What Life Was Like in the Lands of the Prophet: Islamic World, Ad 570-1405 (What Life Was Like Series, 16)

Rating:
Summary: Two decent chapters and one boring one
Review: This one started off more interestingly than some of the past ones, focusing on the life of Mohammed himself and how he came to write the Koran and to start Islam. That was very interesting to read since I knew little about it, and it seemed like something important.

The next chapter, though, moved ahead a couple of hundred years and boiled down to who-conquered-whom, which seems to be about typical for the middle chapters of these books. So you've got some guys in Spain and some guys in West Africa fighting over the throne of Islam in the Middle East. It got tedious very quickly.

The concluding chapter (there were only three) was an improvement, dealing with the lives of doctors and tradesmen in Cairo during the prime of the Islamic Empire. That was a little more interesting, particularly dealing with the Islamic Renaissance, since the doctor followed the teachings of Galen.

Again, I doubt I'm going to accept any more of these. I only accepted this one because of the unusual subject.