It is spring of the year 830. Baghdad, the capital of a vast Islamic empire, is one of the world's most glorious cities. Its ruler is an intellectual, a forward-thinking caliph who champions reason and the pursuit of knowledge against the forces of ignorance and superstition. The Caliph's court has become a dazzling academy of poets, musicians, philosophers, and theologians--a picture of a vibrant, self confident, pleasure-loving society.

Yet, it bears the fateful seeds of future strife. The Sunni-Shia divide, religious fanaticism, and the stirrings of Islamist extremism all started then. These themes emerge as the story of a passionate love that ends in murder unfolds.

The book opens with the Caliph at death's door, struck down by a mysterious illness. His condition worsens as physicians desperately search for a cure. Only Abu Mansour al-Tabrizi, Baghdad's most famous doctor, is able to diagnose the cause. The Caliph's malady is a love-sickness akin to madness for a beautiful, young woman named Murjana. It is an affliction with only one remedy: marriage.

But Murjana is from a Shia family, and such a union could pose danger to a Sunni caliph and a Sunni society. From the start, forces are at play which threaten the caliph's happiness.

And yet the controversial marriage of Murjana and the Caliph goes ahead and captures Baghdad under its spell. The story of their love becomes an ode to the power of passion to erase boundaries. But enmity and vengeance stalk them, and only when tragedy strikes does division and conflict reveal their futility.