viii INTRODUCTION
crusaders in 1100 and their modern counterparts driving airplanes into
buildings filled with innocent civilians.
It was not the intention of this work to provide a detailed, scholarly
examination of the military history of the Islamic world. Such a work
would be far too massive to be anything other than the work of a lifetime.
Instead, this survey touches on the high points of Islam’s military history.
It also seeks to set straight the record on the military nature of Islam,
which has been broadly represented as being a peaceful religion. It cer-
tainly has a peaceful side to it, but its military history is so rich and so
long that any attempt to suggest that it doesn’t exist is a disservice to the
truth.