Customer Reviews

The Venture of Islam, Volume 2: The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods

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This review really applies to all three volumes. Hodgson's work is not for those new to Islamic studies, and his writing style is complex. Few are the sentences that lack at least one subjunctive clause. But his adoption of key Arabic terms in his narrative; his broad geographic sweep, from Andalusia and the Sahel through Nile and Oxus to India and Indonesia; and his comprehensive consideration of political, social, religious, cultural, and economic aspects of civilization make for a series as broad and deep as this student of history could want. It took me several years to read the whole set, as only recently did I have enough interest in the artistic and philisophic (falsafah) traditions.

This book's chapters are dense. Of the three volumes of The Venture of Islam, however, it is the one that has held up the best under modern scholarship.