Didn't really seem to have a unifying point or a strong conclusion. ( )

The author's core premise is a fascinating one: that the rise of Islam and the Koran should be seen as the last great development of the Classical world, rooted very much in the broader politics and cultural clash between Byzantine Rome and Persia rather than a movement that arose almost independently in the wilds of the Arabian desert.

This may not be the book for absolute beginners to the period in question, as while the book is engagingly written it is academically rigorous and presupposes some basic knowledge about the late Classical world. The episodes bounce around a little in the middle stages of the book, meaning I had to make frequent references to the list of people and concepts at the back of the book to keep track of developments. There is more emphasis on the period of and after Justinian's reign rather than on Mohammed, and I found it fascinating to retrace the steps through the Byzantine world of Syria and the Holy Land. ( )

fascinating account of the early days of Islam but also considering history of Iranshahr and early church. Interesting stuff. ( )

I liked this book a lot less than I expected. It's well-written and thought-provoking, but less than it could have been.

Ultimately In the Shadow of the Sword is two books in one: a narrative history of the rise of Islam, and a revisionist history challenging traditional assumptions about Islam's origins. Both intertwine in a way that is entertaining but slight. Too often the need to keep the narrative moving forward stops Holland from fully making the argument he wants to: that the Prophet Muhammad emerged not from the Hejaz, as traditional assumptions say, but from the deserts of Mesopotamia, the free-wheeling political and religious borderland where Arab tribes had lived for centuries between Romans and Persians, Christians and Zoroastrians. Instead, these arguments are often made in passing and by implication.

To be fair, Holland couldn't have done much better. Contemporary sources are so scarce for this period — once one discards later efforts that may or may not be accurate — that making a positive argument about Muhammad's origins away from Mecca is basically impossible. He has to rely on coins, inscriptions, fragments of writing and observations from foreign observers to fill in the gaps left by the suspiciously late emergence several centuries later of Muhammad's traditional biography. This isn't enough to prove alternatives, but is enough to raise doubts about the traditional history.

I found the weakest part to be the first half, which is only obliquely about the Arabs at all. Instead, Holland goes into detail about the histories of two subjects he's written about before: the empires of Byzantine Rome and Sassanid Persia. This was interesting in itself (or would have been had I not recently covered almost all of it listening to the History of Byzantium podcast) and sometimes foreshadowed important developments, but largely felt like a distraction from the book's core thesis. ( )

Easy reading & well worth it. 2 critiques:

1. He often quotes contemporaries fantastical view of events straight up when it is quite obvious he is slightly mocking them, which is fine once in a while but it becomes repetitious shtick
2. He hints at but doesn't really answer the question he posed at the beginning - what are the origins of the Quran and Islam and who is the Mohammed character?

In the documentary he did and in interviews he is much more forthcoming about his theories on point 2. Anyone reading this book should also watch the documentary and listed to his interview with Robin Pearson from the History of Byzantium podcast (as well as Robin's podcast on the topic of the Origen of Islam). I get that they are just theories and perhaps he was a bit reluctant to be too concrete and explicit in a book so as not to be accused of replacing one fantasy for another.

One last point: for every other major religion existent (and non-existent) today where there are tons of popular science*-based overviews, Holland's book is the first on the shelf for this topic and he does a damn good job. To his credit he's cracked the nut, opening the doors for others to popularize a more scientific approach to the origins of Islam.

* by science I mean critical, skeptical & evidence-based approaches not based on the evidence-free premise that any given religion is the word of God/s ( )