Muslim Europe

Tharik Hussain
Hardback, 432 pages
9780241742822

A Journey in Search of a Fourteen Hundred Year History

This revelatory history explores the ancient roots of Muslim Europe, tracing their journey through the Mediterranean.

Our odyssey begins in the little-known Sufi lodges in Cyprus, where Muslims arrived in 647AD. From there, we travel through the continent – visiting places such as Sicily, Malta, Portugal and Spain – encountering red-haired European Sultans and Arabic-speaking Christian Kings. We meet forgotten Muslim pioneers, such as Abbas Ibn Firnas who gave us flight and Ibn Sina who gave us modern medicine. We see the Islam-inspired mudejar art of fourteenth-century Christians in Spain, and how such cross fertilisation birthed Europe’s ‘Renaissance’. We discover the long-forgotten tombs of European Muslims who knew the Prophet Muhammad, and the author – award-winning writer Tharik Hussain – becomes the first Muslim in over 900 years to pray inside the remains of a nameless Sicilian Mosque.

To remedy Europe’s Islamic amnesia, this ambitious history reveals that Islam is no side show to Western culture – but rather has been integral to its development over 1,400 years.