politics, a man who achieved the extraordinary: uniting disparate Arab tribes into a more cohesive whole. This book remains an important work for anyone wishing to understand the roots of one of the most intractable sociopolitical divides-between East and West, Muslim and Christian-still haunting the world today. Author David S. Margoliouth (1858-1940), a professor of Arabic at Oxford University, worked from primary Arabic texts and omitted "all anecdotes that are obviously or most probably fabulous," resulting in a clear-headed history of a highly contentious moment in time.

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