Tharik Hussain

Tharik Hussain’s travels around the Mediterranean revealed how Islamic culture helped civilise the West . . . Fascinating . . . This is no dry archaeological or architectural study. Much of the human interest here comes from Hussain’s meetings with actual Muslims, both residents and visitors . . . while English doctors prescribed crushed snails and smouldering goat’s hair, learned physicians in Muslim Cordoba were performing successful caesareans and cataract operations

There is something of Naipaul’s vivid sense of human realities . . . particularly through Hussain’s many many pen portraits of actual European Muslims living their Islam . . . fascinating . . . he hopes to provide a positive charter in in the past for Muslim-Christian relations in the present

Offers a fresh, bracing perspective on European history . . . Hussain’s mission to restore Islamic heritage to the wider story of Europe’s history is admirable, as are his efforts to foster a “place identity”, a sense of belonging in Europe for European Muslims in general and his children in particular

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

Fascinating . . . complicates our notion of “Europe” as a closed Judeo-Christian space, reminding us that Muslims have since the early days of Islam been an integral, important part of the continent

Uncovers a world of which few are fully aware

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

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, author of THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

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. With the curiosity of a traveller and the rigour of a historian, Tharik uncovers forgotten stories that challenge everything we think we know about the continent’s past. An important and necessary book for these times

Tharik Hussain is just the kind of travelling companion we need in polarised times like these: curious, empathetic, erudite. An absolutely fascinating book, expertly threading past and present with a revelatory light

Sophy Roberts, author THE LOST PIANOS OF SIBERIA

The book is packed with intriguing details and revealing insights

A thoughtful, accessible and quietly powerful book that combines journalistic craft with historical insight to tell a story that is too often erased . . . an act of narrative resistance, not by shouting but by showing . . . Muslim Europe offers a corrective to lazy assumptions and ahistorical debate

A sweeping travel-history work that challenges how the continent understands itself . . . Hussain’s work is a reminder that history lives in the footsteps we take and in the stories we choose to seek

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.

Tharik Hussain

Praise for Muslim Europe

Tharik Hussain’s travels around the Mediterranean revealed how Islamic culture helped civilise the West . . . Fascinating . . . This is no dry archaeological or architectural study. Much of the human interest ...

There is something of Naipaul’s vivid sense of human realities . . . particularly through Hussain’s many many pen portraits of actual European Muslims living their Islam . . . fascinating . . . he hopes to provid ...

Offers a fresh, bracing perspective on European history . . . Hussain’s mission to restore Islamic heritage to the wider story of Europe’s history is admirable, as are his efforts to foster a “place id ...

Tharik Hussain’s travels around the Mediterranean revealed how Islamic culture helped civilise the West . . . Fascinating . . . This is no dry archaeological or architectural study. Much of the human interest ...

There is something of Naipaul’s vivid sense of human realities . . . particularly through Hussain’s many many pen portraits of actual European Muslims living their Islam . . . fascinating . . . he hopes to provid ...

Offers a fresh, bracing perspective on European history . . . Hussain’s mission to restore Islamic heritage to the wider story of Europe’s history is admirable, as are his efforts to foster a “place id ...

Tharik Hussain’s travels around the Mediterranean revealed how Islamic culture helped civilise the West . . . Fascinating . . . This is no dry archaeological or architectural study. Much of the human interest ...

There is something of Naipaul’s vivid sense of human realities . . . particularly through Hussain’s many many pen portraits of actual European Muslims living their Islam . . . fascinating . . . he hopes to provid ...

Offers a fresh, bracing perspective on European history . . . Hussain’s mission to restore Islamic heritage to the wider story of Europe’s history is admirable, as are his efforts to foster a “place id ...

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