Sea of the caliphs : the Mediterranean in the medieval Islamic world / Christophe Picard ; translated by Nicholas Elliott.

"This book was originally published in French as La mer des califes: Une histoire de la Mediterranee musulmane, VIIe-XIIe siecle, copyright (c) Editions du Seuil, 2015"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-376) and index.

Introduction: The end of the Noorish and Saracen pirate? -- Part I. The Arab Mediterranean between representation and appropriation: The Arab discovery of the Mediterranean -- Arab writing on the conquest of the Mediterranean -- The silences of the sea: the Abbasid jihad -- The geographers' Mediterranean -- Muslim centers of the western Mediterranean: Islam without the Abbasids -- The Mediterranean of the Western caliphs -- The western Mediterranean: last bastion of Islam's maritime ambitions -- Part II. Mediterranean strategies of the caliphs: The Mediterranean of the two empires -- Controlling the Mediterranean: the Abbasid model -- The maritime awakening of the Muslim West -- The maritime imperialism of the caliphs in the tenth century: the end of jihad? -- Islam's maritime sovereignty in the face of Latin expansion -- Conclusion: The medieval Mediterranean and Islamic memory.