Shaping a Muslim State - Sijpesteijn, Petra M. (Professor of Arabic Language and Culture, Leiden University)

This volume provides a synthetic study of the political, social, and economic processes which formed early Islamic Egypt. Looking at a corpus of previously unknown Arabic papyrus letters, Sijpesteijn examines the reasons for the success of the early Arab conquests and the transition from the pre-Islamic Byzantine system to an Arab/Muslim state.