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Empires of Faith: The Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam, 500-700

Online ISBN:
9780191730962
Print ISBN:
9780199261260
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Empires of Faith: The Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam, 500-700

Peter Sarris
Peter Sarris
Senior Lecturer in Late Roman, Early Medieval, and Byzantine History, University of Cambridge; Fellow of Trinity College
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Published online:
19 January 2012
Published in print:
27 October 2011
Online ISBN:
9780191730962
Print ISBN:
9780199261260
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

Drawing upon the latest historical and archaeological research, this work provides a panoramic account of the history of Europe, the Mediterranean and the Near East from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam. The formation of a new social and economic order in western Europe in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, and the ascendancy across the West of a new culture of military lordship, are placed firmly in the context of on-going connections and influence radiating outwards from the surviving Eastern Roman Empire, ruled from the great imperial capital of Constantinople. The East Roman (or ‘Byzantine’) Emperor Justinian’s attempts to revive imperial fortunes, restore the empire’s power in the West, and face down Constantinople’s great superpower rival, the Sasanian Empire of Persia, are charted, as too are the ways in which the escalating warfare between Rome and Persia paved the way for the development of new concepts of ‘holy war’, the emergence of Islam, and the Arab conquests of the Near East. Processes of religious and cultural change are explained through examination of social, economic, and military upheavals, and the formation of early medieval European society is placed in a broader context of changes that swept across the world of Western Eurasia from Manchuria to the Rhine. Warfare and plague, holy men and kings, emperors, shahs, caliphs and peasants all play their part in a compelling narrative suited to specialist, student, and general readership alike.

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