Tharik Hussain in conversation with Mustafa Ahsan

Muslim Europe

A Journey in Search a Fourteen Hundred Year History

Tharik Hussain is an award-winning author, historian and public interpreter of Europe’s interconnected histories. Through an interdisciplinary practice that combines historical research, travel writing, heritage interpretation and public engagement, his work reveals the overlooked cultural exchanges, movements and encounters that have shaped societies across Europe and beyond.

Internationally recognised for his expertise in Muslim heritage and its place within Europe’s wider historical story, his work challenges inherited narratives by demonstrating that Europe’s past is richer, more interconnected and more culturally diverse than conventional histories suggest. Whether writing books, advising museums, developing heritage projects or leading public conversations, he encourages audiences to encounter familiar places through new historical perspectives.

His debut book, Minarets in the Mountains, was longlisted for the biggest prize in non-fiction, the Baillie Gifford, shortlisted for the Stanford Travel Awards and won the Adele Evans Award.  

About Muslim Europe

This revelatory history explores the ancient roots of Muslim Europe, tracing its origins 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.

Praise for Muslim Europe

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

Times Literary Supplement

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

The Telegraph

Uncovers a world of which few are fully aware

Colin Thubron

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

William Dalrymple

About Mustafa Ahsan

Mustafa is the co-founder of Islamic Travels where he is responsible for new business development, partner relations and itinerary optimisation. The company was established more than 13 years ago with the aim of providing holistic travel experiences guided by Islamic principles. In recent years they have organised trips to destinations as diverse as Bosnia, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Peru and Tanzania.

Mustafa holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering and a master’s in Petroleum Engineering from Imperial College London. He has a strong interest in languages, geopolitics and Islamic history, and has been fortunate enough to travel to over 80 countries.