The First Dynasty of Islam : The Umayyard Caliphate, AD 661-750

Rating:
Summary: Readable introduction
Review: Hawting's history of the Ummayad Caliphate is quite readable -- and straightens out lots of questions I had about the replacement of the Ummayads by the Abbasid dynasty (I had never understood that the jostling went on for so much of the late Ummayad period). Hawting is also helpful on understanding how much Arabisation and Islamisation went hand in hand AND were resisted by the Caliphate for tax-base-preservation reasons (among others).

The book is reasonably transparent to the non-specialist. The glossary is useful and he explains most terms both in the text and in the glossary (though there are a few misfires on that score).

I've given it 4 rather than 5 stars for the non-specialist reader because it's also SHORT! Those of us who want to know about the early Caliphate without reading, say, reading Madelung's 400-pager on the succession to Muhammad are grateful for a 141-page introduction.