Never before has such a serious subject been written about with such elegance, wit and humor.

Jihad: A Short History is entertaining popular history in strict chronological order enlivened throughout with wordplay, comedy, graphic detail and vivid anecdotes on leading figures. It describes Islam’s 1,000-year assault on the rest of humanity, leading up to the concluding chapter where military jihad has been abandoned in favor of hijra, migration.

It synthesizes in a single readable comprehensive volume the records of the contemporary chroniclers and the works of later historians, which mostly treat some tiny aspect of this enormous subject. None of them led the author to question the main thrust of his narrative.

An understanding of the constant invasions of Christian Europe by the forces of Islam over a thousand years is vital to properly make sense of the world in which we now live.

The centerpiece of Jihad: A Short History, both figuratively and literally, is the defining 1453 siege and fall of Constantinople, which is described in detail and at length in order to convey the horror of such assaults.

Few westerners know of the catastrophic Battle of Mohács, one of the greatest military encounters in the history of central Europe; or of the Battle of Didgori, in which a staggering 200,000 men perished in a single day of fighting; and that the Muslims twice reached Vienna and in 1543 besieged and plundered Nice.

Jihad: A Short History concisely tells of these forgotten events, and of many more epic confrontations.

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chapter 1 Massacre of the Jews; the rampages of Khalid
• Chapter 2 Ukba rides into the Atlantic; Musa conquers Spain; the reigns of al-Mansur, Harun Rashid, al-Mutasim; mamlukes; takiya; the devastation of India; Arslan, the Battle of Didgori
• Chapter 3 Hulagu and Baybars; Othman founds the Ottoman empire; dhimmitude; Janibeg, the pioneer of biological warfare, infects Europe with the Black Death; Murad I and Bayezid I; the Siege of Rhodes; creation of the Janissary corps; the Battle of Kosovo; Tamerlane; Mehmed II and the fall of Constantinople
• Chapter 4 Suleiman I and the Battle of Mohács
• Chapter 5 Barbarossa; the 1565 Siege of Malta; the conquest of Cyprus; the Battle of Lepanto; the 1683 Siege of Vienna
• Quotes from the Koran
• Quotes on Islam
• Bibliography
• Plate Section