"Full of rare and exact information…A distinguished work." —New York Review of Books The eleventh-century Muslim world was a great civilization while Europe lay slumbering in the Dark Ages. Slowly, inevitably, Europe and Islam came together, through trade and war, crusade and diplomacy. The ebb and flow between these two worlds for seven hundred years, illuminated here by a brilliant historian, is one of the great sagas of world history.

A sweeping history of Islam and the West from the seventh century to today Europe and the Islamic World sheds much-needed light on the shared roots of Islamic and Western cultures and on the richness of their inextricably intertwined histories, refuting once and for all the misguided notion of a "clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and Europe. In this landmark book, three eminent historians bring to life the complex and tumultuous relations between Genoans and Tunisians, Alexandrians and the people of Constantinople, Catalans and Maghrebis—the myriad groups and individuals whose stories reflect the common cultural, intellectual, and religious heritage of Europe and Islam. Since the seventh century, when the armies of Constantinople and Medina fought for control of Syria and Palestine, there has been ongoing contact between the Muslim world and the West. This sweeping history vividly recounts the wars and the crusades, the alliances and diplomacy, commerce and the slave trade, technology transfers, and the intellectual and artistic exchanges. Here readers are given an unparalleled introduction to key periods and events, including the Muslim conquests, the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, the commercial revolution of the medieval Mediterranean, the intellectual and cultural achievements of Muslim Spain, the crusades and Spanish reconquest, the rise of the Ottomans and their conquest of a third of Europe, European colonization and decolonization, and the challenges and promise of this entwined legacy today. As provocative as it is groundbreaking, this book describes this shared history in all its richness and diversity, revealing how ongoing encounters between Europe and Islam have profoundly shaped both.

This book gives an overall presentation and discussion of the interaction between Europe and Islam ever since Islam appeared on the European stage thirteen centuries ago. The events and stories presented are to serve the understanding of present debates on, and notions of, Islam and Muslims in Europe. 0The leading questions in discussing the role of Islam in Europe are: how and in what ways did Europeans and Muslims interact and, for those Europeans who had never met a Muslim, what was their image of Islam, and how did they study the Muslim? Notions of religion, (in)tolerance and Othering are guiding themes.0This book shows that in the course of thirteen centuries the Muslim as well as Islam has undergone many metamorphoses. The Muslim in Europe has been a conqueror, antichrist, scholar, benign ruler, corsair, tradesman and fellow citizen. The image of Islam has meandered accordingly, as a religion that was feared as an enemy or embraced as a partner against heretic Christians, despised as an abomination or admired as a civilization, and studied for missionary, academic, colonial or security purposes.0.

Arab history is often viewed as beginning with Islam, but the Arabs have a long history stretching back millennia. The Phoenicians were exploring the coasts of England and West Africa and colonising much of Spain, Sicily and North Africa in the early first millennium BC. Phoenicians and Arabs form a part of European history that is both European and Asiatic, a part that defines and makes Europe what it is. Europe has been engaged in a complex relationship with Arabs throughout history. This richly illustrated book is an account of that relationship.

Islam in Europe is a book full of striking images: the assassination of and the death threats against artists and intellectuals; violent demonstrations demanding Sharia [Koranic] law for Europe; acts of terrorism. Also detailed are European political initiatives and, in some cases, new laws that forbid the wearing of the burka in public spaces, the ban on minarets in Switzerland, and other efforts to keep Western culture "pure." But there is another reality, as Nilüfer Göle describes it from her own life experience: Muslims who are politicians in European parliaments; scholars teaching in European universities; artists who use this creative intercultural exchange as a theme in their art. More visible are the hundreds of thousands of students, workers, merchants, and professionals who participate in every aspect of public life without concealing their heritage. Göle sees the best hope for a modern and European Islam in the Muslim women who -- in contrast to the men -- demonstrate their commitment to their heritage by wearing head scarves while participating in modern Western life. In manifesting their professional and public experience in their own communities, they become the agents of change and modernism. Göle thus sees European Islam as "feminine," in contrast to the male-dominated traditional Islam. As she said on PBS' Frontline, "Modernity is ... shaped, invented by values that were not the values of Muslim countries. That is one of the basic reasons for the separation between the modern world and the Muslim world, this either/or partition. If you are modern, you can't be a Muslim. But now we are going beyond this division -- you can be both Muslim and modern." This edition is translated from the French by Stephen Rendall.

Handbook of European History, 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation gathers the best scholarship into an array of topical chapters that present current knowledge and thinking in ways useful to specialists and accessible to students and educated nonspecialists.