CRUCIBLE OF LIGHT

This ambitious and gripping new history shows the crucial role played by Islamic civilisation in shaping Europe as we know it today; it challenges the idea that the civilisations of Islam and Europe are alien to each other by showing how profoundly interrelated they really are.

Appealing to readers of David Abulafia, Peter Frankopan and Tom Holland, this is the first comprehensive history (spanning thirteen centuries!) of the contested but fruitful relations between the Muslims and Christians of Europe, and the first to focus on the crucial role played by Islamic civilisation in shaping and transforming modern Europe.

The book opens with the Moorish invasion of Spain, and takes us right to the present day, taking in (among other things) the conquest and reconquest of Spain over several centuries, the meteoric rise of Arabo-Norman Sicily, the Ottoman renaissance of the 16th to 18th centuries, the ebb and flow of Balkan history and the fate of contested islands like Cyprus and Malta, with their very different outcomes.

This scale of history can only be done via snapshots and turning points and focus on individual stories and key places. Above all by tracking themes. Winding through this story are of course epic battles and sieges, with Jihad and Crusade mirroring each other; but also periods of extraordinary collaboration and sharing: Europe owing its initial rediscovery of classical learning and science via the vast libraries in Spain, scoured for enlightenment by Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars alike. Moorish architecture and gardens and geometric design, not to mention the life of the harem, eventually feed into the insatiable appetite for Orientalism in the 19th century, which itself was the sequel to an earlier obsession for oriental goods in the 16th and 17th century courts. In between there are patterns of hidden faiths and swapped identities as people or buildings adapt to clampdown or change sides. The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul at one end of the Mediterranean and the Great Mosque in Cordoba, with its huge cathedral plonked into the middle of it, bookend the kinds of religious inversions we find in this story. Travel and exchange of people, ideas and merchandise are an undercurrent throughout, (arriving inevitably in Venice in its golden age), cutting across opposite tides of rivalry, intolerance and military confrontation. It's a magnificent story.

The author, Elizabeth Drayson, is an expert in Spanish history at the University of Cambridge and a central figure in a major European-wide research project to chart the legacy of Islam in eastern Europe in the 20th century. The author of THE MOOR'S LAST STAND, THE LEAD BOOKS OF GRANADA and THE KING AND THE WHORE, Drayson has also produced the first translation and edition of Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor to appear in England. Drayson's impeccable credentials and admired writing skills show that she is the right person for this unique undertaking.

Islam has been central to European history and culture, but only one side of the story that of conflict has been widely commemorated. Surprisingly few people are aware of how much Europe owes to its Islamic heritage except via pockets of tourism, and this book aims to correct that while exploring the endless complexities that this relationship throws up. At a time when Islam is so narrowly identified with terrorism and migration in Europe, it is an exciting and necessary corrective.