The long shared history of Christianity and Islam began, shortly after Islam emeregd in the early
seventh century A.D., with a question: Who would inherit the Geco-Roman world of the
Mediterranean? Spung from the same source - Abraham and the Revelation given to the Jews - the
two faiths played out over the course of the next millenium what historian Stephen O'Shea calls
"sibling rivalry write very large." Their cataclysmic clashes on the battlefield were balanced by
long periods of coexistence and mutual enrichment, and by the end of the sixteenth century the
religious boundaries of the modern world were drawn.
In Sea of Faith, O'Shea chronicles both the meeting of minds and the collisions of armies
that marked the interaction of the Cross and Crescent in the Middle Ages - the better to
understand their apparently intractable conflict today. For all the great and everlasting moments
of cultural interchange and tolerance - in Cordoba, Palermo, Canstantinople - the ultimate
"geography of belief" was decided on the battlefield. O'Shea vividly recounts seven pivotal
battle between the forces of Christianity and Islam that shaped the Mediterranean world - from
the loss of the Christian Middle East to the Muslims at Yarmuk (Syria) in 636 to the stemming of
the seemingly unstoppable Ottoman tide at Malta in 1565.
In between, the battles raged around the Mediterranean, from distant Poitiers in France and
Hattin in the Holy Land during the height of the Crusades to the famed contest for Constantinople
in 1453 that signaled the end of Byzantium. As much of the armies were motivated by belief, their
exploits were inspired by leaders such as Charles Martel, Saladin, and Mehmet II, whose stirring
feats were sometimes accompanied by unexpected changes of heart.
As with his widely praised previous books, The Perfect Heresy and Back to the
Front, Stephen O'Shea narrates history on the ground, having visited each of the battle sites
and many others around the Mediterranean. Blending a scholar's authority with his sonsummate
skills as a Narrator, he shines light on the distant past, offering timely and thought-provoking
perspective on today's headlines.
