BUSY STUDY TRIP FOR HISTORIAN

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30277, 1 November 1963, Page 12

BUSY STUDY TRIP FOR HISTORIAN

A full year’s work, which includes work on two books, lies ahead for the acting-head of the history department at the University of Canterbury (Mr J. J. Saunders). He will leave for England early in December, accompanied by his wife and two children, and will spend most of the next twelve months on research at Cambridge University.

Mr Saunders is an authority on the history of Islam, and has specialised in the relationships between Muslim and Christian societies in the medieval period. He will collect material in England for a book to be published by Northwestern University, Illinois, on the Muslim world on the eve of the European discoveries. He will also see the publication of his book on “The History of Medieval Islam” on which he has been working for the last year, assisted by Professor C. F. Beckingham and Dr. J. A

Boyle, of Manchester University. His third task during his study leave will be research for an interpretative essay on the Mongol conquests. These thirteenth century invasions weakened Islam and plunged Russia into the cultural backwardness from which it was only now recovering. Mr Saunders said. The Western countries were also given an advantage in avoiding this contact, which enabled them to progress culturally to world leadership, another era of winch could be said to be approaching its end.

“I believe that a re-exam-ination of the subject in the light of recent research will put a good deal of the history of Eurasia in a new light,” Mr Saunders said.