Meritorious book in the sense that it illustrates the wealth and diversity of the various Islamic empires on the basis of short biographies of striking figures: not only rulers (like Saladin, Timoer Lenk or Mehmed II), but also scholars (of course mostly Averroes and Ibn Khaldun), theologians (both rational and reactionary), merchants and even concubines (with 4 bio's, women are poorly represented, but of course this illustrates patriarchal reality).
The short introductions at the beginning of each time period and also the context paragraphs in the bio's themselves clearly indicate that Robinson knows quite a bit about the Islamic world, and offers very nuanced approaches. But that makes it surprising that he choose 'Islamic Civilization', in the singular, as the title of this book, while it clearly illustrates you’d better speak of civilizations in the plural. And in the same vein, it is very regrettable that Islamic empires outside the Arab world (especially in South and East Asia) remain completely out of the picture (for example, the Mogul empire in the Indies already existed at the end of the 15th century, but is left unmentioned). The chronological restriction to the first 1,000 years of Islamic history also suggests that the Islamic culture has never reached the same level again. ( )