The Middle East and Islamic World Reader A fascinating, broad-ranging survey of the rich history and culture of the Muslim world, featuring primary documents from the era of Muhammad to the present crisis in the Middle East and in South and Central Asia The Muslim world is tremendously rich and diverse, yet few Westerners are familiar with the writings and teachings of a culture that ... more »in recent months has come to the forefront of world events. In their insightful new anthology The Middle East and Islamic World Reader, historians Marvin E. Gettleman and Stuart Schaar have assembled a broad selection of documents and contemporary scholarship to give a view of the history of the peoples from the core Islamic lands, from the Golden Age of Islam to today. With carefully framed essays beginning each chapter and brief introductory notes accompanying over seventy readings, the anthology reveals the multifaceted societies and political systems of the Islamic world. Selections range from theological texts illuminating the differences between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, to diplomatic exchanges and state papers, to memoirs and literary works, to manifestos of Islamic radicals. The anthology spans the distance from Tunisia to India through writings by such key figures as the early Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun, Turkish founding father Kemal Ataturk, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, and the Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The readings chart the effects of the Islamic worlds interactions with outsidersfrom the invasions of Central Asian nomads and crusading Europeans in the Middle Ages, to European colonization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuriesas well as its own internal evolution, through accounts of peasants, urban workers, and the experience of Muslim women. Edited by historians Marvin E. Gettleman and Stuart Schaar, The Middle East and Islamic World Reader is a fascinating historical survey of complex societies thatnow more than everare crucial for us to understand.« less