in perpetual conflict to this day. On the state side, the Umayyad caliphs ruled from 711-750, but suffered defeat at Poitiers (in southern France) in 732. While not catastrophic, this defeat weakened the Umayyads at a time when they were also plagued with rebellion from the North African Berbers. The Abbasids eventually took advantage of this Umayyad weakness and overthrew the caliphate, establishing their own in 750 and moving the capitol from Damascus to Baghdad. But this story gets more complicated. An incredible 19-year-old Umayyad named Abd al-Rahman I escaped from certain death into al-Andalus, eventually establishing a power base there that enabled him to rule for 25 years. Nicknamed "The Falcon" for his cunning, and with survival being the mother of all necessity, Rahman I cooperated with Christians to defeat Abassid armies dispatched to bring him to heal. With these dynamics at play, the conditions were created in al-Andalus for Islamic and Christian coexistence in "God's Crucible."

This brings us to Lewis's third theme that important knowledge from the center of Islamic civilization in Baghdad made its way across North Africa, onto the "conveyor belt" of Toledo, and into Christian Europe. Lewis argues that this knowledge provided critical building blocks for the Renaissance and western awakening centuries later. He also seems to lament how the Christian response to jihad, which became officially sanctioned Holy War, gradually erased the "middle ground" that had existed in al-Andalus that allowed the transmutation of valuable knowledge. al-Andalus deteriorated into extremism on both sides. In this lament, he seems to be speaking directly to the modern world of the dangers and lasting harm caused by extremism.

In conclusion, this is a useful and thoughtful book that sheds much-needed light on a period of history that is rarely examined or understood. The book contains abundant maps, a glossary of terms, and a genealogy of both Muslim and Christian rulers. Still, I would hesitate to recommend this book to everyone as it often wanders a field, is dense with difficult names and places, and reads as if it were written for an academic rather than a general audience. Lewis himself says that this project started out as a small book that became a large one, and the reader is left to wonder if the abundance of Lewis's research and the complexity of his subject caused him to write a book that surpasses the reach of those he likely intended it for. In a larger scope though, "God's Crucible" is am important contribution to understanding Islam's long struggle with the Christian west, which is a topic that will remain with all of us for some time.

Yes, I definitely agree with the thesis of David Levering Lewis, the author of God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215, that we would all be better off if Islam had conquered Western Europe in the 8th century. Had that occurred, we could all participate in stoning our wives to death when they cheat on us. Also, we wouldn't have to listen to all this whining from feminists about date rape - we'd be watching rape victims whipped in public, as devout Muslims now do in Saudi Arabia. And we wouldn't have to put up with a woman running for president of the United States - or at least, she'd have to wear her burka while campaigning. And no black people running for office either - they would still be slaves, for no culture has done more to perpetuate the practice of human slavery over the past thousand years than Islam, from selling black Africans by the thousands to Western slave traders in the 17th and 18th centuries, to continuing to murder and enslave Christian animists in Southern Sudan to this very day.

Let us all thank Professor Lewis for pointing out the just how much better of we would be had the enlightenment of Islam prevailed over the decadence of Western culture twelve hundred years ago.

not even worth a comment,
yet as a fictional book it can be amusing.

I think the book is actually quite good.
But the narrator of the audio cd is a disaster.
He has a deep powerful voice but his reading style lacks any kind of storytelling ability. He has this plodding, monotone style that turns the whole book into one, never ending run-on sentence.
Tantor should have known better than to hire a someone with poor articulation. No cadence, no inflection.

The Battle of Tours in 732 was a pivotal moment in world history. Historians like Gibbon consider it a seminal moment in Western Civilization. Had Charles Martel's outnumbered Franks lost that battle, we all might be turning towards Mecca every day for our daily prayers, but they defeated Al Ghafiqi's forces and halted the first of several waves of invasion of Western Europe from the Islamic world. Lewis however, thinks this was a less than ideal outcome, claiming that Europe and indeed the entire world would have been better off had the Muslim armies conquered Europe.

During the Dark Ages, Europe was excessively tribal, violent, mired in poverty, economically backwards and generally uncivilized by any definition of the term. The Islamic world during this same period was the center of the enlightenment, economically robust, scientifically advanced and unified under a common banner of Islam. Lewis, unlike many of his contemporaries, does not hide or obscure the more inconvenient truths about the Muslim who invaded the Iberian peninsula. He writes at some length about the Muslims wars of conquest, their use of slavery, and the treatment of Christians and Jews as second class citizens. Despite his acknowledgement of this he seems to be under the impression that the Islamic rule of Spain was "tolerant" and had this rule spread to Western Europe the Golden Age of Islamic society would have ended the above mentioned deficiencies in European society.

Its almost a reverse of the "White Man's Burden" where the black and brown people of Africa and the Middle East civilize the savages of Western Europe.

But we know how things played out. Western Civilization entered its golden age around the time that Isabella had managed to expel the Muslims from Spain and the Islamic world began its long, slow and painful decline. While Mongol armies stormed the Middle east, and fanatical tribalism once again crept into the Islamic world, the West was developing the seeds of the Renaissance, Scientific Theory, the widespread use of moveable type, representative democracy, abolition of slavery, capitalism and universal suffrage.

True, we don't know where we would be today if Islam conquered Europe, but a quick look at the Middle East today is a clue.

The central argument of this rather rambling book is that the Islamic civilization that developed in the Iberian Peninsula after the Muslim conquest of the 8th Century contributed directly to the rebirth of Western European culture and learning. A secondary theme is that the Realm of Islam, after its initial and phenomenal expansion, developed into a uniquely tolerant and cultured society that compared very favorably to an intolerant and semi-barbaric Western Europe of the early Middle Ages. Yet this book is not a particularly good history. Nonetheless, it is a fun read. Lewis clearly enjoyed writing it and provides the reader with a lot of interesting detours and asides.

History is as much a matter of interpretation as a recounting of facts. It is certainly true that most Islamic fundamentalist today regard much of the period covered by this book (late 8th Century through the early 13th Century) as a `Golden Age' for Islam. It also appears accurate to argue that during this golden age at least parts of the Realm of Islam (Dar al Islam) achieved a remarkably tolerant society and a high level of culture. Yet this is a very relative conclusion. One suspects that most Muslims of the golden age were more like their contemporaneous European Christian counterparts than not. Golden age Islamic learning and culture, like contemporary European culture, were restricted to a learned minority and were scarcely universal. Also one would suspect that Islamic tolerance to religious minority groups such as the Jews and Coptic Christians was as dicey in the Golden Age as it is today. Still the Islamic society of the Iberian Peninsula had an enviable reputation for tolerance and certainly provided Western Europe with some of the intellectual horse power it needed to move into the high middle ages. Yet other influences also helped propel Europe into the pre-renaissance period. The reign of Charlemagne provided the stability needed to reinvigorate Western European learning and scholarship and by the late 10th Century Byzantine (East Roman) culture began again influencing Europe.

The great Belgian historian Henri Pirenne in 1937 wrote what even today is a brilliant book, "Mohammed and Charlemagne" (Amazon.com). In it he argued that the Muslim expansion and subsequent control of the Mediterranean Sea (7th Century) finally and completely brought an end to the commerce which kept at least the vestiges of the Roman commercial system alive in Europe long after the implosion of the Western Empire. In describing the Muslim influence on European development this is still the better book.

This books main argument is that the Islamic conquest of Spain led to a kingdom of tolerance in Spain and led 'proto-Europe' to become intolerant and thus European history since the 8th century has been entirel defined as being anti-Muslim. Thus while Muslim al-Andalus flourished as a perfect utopia Europe became dominated by slavery, war, religious intolerance and hereditary aristocracy. There is one slight problem with this thesis: it is completely wrong in most respects.

Europe was stamping out slavery because Christianity forbid slavery at precisely the same time that Islam brought slavery to Europe. The Islamic empire based in Spain was built on slavery and Muslim colonialistic raids into France were directed towards obtaining more slaves. Spain was not the tolerant paradise as is depicted. In fact the greatest Jewish scholars of Spain, such as Maimonadies, had to flee because of the intolerant Almohads and other Muslim dynasties. Europe didn't invent hereditary dynasties because that would be impossible given the fact that Muslim rule in Spain was also hereditary as it still is today in Syria, Morrocco and Saudi Arabia.

The idea that Muslim Spain was any different than 'proto-Europe' is completely mistaken. Muslim Spain defined itself primarily against the 'infidels' and 'kaffirs' which it waged war against. Those 'infidels' were the Christian Europeans. The idea that Spain was 'tolerant' is no more true than saying the AMerican South in the 1950s was 'tolerant'. Muslim Spain had a society where all the non-Muslim Dhimmi were second class citizens. If they rose to high places it was only due to good luck, rather than equal rights. If there were periods of tolerance they were seperated by periods of extreme intolerance. The idea that Spain had 'grandeur' while Europe was 'dark' is merely a stereotype, and it was precisely the fall of Muslim Spain in the 15th century that coincided with the Reneaisance.

Just one example should suffice. When Christians in 'tolerant' Muslim Spain insulted Islam they were forced to recount or be killed. That is hardly tolerant. Many died as martyrs or slaves. The fact that Christians were called 'Kaffir' and Jews were called 'dog' in Muslim Spain is not exactly 'tolerance'.

THe interplay between Christian Europe and the Muslim world was not a one way street or a simple contest of 'good and evil'. Slavery and intolerance existed on both sides, as did ethnic cleansing and colonialism. The Muslim imperialism in Christian Spain that lasted for 600 years was no different in substance than France's colonization of Algeria. This is a biased and rediculous book that simply ignores history in order to prove a point and transmit stereotypes.

Seth J. Frantzman