The Venture of Islam, Volume 2: The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods

A sweeping work of history that the New Yorker says "demonstrates how history should be written"

The Venture of Islam has been honored as a magisterial work of the mind since its publication in early 1975. In this three-volume study, illustrated with charts and maps, Hodgson traces and interprets the historical development of Islamic civilization from before the birth of Muhammad to the middle of the twentieth century. This work grew out of the famous course on Islamic civilization that Hodgson created and taught for many years at the University of Chicago.

In the second work of this three-volume set, Hodgson investigates the establishment of an international Islamic civilization through about 1500. This includes a theoretical discussion of cultural patterning in the Islamic world and the Occident.
 

Marshall G. S. Hodgson (1922-1968) was an influential scholar of Islamic religion and culture. He taught at the University of Chicago and chaired the Committee on Social Thought. At his death at age 46, he left behind a manuscript that would become a magisterial three-volume book, The Venture of Islam, published posthumously by the Press. The Venture of Islam has shaped all subsequent study of Islam.