Historical Atlas of Islam. . - Briefly Noted - book review

Historical Atlas of Islam. By G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville and Stuart Munro-Hay (Continuum, $50). Through pictures, text, and black-and-white maps, F-C and M-H describe the history and expansion of Islam from the seventh century to the present. Early expansion was the result of military conquest and the slow penetration of Muslim merchants.

Very early, Islam reached Spain in the West and Afghanistan in the East. The spread of Islam brought religious and cultural change, including an extraordinary flowering of literature and the arts. In chapters tracing the growth of Islam after the Crusades, the authors provide physical and agricultural information about the resulting territories inhabited by Muslims in India, Central Asia, Eastern Africa, Western Africa, and South-East Asia. Although the spiritual roots of Islam are in Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and the al-Azhar university mosque in Cairo, its greatest numerical strength today is in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the Russian federation. Because of the presence of large Muslim minorities in the West and the nonfundamentalist stance of many of the Islamic-oriented civilizations, the authors think that fears of polarization between the West and Islam are much exaggerated.

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group