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In The Shadow Of The Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World Paperback – 5 Apr 2012

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Tom Holland (Author)
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Tom Holland (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars 193 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 544 pages
  • Publisher: Little, Brown; Export ed edition (5 April 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1408700085
  • ISBN-13: 978-1408700082
  • Product Dimensions: 15.4 x 4 x 23 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (193 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,123,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

A stunning blockbuster (Robert Fisk Independent)

A compelling detective story of the highest order, In the Shadow of the Sword is also a dazzlingly colourful journey into the world of late antiquity. Every bit as thrilling a narrative history as Holland's previous works, [it] is also a profoundly important book (Christopher Hart Sunday Times)

Written with flamboyant elegance and energetic intensity, Holland delivers a brilliant tour de force of revisionist scholarship and thrilling storytelling with a bloodspattered cast of swashbuckling tyrants, nymphomaniacal empresses and visionary prophets . . . Unputdownable (Simon Sebag Montefiore The Times) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Book Description

* Tom Holland, author of Rubicon and Persian Fire, gives a thrilling panoramic account of the rise of Islam

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsThe conception of Islam and its debt to the ancient world
By David Herdson on 19 Sept. 2015
Format: Paperback
In one sense, Islam was born in the early seventh (Christian) century when the Qu’ran was revealed to Mohammed; a new religion but already mature and one preserved more-or-less immutably ever since. So tradition would have it. Yet as Tom Holland shows in his magnificent study, there is much more to it than that.

In fact, there’s so much more to it than that that he spends most of the book setting the context of the times before delivering his devastating but well-argued conclusions. By AD600, the classical world was way past its heyday. The Roman empire was much reduced (indeed, it didn’t even include Rome), and both it and its long-term rival to the east were exhausted by both twenty years of desperate war against each other and by population-slashing outbreaks of plague. If ever conditions were made for an explosive creation of a new state built by the sword, these were they.

Holland lays out clearly why the two ancient empires – one Christian, one Zoroastrian – had reached such a state, citing military, social, economic and religious reasons in a narrative that’s both convincing and entertaining. No dry academic tome here; the prose is as earthy as the land it describes and at times drips with sarcasm, comic understatement or derision at the actions and choices of societies and leaders alike. Similarly, the detail and anecdote leap lifelike from the page.

But if the half of his story covering how the ancient world collapsed is impressive and entertaining, the half covering the birth of the Islamic empire is dazzling. Holland unpicks centuries of tradition and myth to find uncover a religion born not in the full glare of history but in a foggy murk.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsA Superb Book
By Dr Norman Walford on 17 Nov. 2012
Format: Hardcover
When I set out to understand a bit more about Islam, my first port of call was Karen Armstrong's book 'Mohammed'. I came away from that with a portrait of Mohammed as a really rather impressive character - charismatic, compassionate, in many ways a couple of centuries or even millennia ahead of his time. I wasn't converted, but i was certainly made to think.
Now after reading Tom Holland, I realize that Armstrong's book is quite probably, in great measure, essentially a work of fiction. I say probably because, as Holland is the first to point out, the whole origin of Islam is shrouded in uncertainty, with far more unanswered questions than firm answers. If I was impressed by Mohammed, there's a simple reason for that - the first chroniclers of his life wanted me to be impressed, and that's how they presented him. I'm embarrassed now at the way in which I swallowed Armstrong's friendly portrait quite so uncritically.
Tom Holland picks up on the (once you see it) glaringly obvious problems and inconsistencies of the 'standard model' of Islamic origins and ruthlessly examines them. He writes with great confidence and considerable persuasive powers. My first reaction on reaching the end is 'I need to know more!' I need to know just where Holland stands in line with other scholars of the subject - is he mainstream or a maverick - I'm not sure.
I listened to the audio version of the book. I think reading in print might have been hard work. As audio it's great. Strongly recommended.
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4.0 out of 5 starsFascinating revelations about the birth of Islam
By daja on 14 July 2012
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Tom Holland's fourth book charts the birth of Islam. The chronology is a little confusing: we open with the defeat in battle and death of the king of a Jewish kingdom in what is now the Yemen. Holland then takes us back to the recent histories of the Persian Empire and Constantinople. When we are back up to date we rush through Mohammed and on into the Ummayyads finishing with their annihilation by the Abbassids.

His thesis seems to be that this was the time when people of this region began to write down their religious beliefs; possible to protect them since they lived largely in the border area between the continually feuding Persian and 'Roman' empires. So he shows how the Zoroastrian priests of Persia start to write things down and then the project is enthusiastically taken up by the Jews of the area who develop the Torah. Justinian writes his laws, carefully based on scholarship to demonstrate their ancient provenance. The Bible is collected as a way of imposing orthodoxy on the feuding Christian sects of Constantine's empire although the hadiths amplifying the Koran (largely developed in a town thirty miles from the centre of Jewish learning) seem to be rather an attempt by the religious community to have an authority separate from the say-so if the Caliph.

What I found far more interesting (and frustrating) was the way he challenged the conventional view of Islamic history. Thus is a footnote on page 304 he claims that the concept of their being only a single version of the Koran dates back to 1924; before then it was largely accepted that there were seven 'readings'. The first mention of Mecca outside the Koran was in 741 (Mohammed died before 634).Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsBest yet
By Rufus Harper on 16 April 2012
Format: Hardcover
Tom Holland has a singular talent: the ability to bring to glorious life a period (or periods) - the Ancient and early Medieval - that are underpinned by relatively few reliable historical sources. Now he has used this talent for his most ambitious project yet: a gripping account of the seismic century or so - arguably the most important in history - that saw the dismemberment of the Roman and Persian Empires, and the rise of Islam. He describes the upheaval as spelling the 'end of the ancient world', and he is surely right. In The Shadow of the Sword is a carefully constructed, beautifully written re-assessment of this momentous period. Not everyone will agree with all his conclusions; there are too many vested interests at stake. But the sheer intellectual prowess of the book should win over the vast majority - myself among them.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 starsBetter books out there on the rise of Islam

Written in a very irritating pompous style. The selling point is that it examines the roots of Islam. Read more

Published 3 months ago by Romulus
4.0 out of 5 starsA lot of ancient world context

A practical, easy, short read, which compares American and Australian cultures. This book does seem to be slightly weighted toward American readers seeking to understand Australian... Read more

Published 3 months ago by Allen Hamlin
4.0 out of 5 starsReframing the whole story

Holland tackles early Islamic history in a surprisingly creative, story-reframing way. First, he spends more than half the book weaving stories about what went just before Islam --... Read more

Published 3 months ago by Brian Griffith
3.0 out of 5 starsA confused read

I at first thought this brilliant! The author starts with the lack of any history of Islam, Mohammed in particular, and proceeds to give histories of the other major movements of... Read more

Published 3 months ago by ᅟ
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Very detailed, well researched

Published 4 months ago by J.P.J. Greene
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Fascinating read

Published 4 months ago by Charn Sanghera
5.0 out of 5 starsWell done,Tom Holland

An astonishing work of scholarship and so very readable particularly on account of the time line,dramatis personae,glossary and notes. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 starsSearch Lights over Mecca and Jerusalem.

A well written and excellent review of the early history of Christianity and Islam and the influences of other traditions and faiths on the emerging stories of these two major... Read more

Published 6 months ago by Colin
4.0 out of 5 starsVery worthwhile read

Interesting and well written and helpful in the context of our modern world

Published 6 months ago by Michael
5.0 out of 5 starsnice book.

still reading it... nice book...
islam is far from religion of peace...
just read the koran...

Published 7 months ago by Jaroslav Strnad

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