The Cross and the Crescent The Dramatic Story of the Earliest Encounters Between Christians and Muslims

In this immensely readable history that couldn’t be more timely, award-winning historian Richard Fletcher chronicles the relationship between Islam and Christianity from the time of Muhammad to the Reformation. With lucidity and sound scholarship, Fletcher demonstrates that though there were fruitful trading and cultural interactions between Muslims and Christians during the period when the Arabs controlled most of the Mediterranean world, each group viewed the other’s religion from the beginning as fundamentally different and suspect. Eschewing moral judgments and easy generalizations, The Cross and the Crescentallows readers to draw their own conclusions and explore the implications for the present day.

Richard Fletcher is the author of seven books, including The Quest for El Cid, winner of the Wolfson Award, and the Los Angeles Times History Prize. Recently retired from the University of York, where he was a professor of history, he lives in England.

List of Maps
Preface

1. Ishmael's Children 1
2. An Elephant for Charlemagne 30
3. Crossing Frontiers 67
4. Commerce, Coexistence and Scholarship 100
5. Sieving the Koran 131
6. Epilogue 157

Chronology 162
Further Reading 166
Notes 170
Index 175