The Saracens: Their History and the Rise and Fall of Their Empire

The foreword to this work, first published over a century ago, provides the following recommendation: 'The narrative of Simon Ockley, which Edward Gibbon characterised as instructive, and his translation of Arabic MSS as 'learned and spirited', make his 'History of the Saracens' a fitting sequel to what has been offered in this volume from Gibbon's great work.' The combined essence of the writings of these two historians on Saracenic history, is here combined in a single volume of unsurpassed scholarship. Its republication will be welcomed by a wide readership.Simon Ockley (1678-1720) was born in Exeter and educated at Cambridge where, in 1711, he became Professor of Arabic at the University. His great work on the Saracens, published between 1708 and 1757, was the result of years of study in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The second part of the present volume is an abridgement of this work.Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) is best known for his monumental history 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. He was an admirer of Ockley's early translations from Arabic sources. Gibbon's own work forms the first part of the present work.