Empires in Collision in Late Antiquity

by G. W. Bowersock

Overview

In this book, based on lectures delivered at the Historical Society of Israel, the famed historian G. W. Bowersock presents a searching examination of political developments in the Arabian Peninsula on the eve of the rise of Islam. Recounting the growth of Christian Ethiopia and the conflict with Jewish Arabia, he describes the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of a late resurgent Sassanian (Persian) Empire. He concludes by underscoring the importance of the Byzantine Empire’s defeat of the Sassanian forces, which destabilized the region and thus provided the opportunity for the rise and military success of Islam in the seventh century. Using close readings of surviving texts, Bowersock sheds new light on the complex causal relationships among the Byzantine, Ethiopian, Persian, and emerging Islamic forces.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611683226
Publisher:	Brandeis University Press
Publication date:	08/22/2012
Series:	The Menahem Stern Jerusalem Lectures
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

RICHARD BREITMAN is the author or co-author of nine books and many articles in German history, U. S. history, and the Holocaust. Breitman teaches at American University and is editor of the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He served as director of historical research for the Nazi War Criminal Records and Imperial Japanese Records Interagency Working Group, which helped to bring about declassification of more than eight million pages of U.S. government records under a 1998 law.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Albert I. Baumgarten • Preface • Byzantium, Ethiopia, and the Jewish Kingdom of South Arabia • The Persian Capture of Jerusalem • Heraclius’ Gift to Islam: The Death of the Persian Empire • Notes • Index

What People are Saying About This

Benjamin Isaac

“Glen Bowersock turns topics that are marginal to traditional ancient history into mainstream subjects, and thereby brings new ideas into play. Thus he inspires numerous others to continued research. Religion, wars, and empires in the late antique Near East are reinterpreted. Momentous events, the results of which we can still witness, are here described in a concise and eminently readable account.”

From the foreword by Albert I. Baumgarten

“Bowersock is the master of connecting scholars from all over the world with each other and with their work. [He] has been an authoritative and prestigious go-between . . . These connections and new wholes run the entire length of Bowersock’s scholarly activities and publications . . . , bringing together apparently disparate elements into a cultural understanding.”

Editorial Reviews

Bowersock has brought a novel freshness to this grand narrative. He fastens with delight on new pieces of evidence, from each of which he derives conclusions that significantly alter our view of the whole story.”—The New York Review of Books


“The author, a historian Of Greco-Roman times, shows how edges of empires help us understand the inner workings of the empires themselves.”
 —Saudi Aramco World

From the Publisher