Maxime Rodinson

and critical analysis has not advanced since the two remarkable works of W. Montgomery Watt, to which I make frequent reference.

I aimed to write a book that was a narrative account but also an interpretation. The interpretative aspect was of utmost importance to me. I drew on the partial explanations that had already been put forward. I made an effort at times to criticize, refine, or add to them; but above all, I tried to bring them all together, to place them within a wider context, so as to arrive at an explanatory synthesis

the growth and evolution of what I have called ideological movements.