Book excerpt: Using insights derived from the works of the great annaliste historian Fernand Braudel and those of David Abulafia, this volume aims at presenting a fully-rounded picture of the medieval Islamic Mediterranean between the years 650 and 1450. It ranges from discussions on Islamic Spain and Sicily through essays on economic and cultural exchange to an exapination of Islamic and western politics and religious thought. It also surveys work and warfare in some of the most fascinating centuries of the medieval period and concludes with a profound assessment of the Islamic sources and their transmission. This is a magistral work which no historian of the Mediterranean will wih to be without.