Jonathan Berkeys book surveys the religious history of the peoples of the Near East from roughly 600 to 1800 CE. The opening chapter examines the religious scene in the Near East in late antiquity. Subsequent chapters investigate Islams first century, the classical period from the accession of the Abbasids to the rise of the Buyid amirs, and thereafter the emergence of new forms of Islam in the middle period. The book stresses that Islam did not appear all at once, but emerged slowly, as part of a prolonged process.