God's crucible : Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215

The superpowers -- "The Arabs are coming!" -- "Jihad!" -- The co-opted caliphate and the stumbling Jihad -- The year 711 -- Picking up the pieces after Rome -- The myth of Poitiers -- The fall and rise of the Umayyads -- Saving the popes -- An empire of force and faith -- Carolingian Jihads: Roncesvalles and Saxony -- The great mosque -- The first Europe, briefly -- Equipoise--delicate and doomed -- Disequilibrium Pelayo's revenge -- Knowledge transmitted, rationalism repudiated: Ibn Rushd and Musa ibn Maymun.

In this panoramic history of Islamic culture in early Europe, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian re-examines what we thought we knew. Lewis reveals how cosmopolitan, Muslim al-Andalus flourished--a beacon of cooperation and tolerance between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity--while proto-Europe made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, religious intolerance, perpetual war, and slavery.--From publisher description.