Today’s Muslim world is in upheaval: legalists and mystics engage in intense debates, radical groups invoke Sharia, Muslim immigrants in the West face prejudice and discrimination, and Muslim feminists advocate new interpretations of the Koran. At the same time, Islam is mischaracterized as unitary and unchanging by people ranging from right-wing Western politicians claiming that Islam is incompatible with democracy to conservative Muslims dreaming of returning to the golden age of the prophet. Against this contentious backdrop, this book provides an essential and timely new history of the religion in all its astonishing richness and diversity as it has been practiced by Muslims around the world, from seventh-century Mecca to today.
Why did you feel compelled to write a history of Islam? Why today, in 2025?
John Tolan:There are many books on Islam for the general reader, but most of them ignore important recent research on Islamic history. They tend to rehash a standard narrative about the founding of Islam in seventh-century Arabia and its rapid spread through the conquests of the first caliphs. While there are no doubt elements of truth in this narrative, it is based principally on sources written during the Abbasid caliphate, two centuries after the death of Muhammad. Much of what these sources say about Muhammad and his companions reflect the beliefs of the Abbasid elites who wrote them, rather than the real experience of Muhammad and the early caliphs. Over the past forty years, historians, archeologists, students of the Qur’an and others have shown, based on textual and archaeological evidence, the complexity and diversity of early Islamic society, in which “Islam” as a religion grew out of a mix of religious and cultural elements.
Islam is a world religion. While the story I tell starts in Arabia, and follows the early Muslim conquests and the establishment of the huge empires that comprised the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, I also take the reader to Indonesia (now the largest Muslim country in the world, with over 240 million), the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh have the second, third and fourth largest Muslim populations), West Africa (Nigeria today has the fifth largest Muslim population), as well as Iran, Turkey, and elsewhere. Islam is as diverse as the innumerable cultures, languages and people that practice it.
One of the most fascinating parts of your book is chapter 6, based almost entirely on the travel account of fourteenth-century adventurer Ibn Battuta. Why devote a whole chapter to him?
JT: First of all, because his travels make a great story, and he is a great story-teller. He left his native city of Tangiers, in Morocco, in 1325, at the age of 22, to make the pilgrimage to Mecca—only to return 24 years later. He traveled the width and breadth of the Muslim world, from Mali to China and from the steppes of central Asia to the shores of Zanzibar. His travel account gives fascinating descriptions of the places he visits and the men and women he meets. He paints a vivid picture of the immensity of the Dar al-Islam, and of its tremendous cultural and linguistic diversity. But paradoxically, also of a certain unity: Ibn Battuta, a learned Moroccan jurist, is received with honor by Muslim princes wherever he travels; he is appointed qadi (judge) of Delhi, and later of the Maldives. A learned Arab, well-versed in Qur’an, hadith and Muslim law, was particularly appreciated by rulers in non-Arab Muslim countries.
You stress the changing nature of Islam, its continual evolution between seventh-century Arabia and the world of the 21st century. Why is it important and necessary to insist on this?
JT: Islam, like any other religion, is in constant change. Muhammad saw himself as a prophet continuing the mission of other prophets before him (Abraham, Moses, Jesus and others); in no way did seek to found a new “religion” called “Islam”. It is about 60-70 years after his death that the Umayyad caliphs based in Damascus promote “Islam” to the status of imperial religion separate from and superior to Judaism and Christianity, partly in order to justify their hegemony over a huge empire in which Muslims were a small minority. Gradually, over the course of the following centuries, key elements of what will become essential to Islam emerge and evolve: the five pillars of the faith, the Sharia, the dhimmi system (in which non-Muslim subjects were granted protected but inferior status).
I insist on this because I am combatting the myth of an eternal, non-changing Islam founded by the prophet Muhammad. This myth is promulgated by Salafists, Wahabis and other fundamentalists who use it to further their own political agendas: their purported goal is to recreate an idealized society corresponding to that of Medina during the life of Muhammad. Paradoxically, the myth of eternal Islam is also propagated by the Islamophobic far right in Europe, the US and elsewhere: for them Islam is and always has been misogynist, violent, and obscurantist. My job as a historian is to counter this myth of eternal Islam, to show the diversity and complexity of 14 centuries of Islamic history.
The cover will be surprising to some readers. Who is the woman in the cover illustration? Why did you choose her?
JT: She is Rabia al-Adawiyya, a mystic who lived in Basra in Iraq in the eighth century, a poetess whose Arabic verses were quoted, copied and translated into various languages. She was one of the great founding figures of Sufism, and her biography (and especially legends about her) has inspired tales, novels, songs and films from Indonesia to Egypt to Turkey. The miniature on the cover is the work of an anonymous artist from the Mughal Empire, painted around 1725 (the full image can be found at ). The painter represents the Sufi saint according to the canons of beauty of Mughal India: large almond-shaped black eyes, long black hair, bare henna-tinted feet, red fingernail polish, pearl bracelets, necklace and earrings. The scene is idyllic: a green meadow on the banks of a river, with cultivated fields and a mosque in the background. The saint, decked out in a halo, lies on a blanket, prostrate in prayer. Her outstretched hands receive a piece of paper on which is written “God is enough for us: He is the best protector”: this formula, which Muslims often utter to ask for a benefit or to ward off evil, is a paraphrase of a passage from the Quran (Q 3:173). The painting is an image of spiritual peace, acceptance of God and trust in him, where the beauty of the world around us prefigures that of paradise.
This image illustrates both the unity and the diversity of Islam. It is from the North India in the 18th century, whose emperors of the Mughal dynasty were great patrons of artists and Muslim religious institutions, at the same time as they worked to create a modus vivendi with non-Muslims (Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and others). Mughal India was part of the Persian cultural universe, and this portrait is part of a very rich tradition of Persian miniature painting beginning in the 14th century, featuring sumptuous illustrations of secular and sacred themes, including the life of the prophet Muhammad—which shows, moreover, that there has not been any ban on human representation in Islam. We are far from the real historical figure of Rabia al-Adawiyya, said to be from a poor family and who according to certain legends was even a slave freed by her master who recognized her holiness. We are of course far, too, from the Arabia of Muhammad and his companions: this image puts us before the teeming diversity of Islam.
But at the same time, this image shows the unity of the Muslim world across centuries, languages and cultures. The text on the paper, as we have seen, is a passage from the Quran, a phrase often pronounced by Muslims from Arabia to India, and today as far away as China or California. Representing the Iraqi Rabia al-Adawiyya, a great figure in the history of Muslim spirituality, also shows the links across time and cultures. Certainly, the artist depicted her with the familiar features of a beautiful 18th-century Indian woman, rather than seeking historical realism, just as, at the same time, painters from northern Europe depicted Jesus, a Palestinian Jew of the first century, as a tall blond with blue eyes. Paradoxically, this anachronism brings the historical figure closer to the viewer: Rabia (or Jesus) is like us, very close. And perhaps above all, this image appeals to me because it allows us to go against certain stereotypes about Islam. When we hear talk about Islam, it is often to evoke male Arab figures. We hear about violence, jihad, legal constraints on how to dress, eat, live. This miniature gives us a completely different image of Islam: an image of peace and contemplation, appreciation of the beauty of the world and trust in God.
What do you hope that readers in 2025 will take away from your book?
JT: I hope first of all that the book will reach a variety of readers. Muslims who want to know more about the history of their religion. Other readers who may know little about Islam and are curious about it. For all of these readers, I hope to dispel a number of stereotypes. First of all, as I have already said, by showing the complexity and diversity of Islam, always changing yet grounded in its foundational texts. The rise of new forms of political Islam starting with the Iranian revolution, then the advent of Islamist terrorism starting in the 1990s, favored the parallel rise of an anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant extreme right in countries with Muslim immigrant populations. This period has also seen spirited debates between traditionalists and those who present themselves as reformers, a number of whom I discuss in the final chapters of my book: Egyptians Faraj Fouda, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and Gamal al-Banna; Mahmud Muhammad Taha from Sudan; Indonesians Harun Nasution and Nurcholish Madjid; Muhammad Arkoun and others in France; feminist imam Amina Wadud in the US. Various political parties in many European countries and elsewhere are playing on fears in order to conflate Islam, extremism and terrorism. Others, to better ward off the demons of extremism, affirm that Islam, a “religion of peace”, has nothing to do with religious fanaticism. Yet this assertion is naïve: various forms of Islam, from the most irenist to the most belligerent, have existed since the days of the prophet. Today’s struggle between various factions of Islam has been playing out for centuries. I hope that my book can contribute to better understanding Islam’s past in order to help build its future.
John Tolan is professor emeritus of history at the University of Nantes. His books include England’s Jews, Faces of Muhammad (91ĚŇÉ«), Saint Francis and the Sultan, and Saracens.
About the Author
John Tolan is professor emeritus of history at the University of Nantes. His books include England’s Jews, Faces of Muhammad (91ĚŇÉ«), Saint Francis and the Sultan, and Saracens.