Unearthing Europe’s 1,400-year Islamic history
Award-winning author, historian and journalist Tharik Hussain’s acclaimed new book, Muslim Europe, explores the continent’s 1,400-year Islamic history, bringing to light stories that have long been overlooked and denied. He tells the Runnymede Trust’s Shafik Meghji about mercenary Vikings who immersed themselves in Muslim culture in Sicily, the unexpected Islamic connections of a pair of English monarchs, and the necessity of writing about this subject at a time of soaring Islamophobia.
What was the inspiration behind Muslim Europe?
The inspiration to tell the story of historic Muslim Europe is made clear in the book: it comes from the realisation that not only does Europe have a long and storied Islamic history that goes right back to the very first generation of Muslims that has been written out of our popular histories of Europe, but it is one that was pivotal for the emergence of modern Europe. I felt as Europeans we were not being told the entire story.
The decision to write a book about this, however, is largely down to the success of my previous book, Minarets in the Mountains, where I travel through the Balkans and try to present the stories of Europe’s indigenous Muslim communities. I do this in part by following in the footsteps of the 17th-century Ottoman traveller Evliya Celebi, and this, along with other Muslim sources often neglected or dismissed by historic western histories of Europe, allowed me to present a very different perspective on the make-up of Europe; one that did not ‘other’ its indigenous Muslim cultures.
Minarets was very well received – longlisted for the biggest prize in non-fiction – and this told me there was an appetite to hear wider and alternative versions of our histories. In Minarets I deal with Europe’s Muslim history from the Ottoman arrival at the end of the 14th century onwards, so it made sense to go right back to the 7th century and the beginning of the Muslim presence in Europe for this book.
I do this by visiting the places in Europe that Muslims first came and settled in: Cyprus, Sicily, Malta, Portugal and Spain. These are now largely places of Muslim ‘memory’, so this was a book that was much more about history, and the journeys became a way to tell that history through what I call European Muslim-centric lens.
In the same way that Minarets offered a shift in perspective that did not ‘other’ Europe’s living indigenous Muslim cultures, Muslim Europe does the same and presents a European history that does not ‘other’ its Muslim history. In doing so, among other things, it reveals that Muslims came to Europe at a crucial juncture and completely revolutionised the continent.
The book involved an incredible amount of archival and on-the-ground research: what most surprised you during that process?
I think the more I learned about the 11th-13th century Arab-Norman kings of Sicily who inherited the island culture from the Muslim Kalbid rulers of the Emirate period, the more fascinated I became by these mercenary Vikings who had ‘rocked’ up to this sunny island in the south of Europe – just as their cousins were doing the same to a grey, wet, island in the north – and basically went native.
They began to speak Arabic, adopt titles like ‘Sultan’, build palaces in the style of Muslim rulers, tolerate Jews and Muslims, and immerse themselves into Muslim culture in a way no other Christians in Europe had ever done. As a result, Arab-Norman Sicily became a wonderfully enlightened and inclusive medieval Christian culture, a rare thing in historical Christian Europe, and maybe more crucially, it became a major channel for the transference of that Muslim culture and knowledge so crucial for seeding the Christian Renaissance, to Christian societies across western Europe.
You weave in perspectives from people you meet along the way, including imams, historians, archaeologists, curators and guides: what were the most memorable interviews?
There were so many great conversations along the way and they stick out for different reasons. The Imam in the Hala Sultan Mosque in Larnaca for example was such a wonderful storyteller and listening to his anecdotes about his late teacher Sheikh Nazim and his own mystical experiences with Hala Sultan remain vivid.
Then there is the Sicilian Imam Badri, who revealed to me that he had discovered a forgotten, historic mosque beneath the grounds of his own modern mosque in Palermo, and Manuel de Passhinas who is so passionate about the Muslim history of Portugal even though he himself is not a Muslim that it is palpable.
But the moment that sticks out for me was meeting Muhammad Boulaich, a Moroccan man living in Orgiva, a village in the Alpujarras, south of Granada. Sitting in a café one morning, drinking coffee and spontaneously hearing about his recent journey of ancestral discovery; one that led to him to learn his family were descended from the Muslims driven out of the city of Seville during the 15th and 16th century expulsions. Wow. That was a powerful moment.
‘The relationship between England and the Muslim world stretches much further back than popular history will have us believe'
Although the focus is on continental Europe, the book also provides a fascinating insight into Islamic connections with British kings and queens dating back to the Middle Ages...
As a Brit, this was an area I really wanted to explore, as we have always been culturally linked to the mainland, despite our best attempts to deny that, be that historically or more recently. And things got very interesting when I realised the deep familial ties our medieval Norman conquerors had with their cousins, the Arab-Norman conquerors of Sicily, and – through marriage – some of the Spanish rulers that inherited the Muslim culture of Iberia.
So, as well as offering anecdotal glimpses that suggest the relationship between England and the Muslim world stretches much further back than popular history will have us believe, like the fact that an Anglo-Saxon King, King Offa of Mercia, minted a coin featuring the Islamic declaration of faith in a crude Arabic – the coin remains with us in the British Museum – I also dug a little deeper into those ties to the Christian inheritors of Muslim culture in Sicily and Iberia, and began wondering about some unusual ‘incidents’ that have been previously dismissed as anomalies or hearsay by traditional English historians of the past.
Like the fascinating claim that not one, but two English monarchs – King Henry II and his son John I – both threatened to convert to Islam. The latter, apparently, in a bid to create an alliance with the Almohads of Iberia and North Africa; in fact the sources claim to seal the deal, King John I was willing to adopt Shari’a law in England. Can you imagine?
Of course, this is a huge topic, Islam and Britain, and it is obvious that there is much we do not fully appreciate about the influence of Muslim culture on British culture – clearly a book in its own right – but maybe if we did, our attitude towards Muslim culture as a nation would be quite different?
Muslim Europe arrives at a time of surging Islamophobia in the UK and across the continent: how does it feel to be writing about this subject in this context?
Sadly, it does feels very urgent and necessary, especially as my research revealed some worrying patterns throughout the course of western European history that have undoubtedly contributed to these modern attitudes. Firstly, that this outpouring of anti-Muslim hate is nothing new at all. In fact, I found that it was the core unifying element for many Christian European nations from the moment Islam came to Europe; it was the call to fight against Islam and Muslims that first united many of them and from those kingdoms emerged the modern nation states that lead Europe today.
This is why there is such a Christian-centric feel to western Europe and its colonial legacies like America and Australia, even though this is often painted as being secular and post-Christian.
When you start to unpick all of this, you begin to understand where the apparent ‘phobia’ towards Islam stems from; it is deep in the unconscious, and the consistent denial and erasure of Europe’s 1,400 years of Muslim history and presence, which I present in the book, has played a huge role in reinforcing this hate and falsehood.
What are you working on next?
Strangely enough, given your earlier question about Britain and Islam, I am just finishing off writing a pioneering new travel guide to Britain and Ireland that focuses on the Muslim heritage and culture of both places. However, unlike a narrative book, this offers practical ways to better engage with this hitherto overlooked history, heritage and culture; from the aforementioned King Offa’s 7th-century coin right through to an award-winning modern Cambridge eco-mosque.
Tharik Hussain’s Muslim Europe: A Journey in Search of a Fourteen Hundred Year History is out now.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Runnymede Trust.
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