Think of Caliphs and you think of the fabulous tales of A 1001
Arabian Nights. Of Scheherazade, the beautiful wife desperate not
to suffer the same grisly fate as her predecessors, who told a tale
each night to her husband, but stopped each story at dawn on such a
cliff-hanger that he kept her alive until the following night to
find out how it would end. And the following night she would weave
in another story and so it would continue night after night. Well,
this book is just as fabulous and what's more, all the stories are
true. Telling the story of Islam's greatest dynasty, the book
covers the historical period of the Abbasid caliphate from 750 to
the 940s. And an amazing period of history it is too. Caliphs,
viziers, family arguments, battles, harems - all are here in this
very readable and exciting introduction to the 'glory days of the
caliphate' at a time when Britain had only recently exited the Dark
Ages. I defy anyone with an interest in history to put this book
down unfinished. (Kirkus UK)
Professor Hugh Kennedy makes no apology for the 'fair share of
booze and sex' involved in The Court of the Caliphs. Every element
of his story is drawn from the original Arabic texts: 'the writers
of the ninth and tenth centuries knew their rulers had their fair
share of human frailties and were quite happy to describe them. To
produce a sanitized and whitewashed version of history does no
service to our understanding of the caliphate.' In this fast-paced
and colourful narrative, Professor Hugh Kennedy takes us back to
Baghdad and Samarra and the glory days of the Caliphate. From a
rebellion planned in a remote desert town to the founding of
Baghdad in AD 762, the rule of the Abbasid dynasty was looked back
on as the golden era of the Islamic Conquest. The muslim world was
ruled by a single sovereign, who waged holy war against the
Byzantines and protected the holy cites of Mecca and Medina. For
what was to be the last time in history, a mighty empire was based
on the ancient Mesopotamian heartland that had once supported the
Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians. The Caliphs formed the model
for succeeding muslim regimes. From military conquests to
patronizing poetry, building pala
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