After one year of reading (not listening in audible but reading the fine print hardcover), I feel sad that the book is finished for me yesterday - Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives: The First 1,000 Years. This is written by distinguished historian of Islam Professor Chase F. Robinson and published in 2016. I haven't found many books in English that describe major Islamic figures in the last one and half millennia. Something that came close was written by Badr Azimbadi named Great Personalities in Islam, which I finished 3 years ago. But the quality of Chase Robinson's work is nowhere near comparable with any other books of similar category I can think of. My friend Nody first told me about this book when she shared with me a youtube video Professor Robinson's conversation with Sarah Chayes. After watching it, I immediately ordered the book and started reading when it arrived. It's been a pleasure to see the diversity Islam brought to the world over a long period of time through some of the well-known and unknown figures in this book. The book has been organized by describing the lives of 30 persons picking a few from each century, ordered by their year of death. The 30th character in this book dies in 1524. I wish a follow up of this book is written for the last 5 centuries as well, perhaps picking another 10 lives?
Here are the biographies touched in this book.
Part 1: Islam & Empire (600-850)
- (1) Muhammad- the Prophet (632)
- (2) Ali - cousin, caliph and forefather of Shi'ism (661)
- (3) A'isha - wife of the Prophet - (678)
- (4) Abd al-Malik - engineering of the caliphate (705)
- (5) Ibn al-Muqaffa - translator and essayist (759)
- (6) Rabia al-Adawiyya - renunciant and saint (801)
- (7) al-Mamun - caliph-patron (833)
Part 2: The Islamic Commonwealth (850-1050)
- (8) Arib - courtesan of caliphs (890)
- (9) al-Hallaj - the Truth (922)
- (10) al-Tabari - traditionalist rationalist (923)
- (11) Abu Bakr al-Razi - free thinking physician (925 or 935)
- (12) Ibn Fadlan - intrepid envoy (fl. tenth century)
- (13) Ibn Muqla - vizier, scribe, calligrapher? (940)
- (14) Mahmud of Ghazana - conqueror and patron (1030)
- (15) al-Biruni - catalog of nature and culture (c. 1050)
Part 3: A Provisional Synthesis (1050-1250)
- (16) Ibn Hazm - polemicist, polymath (1064)
- (17) Karima al-Marwaziyya - hadith scholar (1070)
- (18) al-Ghazali - Renewer of Islam (1111)
- (19) Abu al-Qasim Ramisht - merchant millionaire (c. 1150)
- (20) al-Idrisi - cosmopolitan cartographer (1165)
- (21) Saladin - anti-Crusader hero (1193)
- (22) Ibn Rushd (Averroes) - Aristotelian monotheist (1198)
Part 4: Disruption & Integration (1250 - 1525)
- (23) Rumi - Sufi poet (1273)
- (24) Rashid al-Din - physician, courtier and global historian (1318)
- (25) al-Hilli - paragon of Shi'ism ascendant (1325)
- (26) Ibn Taymiyya - stubborn reactionary (1328)
- (27) Timur - sheep-rustler, world-conqueror (1405)
- (28) Ibn Khaldun - social theorist and historian (1406)
- (29) Mehmed II - conqueror and renaissance man (1481)
- (30) Shah Ismail - esoteric charismatic (1524)
