It's more like Mosques were built to look like Roman churches, whereas the west adopted a more Gothic style of Church building.

[quote=@Nilesapa]
I swear I recall the map extending across continental europe.

S'ppose twas just me imagining' things again.

Now where to learn about this corner of the world?  All my medieval audiobooks I found all centers in northern and Western Europe.  All I know about this place is the Christian Egyptians and the massive mosque the Byzantines- I mean romans- built.
[/quote]

[url=http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/]The History of Rome[/url]

This played a part in why I wanted to do a Roman RP in the first place. Back last fall, I started to listen to these while I was at work. It's an amazing overview that everybody should listen to if they call themselves history fans, and covers everything up to the fall of the Western Empire. There is a continuation of it done by somebody else about the Byzantines, but I haven't listened to it so I cannot say anything about it.

[url=http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Count-Belisarius-Audiobook/B00CAWQ0Q4/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1438233243&sr=1-1]Count Belisarius[/url]

This is what I am reading right now (albeit in text format, so I didn't spend no twenty bucks =p. If you can find this at the library, that would be great). Pretty good overview, the narrator explains a lot of the small cultural details of the time, like the religious differences.

[url=http://www.audible.com/pd/History/In-Gods-Path-Audiobook/B00QMP102O/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1438233533&sr=1-1]In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire[/url]

Admittedly, this one forms the foundation of what I know about the rise of Islam. It wasn't a subject I had much knowledge in at all until this year. Pretty good overview of the events that caused it all to happen.