INFO BAR
MUSLIM EUROPE THARIK HUSSAIN
‘A vital, important and sharply observant new voice . . . In an age of growing Islamophobia, when ignorant commentators constantly depict Muslims as the Other, as dangerous outsiders, Hussain reminds us of the long history and the complex, mixed syncretic culture of European Islam, and nudges us to remember the massive debt Europe still owes to the Muslim world . . . A book I’ve been longing for someone to write’ WILLIAM DALRYMPLE ‘A perspective-shattering work showing that, far from being fatal to Western culture, Islam has been integral to the development of Europe for more than 1,400 years . . . Muslim Europe reads as both a revisionist work of history and a voyage of discovery’ CAROLINE SANDERSON
THARIK HUSSAIN is an award-
‘Tharik Hussain is the essential second eye we need to get the history of Europe into focus, a brilliantly informed and also charming guide to the often hidden place of Islam in our shared past. He takes us to unfamiliar times and unfamiliar places – some glittering, some domestic – and expertly shows how they shaped us’ MICHAEL PYE ‘Tharik Hussain is just the kind of travelling companion we need in polarized times like these: curious, empathetic, erudite. An absolutely fascinating book, expertly threading past and present with a revelatory light’ SOPHY ROBERTS ‘Uncovers a world of which few are fully aware’ COLIN THUBRON
9780241742822_MuslimEurope_JKT.indd All Pages
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Front cover photo © iStock/Getty Images; back cover photo by Wolfgang B, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
I S B N 978-0-241-74282-2
90000
winning author, historian and journalist specializing in Muslim heritage and culture. He is a Fellow at the Centre for Religion and Heritage at the University of Groningen and has written for newspapers such as The Times, the Guardian and the Telegraph, magazines such as National Geographic Traveller, and broadcast media such as Al Jazeera and the BBC. His book on Islam in the western Balkans, Minarets in the Mountains, was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year and won the Adele Evans Award.
‘A vital, eye-opening journey into a Europe we were never taught about. A truly extraordinary work of rediscovery that pulls back the veil on a millennium of forgotten history and shows us that Europe has always been far more diverse, interconnected and culturally rich than we’ve been led to believe . . . An important and necessary book for these times’ LEVISON WOOD
‘Vital, important’ WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
MUSLIM EUROPE A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF A
For over 1,400 years, Muslims have been an integral part of Europe’s story, yet their contributions have been pushed to the margins or erased altogether. In Muslim Europe, award-winning author Tharik Hussain restores this forgotten history. In a revelatory journey across the continent, we tread in the footsteps of the first Muslims who arrived on European soil in AD 647. We travel through Cyprus, Sicily, Malta, Portugal and Spain, learning about the continent’s great Caliphate culture and Muslim commonwealth, encountering red-haired European sultans and Arabicspeaking Christian kings, the Sufi lodges of Cyprus and the palaces of Sicily. Forgotten Muslim pioneers like Abbas ibn Firnas gave us flight, Ibn Rushd gifted us modern philosophy, and the cross-fertilization of faiths and cultures birthed Europe’s Christian Renaissance. For twelve centuries, Muslim Europe was a sanctuary for the continent’s Jews. Recalling the poignant voices of Hasdai ibn Shaprut and Abraham Ibn Daud, Jews flourished under Muslim protection, triggering the Jewish Golden Age.
FOURTEEN HUNDRED YEAR HISTORY
THARIK HUSSAIN ‘Perspective shattering’ CAROLINE SANDERSON
For the first time, Muslim Europe lays bare the cause of our collective Islamic amnesia by mapping Europe’s ‘anti-Muslim DNA’ through medieval Crusade narratives and nation-building myths. But Islam was never a sideshow to Western culture; it was integral to its development for over 1,400 years. Deep, learned and utterly convincing, this first Muslim Eurocentric history of the continent dismantles the myth of Europe’s Judaeo-Christian cultural foundation, and offers nothing less than a profound shift in our self-understanding.
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