The Days of the Warlords

A History of the Byzantine Empire, A.D. 969-991

• Author(s): Paul A. Blaum,
• Publisher: University Press of America
• Pages: 132
• ISBN_10: 0819196568
  ISBN_13: 9780819196569
  
• Language: en
• Categories: History / Asia / General , History / Middle East / General , History / Europe / Medieval , History / Europe / Greece , History / Byzantine Empire , Religion / Islam / General , Religion / Islam / Shi'a , Social Science / Ethnic Studies / General ,

Description:... This book, while it deals primarily with civil conflicts between the Byzantine Emperor Basil II and the warrior-aristocrats Bardas Phocas and Bardas Sclerus, casts considerate light on Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle East during the century immediately preceding the crusades. These interactions-sometimes hostile, sometimes surprisingly intimate-occurred during that one period between the mid-tenth and mid-eleventh century when Shi'ite Islam, not Sunni Islam, dominated the Muslim world. The ethnic and secretarian fragmentation that marks present-day Islam was already well in place at the end of the tenth century.