P.M. Holt

P.M. Holt depicts 'an organized revolutionary movement... resulting in the establishment of a territorial Islamic state'.

During the Mamluk Sultanate, writes P.M. Holt, men imported as slaves and trained as warriors became rulers of a great Islamic state.

By occupying Syria and the Holy Places of the Hijaz, Ali Bey sought to make Egypt the dominant power in the 18th-century Arab world. P.M. Holt suggests that his policy of expansion, which included an alliance with Russia, has some interesting modern parallels.

As Professor of Arabic at Oxford, writes P.M. Holt, Pococke pursued his scholarly life amid civil war and republican experiment.