The eleventh-century Muslim world was a great civilization while Europe lay slumbering in the Dark Ages. Slowly, inevitably, Europe and Islam came together, through trade and war, crusade and diplomacy. The ebb and flow between these two worlds for seven hundred years, illuminated here by a brilliant historian, is one of the great sagas of world history.
Bernard Lewis (1916—2018), the author or editor of more than two dozen books, was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus, at Princeton University.