Baghdad During the Abbasid Caliphate PDF Download

Author: Guy Le Strange
Publisher: Oxford, Clarendon Press
ISBN:
Category : Baghdad (Iraq)
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Author: Jurji Zaidan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780984843527
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
It is 809 AD in Baghdad, the capital of the 'Abbasid Empire. The famed Caliph Harun al-Rashid has died. His successor, al-Amin, son of his Hashemite Arab wife, had promised the Caliph that he would appoint his half-brother al-Ma'mun, born to a slave mother, as his heir apparent. But al-Amin appoints his own son instead. This betrayal provides an opening for the Persians to help the statesmanlike and brilliant al-Ma'mun, whom they consider one of their own, to challenge his fickle brother. Against the backdrop of this war of succession, the novel weaves parallel love stories, political intrigue and machinations, nobility and treachery, spies and counterspies. Behzad, a famous doctor with an agenda all his own, is deeply in love with the beautiful Maymuna: both are members of Persian families persecuted by the 'Abbasid house. But the son of al-Amin's vizier is also enamored with Maymuna and wants to marry her. At the center of these tangled webs is al-Amin's mysterious Chief Astrologer, whose true identity and loyalties remain unknown even to the Caliph and his court. He not only divines the future but also shapes it by changing the course of the war between the brothers-a war from which the 'Abbasid Empire never recovered. What will become of the lovers? Who will survive and who will perish? The fast-paced action and suspense leave us guessing to the very end.

Author: Justin Marozzi
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141948043
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 616

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In Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood, celebrated young travelwriter-historian Justin Marozzi gives us a many-layered history of one of the world's truly great cities - both its spectacular golden ages and its terrible disasters 'Justin Marozzi is the most brilliant of the new generation of travelwriter-historians' - Sunday Telegraph Over thirteen centuries, Baghdad has enjoyed both cultural and commercial pre-eminence, boasting artistic and intellectual sophistication and an economy once the envy of the world. It was here, in the time of the Caliphs, that the Thousand and One Nights were set. Yet it has also been a city of great hardships, beset by epidemics, famines, floods, and numerous foreign invasions which have brought terrible bloodshed. This is the history of its storytellers and its tyrants, of its philosophers and conquerors. Here, in the first new history of Baghdad in nearly 80 years, Justin Marozzi brings to life the whole tumultuous history of what was once the greatest capital on earth. Justin Marozzi is a Councillor of the Royal Geographic Society and a Senior Research Fellow at Buckingham University. He has broadcast for BBC Radio Four, and regularly contributes to a wide range of publications, including the Financial Times, for which he has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur. His previous books include the bestselling Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, a Sunday Telegraph Book of the Year (2004), and The Man Who Invented History: Travels with Herodotus.

Author: Saviour Pirotta
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472955978
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Written by bestselling author Saviour Pirotta, this fast-paced story is set in the Islamic Golden Age when Baghdad was the largest and most dazzling city in the world. Perfect for fans of thrilling adventure. Thirteen-year-old Jabir is hoping to save his family from being made homeless by finding work in Baghdad. Famished after his long journey to the city, Jabir is caught stealing bread and sent to prison. Luckily, one of the guards there notices that he has a gift for carving wooden models and he is released on the orders of the grand caliph Harun al Rashid himself. In return Jabir must carve twelve golden horsemen, a gift from the caliph to the emperor Charlemagne. But someone is determined to stop Jabir from completing the work and he will stop at nothing, not even arson, to achieve his aim. Can Jabir and his friend Yasmina finish the horsemen or will Jabir be sent back to prison? Ideal for readers aged 8+, this exciting and readable adventure story is packed with great characters and insight into Islamic civilisation and the historic culture of the Middle East circa AD 900, a period which is now studied in the National Curriculum. The Flashbacks series offers dramatic stories set in key moments of history, perfect for introducing children to historical topics.

Author: Jim Al-Khalili
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101476230
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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A myth-shattering view of the Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations and the role they played in sparking the European Renaissance. Many of the innovations that we think of as hallmarks of Western science had their roots in the Arab world of the middle ages, a period when much of Western Christendom lay in intellectual darkness. Jim al- Khalili, a leading British-Iraqi physicist, resurrects this lost chapter of history, and given current East-West tensions, his book could not be timelier. With transporting detail, al-Khalili places readers in the hothouses of the Arabic Enlightenment, shows how they led to Europe's cultural awakening, and poses the question: Why did the Islamic world enter its own dark age after such a dazzling flowering?

Author: Hanan Al-Shaykh
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408826046
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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The Arab world's greatest folk stories re-imagined by the acclaimed Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh, published to coincide with the world tour of a magnificent musical and theatrical production directed by Tim Supple

Author: Salim T. S. Al-Hassani
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1426209347
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Modern society owes a tremendous amount to the Muslim world for the many groundbreaking scientific and technological advances that were pioneered during the Golden Age of Muslim civilization between the 7th and 17th centuries. Every time you drink coffee, eat a three-course meal, get a whiff of your favorite perfume, take shelter in an earthquake-resistant structure, get a broken bone set or solve an algebra problem, it is in part due to the discoveries of Muslim civilization.

Author: O. Henry
Publisher: Lindhardt og Ringhof
ISBN: 872670126X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 13

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By day a restaurant owner and by night a self-styled ‘Prince of Bohemia’, Margrave Quigg is a man who longs for excitement. One evening, whilst roaming the streets seeking people to help, Quigg encounters a distressed young man called Simmons. Hopelessly in love, Simmons must solve a riddle in order to turn his life around and win the hand of the woman he loves. This is just the sort of quest that Quigg has been waiting for, and before long, his own life is also turned upside-down by the mysterious riddle. A delightful, mysterious short story by the much-loved author William Sidney Porter – also known as O. Henry. William Sidney Porter (1862-1910) was an American writer best-known for his short stories. Born in North Carolina, Porter moved to Texas in his early twenties where he began his literary career contributing to newspapers and magazines such as ‘The Houston Post’. During this period he also began work at a bank where he was accused of embezzlement, lost his job and was arrested a year later. Growing fearful of his upcoming trial, Porter escaped to New Orleans and then Honduras while on bail, where he hid for several months. It was here that he was inspired to write one of his famous short story collections ‘Cabbages and Kings’. In 1897 Porter returned to the US and was sentenced to five years in prison. He continued to write and had several stories published from prison under various pseudonyms, the most famous of which was ‘O. Henry’ – a name by which he is better known. Upon release Porter moved to New York where his most intense period of writing began, authoring hundreds of short stories mostly for the New York World Sunday Magazine. His witty narration and plot twists made his stories a huge hit with readers, a legacy which endures to this day. Some of his most popular short stories include, ‘The Gift of the Magi’, ‘The Cop and the Anthem’ and ‘The Caballero’s Way’. 1952 film ‘O. Henry’s Full House’ featured five of his short stories and starred Marilyn Monroe and Charles Laughton. Annual American literary prize ‘The O. Henry Award’ was established in his honour in 1919.

Author: Nabia Abbott
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780863561191
Category : Arabia - Khayzurān & Zubaydah - Biographies
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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The Abbasid dynasty was perhaps the greatest in Arab history, and the greatest of the Abbasid rulers was undoubtedly Harun al-Rashid. His mother, Khaizuran, and wife Zubaidah are the 'two queens' of this book. Abbott recounts the lives of these two women, who flouted the taboos of Muslim society and made their imprint on a key period of early Islamic history.

Author: Jonathan Lyons
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608191907
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
For centuries following the fall of Rome, western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to catch even a glimpse of the scientific advances coming from Baghdad, Antioch, or the cities of Persia, Central Asia, and Muslim Spain. T here, philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers were steadily advancing the frontiers of knowledge and revitalizing the works of Plato and Aristotle. I n the royal library of Baghdad, known as the House of Wisdom, an army of scholars worked at the behest of the Abbasid caliphs. At a time when the best book collections in Europe held several dozen volumes, the House of Wisdom boasted as many as four hundred thousand. Even while their countrymen waged bloody Crusades against Muslims, a handful of intrepid Christian scholars, thirsty for knowledge, traveled to Arab lands and returned with priceless jewels of science, medicine, and philosophy that laid the foundation for the Renaissance. I n this brilliant, evocative book, Lyons shows just how much "Western" culture owes to the glories of medieval Arab civilization, and reveals the untold story of how Europe drank from the well of Muslim learning.