A fascinating book that has a wonderful appendix covering important issues in and around the life of Aisha and other key and influential women in Medina during a foundational period of Islamic history. I worried about possible bias from the author, but it doesn't seem to affect this work much, but I need time to read it more carefully in conjunction with his other works.

An informative but rather one-sided book; this is more a hagiography than a history. The author admits up front that the records from that period are created by partisans and likely to be exaggerated, but he chooses only one side to report, leaving this as a warm and fuzzy extremely pro-Islam piece. It is difficult to believe that people were so incredibly noble as the ones portrayed here, and often laid up against villains. Still, there is a lot of information as long as you are willing to maintain a somewhat skeptical frame of mind. It is also true that what he represents as integrity and nobility may not appear that way to many readers. His frequent snarking at Westerners who don't understand is unneeded. And he loses half a star for his constant phrasing of sentence fragments that stand out like a sore thumb. This is also probably at least partially the fault of the editor, but an author should be able to proofread their own work and see those fragments. Overall, a decent work but with some serious flaws. ( )

This is one of the few biographies of Prophet Muhammad and the Rightly Caliphs that I found to be a real page-turner. It is the first bio that I have ever read that starts out with a physical description of Medina (rural garden-oasis) to Mecca (barren desert city) and how the geographic circumstances contributed to tribal world views.

The bios of Abu Bakr, Omer, Uthman, Ali, Muawiya, Hasan, wives of the Prophet, and many others are eye-opening. I'm not sure how accurate all of it is, and Rogerson himself acknowledges the historical vagaries, but it paints a very human portrait of everyone. I had a completely different idea of Ali and his sons (much more positive) after reading this book. It also clarified, for me, why the Medina clans invited Muhammad to come to their city in the first place.

I also like Rogerson's method of dispelling myths. At one point he says the image of a Muslim soldier with a sword in one hand and the Quran in the other is completely false. First of all, Qurans would have been too expensive for the average soldier. Second of all, a Muslim would never hold a Quran in his left hand (unclean), so that would mean he would be holding his sword in his left hand and how can you fight properly? OR was there a special squad of left-handed proselytizing warriors? Heh he.

An excellent book for anyone interested in the fifty years following the death of Prophet Muhammad. ( )

Story of Prophet Muhammad and the leaders that came after him--explains the Shiaa, Sunni origins and divide. At ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/932939.html

A breezily written, enthusiastic book about the early decades of Islam. Rogerson spends a good third of the book getting to the starting point, recapitulating his earlier biography of the Prophet.

Rogerson is clearly a sympathiser, and this means that the book cannot be considered particularly neutral. But that's perhaps not such a bad thing; I am more interested in finding out what the Prophet's followers believe than in getting the historical "facts", whatever they are.

His narrative is complete enough that I did find myself taken aback at some points. His enthusiasm in the face of the facts is almost endearing. While the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and Omar, seem to have indeed been gifted leaders - it was under Omar that the really big military conquests took place, culminating with Persia, the Holy Land and Egypt - the caliphate collapsed under the leadership of Uthman and Ali, and Rogerson's attempts to exalt Ali's reputation (as indeed it is exalted in both Shia and Sunni tradition) are difficult to sustain given his failure to keep his own regime together.

However. This was a very interesting read for me, filling in a significant gap in my knowledge which I had previously only really read in much detail in chapters L and LI of Gibbon; who is also entertaining and partisan, of course (and truth be told somewhat better written). ( )