In the Shadow of the Sword, the Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World

The seventh century saw the meteoric rise of the Arab empire. The ancient Roman and Persian empires had fought themselves to exhaustion over the previous generation and now from the deserts of Arabia armies of Arab tribesmen came storming. In a few decades the Persain empire was completely overthrown, the Roman empire reduced to a rump and the Arabs ruled from Spain to China. In the process the new religion of Islam and its Prophet Mohammed came to transform the world and establish a paradigm for human society that remains to this day. Tom Holland examines the evidence from the ancient world to draw the picture of these tumultuous times and challenge the accepted narrative of the rise of the Islamic world.