Author : Kenneth Katzman
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 163 pages
File Size : 19,12 MB
Release : 2019-07-11
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1000306968
This book shows that the revolutionary guard has resisted professionalization on the key aspect of war decision making. It explains how the Guard was able to resist ideological dilution despite its need to adopt a rationalized and complex organizational structure.
Author : John J. O'Neill
Publisher : Felibri.com
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 37,94 MB
Release : 2009-08
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 0980994896
Historian O'Neill examines a great variety of evidence from many specialties and reaches an astonishing and novel conclusion: Classical Greek Civilization was not destroyed by Barbarians or by Christians. It survived intact into the mid-7th century when everything changed.
Author : Minou Reeves
Publisher : Dutton Adult
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 10,65 MB
Release : 1989
Category : Religion
ISBN :
Author : Daniel Byman
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 46,91 MB
Release : 2019-05-02
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0190646535
Ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, fighters from abroad have journeyed in ever-greater numbers to conflict zones in the Muslim world to defend Islam from-in their view-infidels and apostates. The phenomenon recently reached its apogee in Syria, where the foreign fighter population quickly became larger and more diverse than in any previous conflict. In Road Warriors, Daniel Byman provides a sweeping history of the jihadist foreign fighter movement. He begins by chronicling the movement's birth in Afghanistan, its growing pains in Bosnia and Chechnya, and its emergence as a major source of terrorism in the West in the 1990s, culminating in the 9/11 attacks. Since that bloody day, the foreign fighter movement has seen major ups and downs. It rode high after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when the ultra-violent Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) attracted thousands of foreign fighters. AQI overreached, however, and suffered a crushing defeat. Demonstrating the resilience of the movement, however, AQI reemerged anew during the Syrian civil war as the Islamic State, attracting tens of thousands of fighters from around the world and spawning the bloody 2015 attacks in Paris among hundreds of other strikes. Although casualty rates are usually high, the survivors of Afghanistan, Syria, and other fields of jihad often became skilled professional warriors, going from one war to the next. Still others returned to their home countries, some to peaceful retirement but a deadly few to conduct terrorist attacks. Over time, both the United States and Europe have learned to adapt. Before 9/11, volunteers went to and fro to Afghanistan and other hotspots with little interference. Today, the United States and its allies have developed a global program to identify, arrest, and kill foreign fighters. Much remains to be done, however-jihadist ideas and networks are by now deeply embedded, even as groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State rise and fall. And as Byman makes abundantly clear, the problem is not likely to go away any time soon.
Author : Daniel Pipes
Publisher : Daniel Pipes
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 38,72 MB
Release : 1981
Category : Armies
ISBN : 0300024479
De islamiske religiøse idealer medførte, at muslimerne ikke gerne engagerede sig i krig eller regeringsanliggender, hvorfor de gennem tiderne systematisk skaffede sig udenlandske slaver, som blev uddannet og anvendt som professionelle soldater, første gang omkring 815-820, f.eks. er det berømte tyrkiske janitscharkorps, der bestod af osmanniske elitesoldater, skabt i det sene 1300 tal af kristne krigsfanger.
Author : Ali Anooshahr
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 207 pages
File Size : 34,34 MB
Release : 2008-11-19
Category : History
ISBN : 1134041330
The Ghazi Sultans were frontier holy-warrior kings of late medieval and early modern Islamic history. This book is a comparative study of three particular Ghazis in the Muslim world at that time, demonstrating the extent to which these men were influenced by the actions and writings of their predecessors in shaping strategy and the way in which they saw themselves. Using a broad range of Persian, Arabic and Turkish texts, the author offers new findings in the history of memory and self-fashioning, demonstrating thereby the value of intertextual approaches to historical and literary studies. The three main themes explored include the formation of the ideal of the Ghazi king in the eleventh century, the imitation thereof in fifteenth and early sixteenth century Anatolia and India, and the process of transmission of the relevant texts. By focusing on the philosophical questions of ‘becoming’ and ‘modelling’, Anooshahr has sought alternatives to historiographic approaches that only find facts, ideology, and legitimization in these texts. This book will be of interest to scholars specialising in Medieval and early modern Islamic history, Islamic literature, and the history of religion.
Author : Robert D. Kaplan
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 23,5 MB
Release : 2008-12-24
Category : History
ISBN : 0307546985
First time in paperback, with a new Introduction and final chapter World affairs expert and intrepid travel journalist Robert D. Kaplan braved the dangers of war-ravaged Afghanistan in the 1980s, living among the mujahidin—the “soldiers of god”—whose unwavering devotion to Islam fueled their mission to oust the formidable Soviet invaders. In Soldiers of God we follow Kaplan’s extraordinary journey and learn how the thwarted Soviet invasion gave rise to the ruthless Taliban and the defining international conflagration of the twenty-first century. Kaplan returns a decade later and brings to life a lawless frontier. What he reveals is astonishing: teeming refugee camps on the deeply contentious Pakistan-Afghanistan border; a war front that combines primitive fighters with the most technologically advanced weapons known to man; rigorous Islamic indoctrination academies; a land of minefields plagued by drought, fierce tribalism, insurmountable ethnic and religious divisions, an abysmal literacy rate, and legions of war orphans who seek stability in military brotherhood. Traveling alongside Islamic guerrilla fighters, sharing their food, observing their piety in the face of deprivation, and witnessing their determination, Kaplan offers a unique opportunity to increase our understanding of a people and a country that are at the center of world events.
Author : John Kelsay
Publisher : Westminster John Knox Press
Page : 164 pages
File Size : 24,86 MB
Release : 1993-01-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780664253028
This book explores questions regarding the justice of war and addresses the lack of comparative perspectives on the ethics of war, particularly with respect to Islam. Focusing on the role of Islamic symbols in the rhetoric of Saddam Hussein, Kelsay provides an overview of the Islamic tradition regarding war and peace, and investigates the notion of religion as a just cause for war.
Author : Mark Huband
Publisher : Westview Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 11,62 MB
Release : 1998-08-06
Category : History
ISBN :
Warriors of the Prophet is a revealing inquiry into the Islamic fundamentalist phenomenon, based on firsthand accounts of the movement and candid discussions with its key players. Mark Huband draws on his wide-ranging personal experience in the Islamic world, providing illuminating accounts of the Islamic revolutionary experience from Morocco to Afghanistan. The contributions of Islamic history, modern warfare, religious thinkers, and Western policy are also discussed in this compelling study of one of the major issues of the late twentieth century. - Back cover.
Author : Robert G. Hoyland
Publisher : Ancient Warfare and Civilizati
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 25,84 MB
Release : 2015
Category : History
ISBN : 0199916365
In just over a hundred years--from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750--the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far afield as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time. How this collection of Arabian tribes was able to engulf so many empires, states, and armies in such a short period of time is a question that has perplexed historians for centuries. Most recent popular accounts have been based almost solely on the early Muslim sources, which were composed centuries later for the purpose of demonstrating that God had chosen the Arabs as his vehicle for spreading Islam throughout the world. In this ground-breaking new history, distinguished Middle East expert Robert G. Hoyland assimilates not only the rich biographical and geographical information of the early Muslim sources but also the many non-Arabic sources, contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous with the conquests. The story of the conquests traditionally begins with the revelation of Islam to Muhammad. In God's Path, however, begins with a broad picture of the Late Antique world prior to the Prophet's arrival, a world dominated by the two superpowers of Byzantium and Sasanian Persia, "the two eyes of the world." In between these empires, in western (Saudi) Arabia, emerged a distinct Arab identity, which helped weld its members into a formidable fighting force. The Arabs are the principal actors in this drama yet, as Hoyland shows, the peoples along the edges of Byzantium and Persia--the Khazars, Bulgars, Avars, and Turks--also played important roles in the remaking of the old world order. The new faith propagated by Muhammad and his successors made it possible for many of the conquered peoples to join the Arabs in creating the first Islamic Empire. Well-paced and accessible, In God's Path presents a pioneering new narrative of one the great transformational periods in all of history.
