![]() ![]() The decaying empire is then attacked by nomadic barbarians from the north – but in the Islamic world, “the north” refers to the steppes of Central Asia – and in that world the nomadic barbarians are not the Germans, but the Turks. ![]() In both histories, the great early empire fragments because it simply grows too big. Looking back from anywhere in the Islamic world, one also sees a single definitive empire looming back there, embodying the vision of a universal state, but it isn’t Rome. Looking back, for example, from within the Western world-historical framework, one sees a single big empire towering above all others back there in ancient times: it is Rome, where the dream of a universal political state was born. In between, however, they had passed through different – and yet strangely parallel – landscapes.The two histories had begun in the same place, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers of ancient Iraq, and they had come to the same place, this global struggle in which the West and the Islamic world seemed to be the major players. Starting from the same cradle of civilization, he explains how Western and Muslim perceptions of civilization diverged into two separate universes – and how they are merging again in today’s geopolitical scene. ![]() In “Destiny Disrupted,” author Tamim Ansary considers the history of the world through Islamic eyes. ![]()
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