Resumen: In this book, Marco Demichelis explores the history of the concept of jihad in the early proto-Islamic centuries (7-8th). Deploying an interdisciplinary approach which combines the hermeneutical study of the famous 'Verses of the Sword' within the Qur'an itself, with historical writing by Islamic chroniclers as well as non-Islamic sources, numismatics, epigraphical and architectural evidence, the book questions the relationship between the religious concept of jihad and the conquests. The book argues that Christian Byzantine Foederati forices who previously fought against the Persians may have had a formative effect on the later emergence of more bellicose rhetoric. In so doing, it calls into question assumptions about warlike attitudes inherent within Islamic doctrine, and reveals a more nuanced and complicated history of religious violence in the pre, proto and early Islamic period.