The spread of Islam, first through conquest, then migration, has had a tremendous impact on the world in which we live. Today, certainly by Hollywood and the Western media, that impact is usually framed in terms of terrorism. Again and again, Arabs in general and Muslims in particular are portrayed as backward, hateful, violent people fueled by an ideology that despises freedom and glorifies, indeed rewards, violence. If your impressions of Arabs and Muslims have been formed mainly by this kind of pejorative, simplistic, us-versus-them, clash-of-civilizations rhetoric, you may expect the story of the great Arab conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries to depict a brutal and grotesque bloodbath.

When I first received an advance reading copy of Hugh Kennedy's The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In, I approached it with a certain apprehension. I worried about the kind of bias it might contain. The subtitle can lead one to expect some kind of discussion on how the world is different now because of the Arab conquests and the spread of Islam. Although the preface and foreword put me somewhat at ease, I still kept waiting impatiently, no matter how interesting the narrative, to see what kind of conclusions would be drawn at the end. As it turns out, the subtitle refers more to how the world at the time was changed, than to what impact it has today. The Great Arab Conquests is a fascinating grand narrative told in a remarkably straightforward and balanced way.

Hugh Kennedy has taught at the University of St Andrews' School of History, is Professor of Arabic in the Department of the Languages and Cultures of Near and Middle East at SOAS (School of African and Oriental Studies) at the University of London, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2000. He has written a number of books before The Great Arab Conquests, including The Courts of the Caliphs (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004), Crusader Castles (Cambridge University Press, 1994), and When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise And Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty (Da Capo Press; New Ed edition, March 30, 2006). Kennedy lives in St. Andrews, Scotland.

Map lovers will like the series of maps at the beginning of The Great Arab Conquests. The list of illustrations and maps precede even the preface and foreword. The maps are fascinating, but I wish Kennedy had added or overlaid modern maps too. With my limited knowledge of medieval geography, the historical maps were at times difficult to understand. People with more knowledge in this area will certainly find them very helpful. I did find myself flipping back to the maps many times when confronted with names of places conquered, places where major battles were fought, and places that held out for some time, resisted capture, or even reversed the spread of Islam.