Sign-In
Cart
Four Caliphs, Twenty Years: The Rashidun Conquests and an Empire Born Fast
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 4 2026
Pages: 142
Weight: 0.40
Height: 0.36 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
History remembers the astonishing conquests. This book asks the more important question: how did they happen at all?
When the Prophet Muhammad died in 632, the Muslim community appeared dangerously fragile. Its authority barely extended beyond western Arabia, tribal loyalties were uncertain, and the world's two superpowers-the Byzantine and Sassanian Empires-still dominated the Near East. Within just twenty years, that small community had conquered Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Persia, and lands stretching from North Africa to Central Asia, reshaping world history with breathtaking speed.
In Four Caliphs, Twenty Years, historian Marcus Russell O'Brien traces the extraordinary rise of the Rashidun Caliphate through the lives and leadership of Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali. Moving chronologically from the crisis following Muhammad's death to the First Fitna that shattered the unity of the early caliphate, the book examines the battles, political decisions, administrative innovations, and personal rivalries that forged-and nearly destroyed-one of history's fastest-growing empires.
Drawing on surviving ancient sources and modern scholarship, O'Brien presents a balanced historical narrative that neither avoids controversy nor reduces complex events to simple legends. He explores the remarkable military successes of the Rashidun armies while placing them within the wider context of exhausted rival empires, fragile institutions, and competing claims to legitimacy that continue to shape the Islamic world today.
A compelling work of historical nonfiction, Four Caliphs, Twenty Years is the story of an empire born with astonishing speed-and of the immense human, political, and religious costs of building a state before its foundations were fully secure.
Also from
O'Brien, Marcus Russell
The World's First Conqueror: Sargon of Akkad and the Birth of Empire
O'Brien, Marcus Russell
Paperback
Baghdad's Golden Century: The Abbasids and the World's Greatest Library
O'Brien, Marcus Russell
Paperback
Gift Of The River And The Children Of The Nile: How the Nile Built the World's Longest Civilization
O'Brien, Marcus Russell
Paperback
Hanging Gardens, Towering Walls: Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon's Imperial Ambition
O'Brien, Marcus Russell
Paperback
The Price Of One China: Qin Shi Huang and the Violence of Unification
O'Brien, Marcus Russell
Paperback
Also in
General World History
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Kendi, Ibram X.
Paperback
Titanic: The Ship Magnificent - Volume Two: Interior Design and Fitting Out
Hall, Steve
Beveridge, Bruce
Braunschweiger, Art
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960
Van Slyck, Abigail A.
Hardcover
Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book
Bittman, Mark
Hardcover
The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: Power and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII, 1485-1534
Everett, Michael
Paperback
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
Loewen, James W.
Paperback
The Allies: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II
Groom, Winston
Paperback
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World
McNeill, J. R.
Paperback
Dangerous Games: Faces, Incidents, and Casualties of the Cold War
Wise, James E.
Baron, Scott
Hardcover
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
Green, John
Hardcover
1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World
Ahamed, Liaquat
Hardcover
The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail
Dolin, Eric Jay
Hardcover
American Pope: Leo XIV's Road from the South Side of Chicago to Vatican City
Detrow, Scott
Burke, Daniel
Hardcover
Obstinate Daughters: The Rebels, Writers, and Renegade Women Who Ignited the American Revolution
Kiernan, Denise
Hardcover
Freedom's Daughters: How a Generation of Black Women Resisted Oppression Through Literacy and Education
Headlee, Celeste
Hardcover
The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy
Ross, Steven J.
Hardcover
How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women
Mitchell, Claire
Venditozzi, Zoe
Paperback
The East Wing: Power, Intrigue, and the Untold Story of America's First Ladies
Moaveni, Azadeh
Hardcover
100 Bible Verses That Made America: Defining Moments That Shaped Our Enduring Foundation of Faith
Morgan, Robert J.
Paperback
The Phantom: The Untold Story of the American Marine the Nazis Could Not Kill
Clavin, Tom
Drury, Bob
Hardcover
The Nuremberg Women: The Untold Story of the Eight Women Who Brought the Nazis to Justice
Livingstone, Natalie
Hardcover
America in 25 Revolutions: The Story of Our Imperfect Nation's 250-Year Quest to Become a More Perfect Union
Graff, Garrett M.
Hardcover
How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words
Galer, Sophia Smith
Hardcover
The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery
Tiffany, Kaitlyn
Hardcover
The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women's Magic
Stewart, Lindsey
Paperback
1,000 Days in America: An Illustrated History of the Moments That Defined a Nation
National Geographic
Hardcover
Two Ships: Jamestown 1619, Plymouth 1620, and the Struggle for the Soul of America
Reynolds, David S.
Hardcover
True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color--From Azure to Zinc Pink
Stamper, Kory
Hardcover
Aristocracy, American Style: Class Privilege and the Persistence of Elite Power
Isenberg, Nancy
Hardcover
A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders: Surprising Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps
Elledge, Jonn
Paperback
The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World
Mazzeo, Tilar J.
Hardcover
Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age
Tabor, James M.
Hardcover
The Elections That Changed the World: Fifteen Pivotal Moments That Shaped How We Live
Bash, Dana
Hardcover
The Age of Alchemy: The Secret History of Chemistry from Ancient Magic to Modern Science
Chapman, Kit
Hardcover
The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling from the Dawn of Print to the Twenty-First Century
Pettegree, Andrew
Hardcover
Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight Over Free Speech in Modern America
Loeffler, James
Hardcover
The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women's Magic
Stewart, Lindsey
Hardcover
Liberation Summer: The Moment That Changed the Women's Movement and the Future of American Politics
McElya, Micki
Hardcover
The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World
Pancevski, Bojan
Hardcover
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
Sides, Hampton
Paperback
Socialism: The Real History from Plato to the Present: How the Deep State Capitalizes on Crises to Consolidate Control [With Paperback Book]
Federer, William J.
Paperback
When America Roared: How the 1980s Saved, Then Broke, the Country--And Led Us to Today
Kaufman, Jonathan
Hardcover
On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World
Hazrat, Florence
Hardcover
The Summer of Death: The Great Heat Wave of 1936 and the Making of Modern-Day America
Williams, Geoff
Hardcover
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
McGilchrist, Iain
Paperback
The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within Us Slave Culture
Woodard, Vincent
Paperback
No One's Coming: The Rogue Heroes Our Government Turns to When There's Nowhere Else to Turn
Hazzard, Kevin
Hardcover
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
Shetterly, Margot Lee
Paperback
The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
Kara, Siddharth
Hardcover