The wars of Islam have been rarely been studied in depth. Before Spencer's book, which is supposed to cover those conquests beyond Europe, Paul Fregosi wrote one about the Islamic wars against Western powers.
Here is how Fregosi begins his Introduction to Jihad in the West:
"The jihad, the islamic so-called Holy War, has been a fact of life in Europe, Asia,
Africa, and the Near and Middle East for more than 1,300 years, but this is the first history of the Muslim
wars in Europe ever to be published. Hundreds of books, however, have appeared on its Christian
counterpart, the Crusades, to which the Jihad is often compared, although they lasted less than two hundred
years and unlike the Jihad, which is universal, were largely but not completely confined to the Holy Land.
Moreover, the Crusades have been over for more than 700 years, while a Jihad is still going on in the world.
The Jihad has been the most unrecorded and disregarded major event of history. It has, in fact, been largely
ignored. For instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the Crusades eighty times more space than the
Jihad. In the New South Wales State Library, where I did part of my research while in Australia, there were
108 entries listed in their catalogue cards for the Crusades, but only two for the Jihad! The Jihad has been
largely bypassed by Western historians, and this book is an attempt to right the situation, for the Jihad has
affected the lives-and continues to do so-of far, far more people and regions in the world than the long-extinct
Crusades ever did."
