... period and an authority on the cultural and social history of Islam. For annotated selections from his writings, see Travels of Ibn Battta (tr. by H. A. R. Gibb, 3 vol., rev. ed. 1958-71). Edward Gibbon English historian, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His childhood was sickly, and he had little formal education but read enormously and omnivorously ... . He went at the age of 15 to Oxford, but was forced to leave because of his conversion to Roman Catholicism. His father sent him (1753) to Lausanne ... and Fall are legion. The modern standard edition ...

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