The author, a bright new star in the firmament of Quran scholarship, slices through the bramble of false assumptions and ungrounded speculation that have plagued the field. With careful historical reasoning, he establishes the cultural and geographical context for the emergence of Islam, deploying recent epigraphic and archeological findings. -- Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan and author, Rethinking the Qur'an in Late Antiquity