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The War of the Three Gods
- Romans, Persians, and the Rise of Islam
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
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The War of the Three Gods
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Publisher's Summary
The War of the Three Gods is a military history of the Near and Middle East in the seventh century - with its chief focus on the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Heraclius (AD 610-641) - a pivotal and dramatic time in world history. The Eastern Roman Empire was brought to the very brink of extinction by the Sassanid Persians before Heraclius managed to inflict a crushing defeat on the Sassanids with a desperate, final gambit. His conquests were shortlived, however, for the newly converted adherents of Islam burst upon the region, administering the coup de grace to Sassanid power and laying siege to Constantinople itself, ushering in a new era.
Peter Crawford skillfully explains the threeway struggle between the Christian Roman, Zoroastrian Persian, and Islamic Arab empires, a period of conflict peopled with fascinating characters, including Heraclius, Khusro II, and the Prophet Muhammad himself. Many of the epic battles of the period - Nineveh, Yarmuk, Qadisiyyah, and Nahavand - and sieges such as those of Jerusalem and Constantinople are described in as rich detail. The strategies and tactics of these very different armies are discussed and analyzed, while plentiful maps allow the listener to follow the events and varying fortunes of the contending empires. This is an exciting and important study of a conflict that reshaped the map of the world.
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What listeners say about The War of the Three Gods
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Shiva Vosoughi
- 2022-05-18
Hugely Biased In Favour Of Islam but OK
The writer mentions Arabs' "tolerance" more than a hundred times during the book.
The level of racism and killings Arabs did during their invasion can only be matched with Mongols; they literally changed people's beliefs by force, it's a religion speared by killing, but for no apparent reason, the writer thinks they were tolerant, but fails to explain why only in those conquered lands people are Muslim now,
If they were tolerant as the writer says, people wouldn't be Muslims now.
It seems most western writers have some sort of love for Islam, but they fail to explain why they like Islam so much?
The writer fails to mention all the book burnings by Rashidun and others, he fails to talk about almost 700,000 dead in Sassanid Persian lands and 200,000 dead on Roman lands, but he mentions Arabs creating trade and good buildings as they came out of Arabia, (we currently can't find even 1 ancient column in the whole of Arabia, there's no sign of any kind of advanced civilization so we do know that what ever Arabs did was with the help of Romans or Iranians)
The writer fails to mention Arabs' INVASION of Romano-Perso lands; not once in the book does he mentions the word "invasion" or talks about the brutality of Arabs and the distribution of peace and trade in those lands. peace that Romans and Persians made 10 years before, there wasn't any kind of war in the world when Arabs decided to make one.
The writer talks about Mohammad like he is really talking to God; he fails to talk about any sort of negatives against Mohammad, like the fact that he caused the whole regime change in Arabia by the cabal of killers, a lot of people resisted Mohammad in Arabia, but they either killed them or forced them to change their religion.
The book is ok for understanding those 50-60 years period of history that our life now depends on it so much but it is far from perfect, critical thinking is minimal and like many of the books and videos that explain that period, the book is buried underneath of fear of Islam, I understand of course, no one wants to be Salman Rushdi, it could be much better.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Cory
- 2015-10-19
Filled in some blanks
An interesting account of a period that I had little understanding and an all but forgotten empire. In total, very good but very heavy on battlefield tactics that I felt was at times unnecessary. Also at times the chronology jumps around a bit and I found it a little hard to keep up, but I recommend this book to the casual history non-fiction reader.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Just_Shoppin
- 2020-11-08
Awesome History, Worth the time & investment
If I rated this in the first four hours I would give it five stars! But I got lost is the Names and Places as the story moved on. There is a lot to learn about this side of history. However, I did learn quite a bit about the origin of Islam. Basically, a guy gets lost in the mountains, makes up some rules then gets a gang to overpower and enforce his beliefs. Defeats the Persians and forces them to believe as he does. Then Islam starts off inclusive and evolves into what we have today which conforms or dies.
On the other side, Rome's internal greed and division caused the most powerful country on earth to be overcome by Islam. Loses Noth Africa loses the east and almost the entire European continent. And the beat goes on and on and on...
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
- Intellectual Warrior
- 2015-05-07
Good historical narrative
This book is a good historical overview of the Romano-Persian wars of the seventh century, but overstates Muslim successes without addressing the growing schisms and fault lines that rapidly led to reverses and internal conflict. It points those out readily enough to describe Roman reverses and Persian collapse, but dismisses them to easily when examining Islam.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 2020-12-25
Compare with Richard J Evans' the Pursuit of Power
This book just doesn't get into the depth of characterizations of the people of history or their times. Compared w/ Evans' work, it's just a list of battles and wars and this and that and it just doesn't flow. My god where are the good history writers?
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Bo E
- 2020-09-02
Good story and well done but lacking some explanation
Overall I enjoyed the listen and the subject covered. There were some statements on motivation and strategy in the book that had no explanation, which I would have appreciated. For example, the author posits that the Persian patriarch Cyrus held “inherent racism” toward a Muslim delegate of a darker skin tone. I found the statement confusing as I was unaware that race-based thought and identity existed at this point in history and would have appreciated a deeper look into it. Nonetheless, I appreciate a book covering such a fascinating subject and found it compelling and worth the read.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Eugen
- 2020-11-08
a secularist writing about what he doesn't underst
his arrogance stops him from writing an objective history on this topic. at one point he refers to a debate about the Holy Trinity as a " Petty squabble"
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Roboto
- 2015-02-12
Great book
I really enjoyed this book and think it covers an important but under represented period of time in history. Great to read
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Forrest Barfield
- 2014-12-03
Having trouble finishing this one...
I've been eagerly wating for Audible to release an audiobook on this subject since finishing Albert Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples back in 2010. Popular history seems to be mostly silent when it comes to providing a Roman or Persian perspective on the rise of the Islamic Caliphate. I was hoping that this title would fill the gap.
The author strikes a good balance between creating an entertaining narrative and acknowledging when the historical sources are too spotty to be dogmatic about what actually occurred. Though not as compelling as similar titles in the genre, the book is well-written overall.
The narration of this book is nearly unbearable. The narrator has a professional voice and good pronunciation but doesn't project well, resulting in a whisper-like, grumbly, bass-heavy recording. This is problematic for me, since I do the majority of my listening while engaged in sometimes-noisy manual labor and almost always listen to my books at 2x or 3x normal playback speed. Even while driving, I've found it difficult to concentrate on the content unless I play the audio at high volume and at 1x or 1.25x speed.
I'm pleased that Audible has provided a PDF supplement with this audiobook, featuring political and battle strategy maps which have proved more fascinating than the book itself. This is a welcome change to the several books and lectures I have downloaded which advertise supplementary content but fail to deliver.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- M.S. Green
- 2021-04-06
Misleading title or not?
Based on the title I expected this book to be a detailed historical comparison of the three main religious groups and their struggles for supremacy in the Fertile Crescent in the period of Late Antiquity into the Early Middle Ages.
It sort of started out that way, with simplistic explanations of the main faith systems in the region. However, the majority of this book is an unnecessarily long description of troop maneuvers in battle after battle, with little snippets added periodically about the lives of the people involved. It would have been alright if there had been a balance as the title does include the word 'god', but this book is not balanced. By the end, it felt like I had been listening to a field manual.
Adding insult to injury, it was read by a man who had absolutely no grasp of how to pronounce simple words in any language other than American English. Without discrimination, he mangled simple and more complicated names and places. Even words in English were challenging for this reader...is it "CAVALRY" or "CALVARY"? They mean rather different things but tripped off his tongue as if they were interchangeable.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- MD_44
- 2021-03-30
I had much higher hopes for this book
This book could have been so much better!
1. The narrator’s pronunciation is way off. Many names that I am already familiar with were not distinguishable from his narration. Narrators should consult native speakers on how to best pronounce the names to avoid blunders such as “Kaka” ibn Amer!
2. The story thread is very disorganized. The author started with an analysis of the perso-romano wars ending at islamic conquests. It is not clear if the thread is geographic (story told by location), historic (story told by sequence of events), or religious (story told by sect or followers). It was none of these and exhausting to follow - especially by audio.
I was disappointed all the way to the epilogue when he offered a final opinion.
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2 people found this helpful