“The best single account [that] we possess of the Islamic world between the seventh and eleventh centuries … It surveys in masterly fashion how the Islamic World emerged out of conquered Sassanian, Byzantine, North African, and Spanish areas and developed a special civilization of its own, which directly affected Western European, Byzantine, and other civilizations [that] were its neighbors. It [includes an] excellent chapter on the relationship of a growing Arabic language and literature with the earlier Coptic and Aramean traditions of the Central Region and with the Berber and Romance tongues of Western Islam, as well as the Persian and Turkish language[s] and literature of the East…
“Professor Lombard … has a mastery of the part played in the Islamic World by geography, by a growing money economy of gold and silver, by technological progress in agriculture and industry, and by the development of commerce and urban life … He insists upon a process of continuity between this world and those [that] preceded it … The best book [that] has yet appeared dealing with the early centuries of one of the world’s great and significant civilizations.” — Speculum
“Important.” — The American Historical Review