Muhammad

A definitive and fascinating introduction to the life, ideas, and impact of the founder of Islam. Maxime Robinson's Muhammad has long been regarded as one of the touchstones of scholarship on the founder of Islam. Thirty years after first being published in English, it remains the definitive introduction to the Prophet's life. Drawing on wide-ranging scholarship and imaginative insight into the Prophet's personality, family, background, and wider society, Rodinson's Muhammad offers a vivid account of how he spread the word of Islam, created a sect and state, and defeated his enemies, establishing the first great Muslim military power—a power which was soon to control territory stretching all the way from the Pyrenees to the borders of China. For anyone who wants to understand the historical roots of one of the world's great religions, Rodinson's Muhammad provides the ideal guide to a fascinating and timely subject.

Maxime Rodinson was for many years a professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne. He served in Syria during World War II and stayed for seven years in Lebanon, working as a professor in a Muslim high school and as an official in the French Department of Antiquities for Syria and Lebanon. He returned to Paris in 1947 to take charge of Oriental printed books in the National Library, and from 1950 to 1951 he published Moyen Orient, a political monthly on the Middle East. American editions of his books include Israel and the Arabs and Islam and Capitalism.