Conventional chronology holds that the Muslim world fell from the splendors of the medieval period starting about the fourteenth century, and that it continued to decline until reaching rock bottom in the 1700s. Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 marked the beginning of the modern age, defined as a time of intense interaction with the West.
Recent research has been punching holes in this simple outline, especially the part concerning the eighteenth century. The present volume — an excellent and highly original undertaking — will speed the process along. The editors contend that as historical research moves away from the confines of military and political subjects, and takes up social and religious developments, it becomes clear that what once appeared to be an era of unblemished decline was in fact far more complex. Yes, the empires of the Middle East were weakened and impoverishment was widespread, but intellectual ferment and religious expansion of great importance were taking place. To note just one example, the fundamentalist cast of the eighteenth-century reform movements has probably had much to do with the rigorist and puritanical tenor of so many reform movements in the modern age. Accordingly, the editors rightly plead that the era between the old grandeur and the modern experience "be examined as something more than simply an epilogue or a preface to the study of some other subject."
