"A History of the Muslim World": Michael Cook

Michael Cook's "A History of the Muslim World" is my favourite book of 2024. Together, we discussed: - Did Islamic science weaken due to religious authoritarianism? - Why, in the Middle East and North Africa, were there so few peasant rebellions? - Theologically, how important was Ghazali? - What determined the rate at which people converted to Islam? - Why was there so much religious syncretism and diversity in the Ottoman Empire? - Why did the Muslim world fall behind economically? - Did the Ottoman Empire ban the printing press? - Why is South Asia the only place where Muslims ruled for hundreds of years yet remained a minority? - When you study the global history of Islam, what is the best indicator of how Muslim they really were? - Did colonialism trigger an Islamic backlash? - Why do Muslim countries often have weak state capacity? Timur Kuran blames waqfs. Do you agree? "A History of the Muslim World": https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691236575/a-history-of-the-muslim-world On my Substack, you can see my earlier reviews: https://www.ggd.world/p/a-history-of-the-muslim-world-by