“Was the Rise of Islam a Black Swan Event?” Michael Cook, 2016 R. Stephen Humphreys Distinguished Visiting Scholar

A Black Swan Event is by definition a highly improbable happening with a massive impact. No one questions the impact of rise of Islam, but just how improbable was it? Two of its central features look very unlikely against the background of earlier history: the appearance among the Arabs of a new
monotheistic religion, and the formation of a powerful state in Arabia. Does that add up to two Black Swans, or do they cancel out?

Michael Cook is the Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He is the author of Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought and A Brief History of the Human Race, among other books, and he is also the general editor of The New Cambridge History of Islam.

Sponsored by the Center for Middle East Studies, R. Stephen Humphreys Distinguished
Lecture Series

Download flyer