ePub Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life by Charles J. Chaput in History

Description

In this volume; Andre Wink analyzes the beginning of the process of momentous and long-term change that came with the Islamization of the regions that the Arabs called al-Hind--India and large parts of its Indianized hinterland. In the seventh to eleventh centuries; the expansion of Islam had a largely commercial impact on al-Hind. In the peripheral states of the Indian subcontinent; fluid resources; intensive raiding and trading activity; as well as social and political fluidity and openness produced a dynamic impetus that was absent in the densely settled agricultural heartland. Shifts of power occurred; in combination with massive transfers of wealth across multiple centers along the periphery of al-Hind. These multiple centers mediated between the world of mobile wealth on the Islamic-Sino-Tibetan frontier (which extended into Southeast Asia) and the world of sedentary agriculture; epitomized by brahmanical temple Hinduism in and around Kanauj in the heartland. The growth and development of a world economy in and around the Indian Ocean--with India at its center and the Middle East and China as its two dynamic poles--was effected by continued economic; social; and cultural integration into ever wider and more complex patterns under the aegis of Islam. Please note that Early medieval India and the expansion of Islam 7th-11th centuries was previously published by Brill in hardback (ISBN 90 04 09249 8; still available).