The lost centuries: from the Muslim empires to the Renaissance of Europe, 1145-1453

"1967. First edition. 511pp., 51 maps and 31 genealogical tables. Sir John Bagot Glubb (1897-1986), known as Glubb Pasha, was an English soldier and writer. After service in the Royal Engineers in the First World War, he was the first organizer of the native police force in the new State of Iraq. He gained immense prestige among the Bedouin, and was one of the most influential figures in Arabia in the period of British paramountcy. This book is the fourth and last of a series of books, in which his object has been to join the history of Rome to that of the modern world. It covers the periode between the twelfth and the fifteenth century, when the tide turned gradually against the Islamic countries. The Crusades are seen here not as isolated events but a new development in the battle Christendom had been fighting, and Islam, battling for survival against the Christian nations of the West, also had to face the Turkish and Mongol hordes of the East. When Europe achieved the upper hand and the Renaissance followed, religious hostility against Islam was still intense. It was Roman civilization which was said to have been reborn, no debt to Arab or Muslim culture was admitted, and the centuries of Muslim predominance were censored from our histories."