For approximately six hundred years after the death of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, the Muslim community formed a cohesive state called the Caliphate. This book follows the four distinct Caliphates (Rightly Guided, Umayyad, Abbasid, and Fatimid) through their periods of leadership, to the state's prolonged downfall at the hands of the Seljuqs and the Crusaders and its ultimate defeat by the Ottoman Empire.
|
