Caliphate: The History of an Idea - Hardcover

Enlisting significant Arab-language scholarship, Kennedy provides a carefully calibrated, timely chronicle for nonacademic readers. -"Kirkus Reviews"
"

Publishers Weekly
[An] engrossing and entertaining introduction Kennedy clearly shows the continuing power of this idea to incite controversy.
Kirkus Reviews
Enlisting significant Arab-language scholarship, Kennedy provides a carefully calibrated, timely chronicle for nonacademic readers.
George Saliba, professor of Arabic and Islamic science, Columbia University
Only Hugh Kennedy has the expertise, the wide-ranging mastery of the sources, the general deep understanding of Islamic culture, and the literary style to construct a persuasive argument that describes the intellectual vitality of classical Abbasid Baghdad as similar to that of our modern-day Paris or London.
Shawkat Toorawa, professor of Arabic, Yale University
A lucid and learned account of one of the most important institutions in world historyand who better to deliver it than one of our most gifted and accessible historians.
"

Publishers Weekly
[An] engrossing and entertaining introduction... Kennedy clearly shows the continuing power of this idea to incite controversy.
Kirkus Reviews
Enlisting significant Arab-language scholarship, Kennedy provides a carefully calibrated, timely chronicle for nonacademic readers.
George Saliba, professor of Arabic and Islamic science, Columbia University
Only Hugh Kennedy has the expertise, the wide-ranging mastery of the sources, the general deep understanding of Islamic culture, and the literary style to construct a persuasive argument that describes the intellectual vitality of classical Abbasid Baghdad as similar to that of our modern-day Paris or London.
Shawkat Toorawa, professor of Arabic, Yale University
A lucid and learned account of one of the most important institutions in world historyand who better to deliver it than one of our most gifted and accessible historians.
"

Times Literary Supplement
An engaging portrait of a fascinating, multifaceted history.
Publishers Weekly
[An] engrossing and entertaining introduction... Kennedy clearly shows the continuing power of this idea to incite controversy.
Kirkus Reviews
Enlisting significant Arab-language scholarship, Kennedy provides a carefully calibrated, timely chronicle for nonacademic readers.
George Saliba, professor of Arabic and Islamic science, Columbia University
Only Hugh Kennedy has the expertise, the wide-ranging mastery of the sources, the general deep understanding of Islamic culture, and the literary style to construct a persuasive argument that describes the intellectual vitality of classical Abbasid Baghdad as similar to that of our modern-day Paris or London.
Shawkat Toorawa, professor of Arabic, Yale University
A lucid and learned account of one of the most important institutions in world historyand who better to deliver it than one of our most gifted and accessible historians.
"

Wall Street Journal
The doctrine of the caliphate still animates the imagination of Muslim theologians, politicians and ideologues, as Hugh Kennedy shows powerfully in Caliphate[an] intriguing argument In order to grasp recent developments in the Middle East and Muslim South Asia and Africalet alone to try to remake the region's politicsyou would be a fool to ignore this history of the caliphate. In Mr. Kennedy's optimistic view the best thing about the caliphate is that it is a living idea that may yet still serve as a model for good governance.
Washington Post
British historian Hugh Kennedy takes it upon himself to recover the caliphate's meaning, and he succeeds with welcome doses of erudition, accuracy and, when necessary, empathy.
Times Literary Supplement
An engaging portrait of a fascinating, multifaceted history.
Publishers Weekly
[An] engrossing and entertaining introduction... Kennedy clearly shows the continuing power of this idea to incite controversy.
Kirkus Reviews
Enlisting significant Arab-language scholarship, Kennedy provides a carefully calibrated, timely chronicle for nonacademic readers. "

Wall Street Journal
"The doctrine of the caliphate still animates the imagination of Muslim theologians, politicians and ideologues, as Hugh Kennedy shows powerfully in Caliphate...[an] intriguing argument... In order to grasp recent developments in the Middle East and Muslim South Asia and Africa--let alone to try to remake the region's politics--you would be a fool to ignore this history of the caliphate. In Mr. Kennedy's optimistic view the best thing about the caliphate is that it is a living idea that may yet still serve as a model for good governance."

Washington Post
"British historian Hugh Kennedy takes it upon himself to recover the caliphate's meaning, and he succeeds with welcome doses of erudition, accuracy and, when necessary, empathy."

Times Literary Supplement
"An engaging portrait of a fascinating, multifaceted history."

Publishers Weekly
"[An] engrossing and entertaining introduction... Kennedy clearly shows the continuing power of this idea to incite controversy."

Kirkus Reviews
"Enlisting significant Arab-language scholarship, Kennedy provides a carefully calibrated, timely chronicle for nonacademic readers."

New York Review of Books:
"Hugh Kennedy demonstrates in Caliphate: The History of an Idea, his readable but scholarly account, [the caliphate] was present throughout centuries of Muslim history, in a variety of guises."
Choice:
"[A] sweeping, yet deeply researched, history of popular and scholarly efforts-from the mid-seventh century to the present day....extraordinarily important..."
"Hugh Kennedy demonstrates in Caliphate: The History of an Idea, his readable but scholarly account, [the caliphate] was present throughout centuries of Muslim history, in a variety of guises."
-- New York Review of Books

"[A] sweeping, yet deeply researched, history of popular and scholarly efforts-from the mid-seventh century to the present day....extraordinarily important..."
--Choice

From a preeminent scholar of Islamic history, the authoritative history of caliphates from their beginnings in the 7th century to the modern day
In Caliphate, Islamic historian Hugh Kennedy dissects the idea of the caliphate and its history, and explores how it became used and abused today. Contrary to popular belief, there is no one enduring definition of a caliph; rather, the idea of the caliph has been the subject of constant debate and transformation over time. Kennedy offers a grand history of the caliphate since the beginning of Islam to its modern incarnations. Originating in the tumultuous years following the death of the Mohammad in 632, the caliphate, a politico-religious system, flourished in the great days of the Umayyads of Damascus and the Abbasids of Baghdad. From the seventh-century Orthodox caliphs to the nineteenth-century Ottomans, Kennedy explores the tolerant rule of Umar, recounts the traumatic murder of the caliph Uthman, dubbed a tyrant by many, and revels in the flourishing arts of the golden eras of Abbasid Baghdad and Moorish Andalucía. Kennedy also examines the modern fate of the caliphate, unraveling the British political schemes to spur dissent against the Ottomans and the ominous efforts of Islamists, including ISIS, to reinvent the history of the caliphate for their own malevolent political ends.

In exploring and explaining the great variety of caliphs who have ruled throughout the ages, Kennedy challenges the very narrow views of the caliphate propagated by extremist groups today. An authoritative new account of the dynasties of Arab leaders throughout the Islamic Golden Age, Caliphate traces the history-and misappropriations-of one of the world's most potent political ideas.