التاريخ
A shelf in the garden of Seerah & History
Athar travels fourteen centuries of Islamic history as one caravan route, station by station. This shelf holds the book behind it and the ones to read next: our own notes first, then a book for each era, then the classics written by Muslim historians themselves.
11 books, each with where to get it
فوائد
With our notes
Our chapter-by-chapter notes, in our own words, with every chapter linked to Athar and our other sites. Read a chapter of the book, then its note.
Our reading notes
by Firas Alkhateeb · Hurst, 2017
The whole story in one readable book, from Arabia before Islam to the twentieth century. Athar’s eras draw on it, and our notes take each of its twelve chapters in turn, with a timeline, a map and the details to read with care.
Its chapters in our notes
المحطات
A reading path
Athar’s twelve stations, each with the chapters of our Lost Islamic History notes that cover it and the book from this shelf to read next.
Our notes
Our notes
Read next
Read next
Our notes
Read next
Our notes
Read next
Our notes
Read next
Our notes
Read next
Read next
Our notes
Read next
Read next
Our notes
Read next
الرفّ
The shelf
Each book with a line on what it is, who it suits, anything worth knowing before you start, and the pages on Athar to read alongside it. How to Muslim isn’t paid by any publisher; the links go to each publisher’s own shop.
After Lost Islamic History, two more ways through the whole story: a lively one-volume history and a detailed classic in three volumes.
Tamim Ansary · PublicAffairs
World history told from the Muslim side, from the birth of Islam to our own century, showing how Muslims saw the story they were living through.
Read it with
Akbar Shah Najeebabadi · Darussalam, 3 volumes
A detailed history in three volumes and over 1,600 pages, written in Urdu by an Indian scholar in the early twentieth century and translated into English.
Read it with
One book for each of the eras below. Each is a well-regarded telling of its age in English, and each pairs with its era on Athar.
Jalal ad-Din as-Suyuti, translated by Abdassamad Clarke · Ta-Ha
The lives of Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthman and ‘Ali, from the fifteenth-century Tarikh al-Khulafa’: how they led, judged and lived.
Read it with
Jim Al-Khalili · Penguin Press
A physicist tells the story of science in Arabic, from the translators of Baghdad to al-Khwarizmi, Ibn al-Haytham and Ibn Sina.
Read it with
María Rosa Menocal · Little, Brown
Al-Andalus through its cities, poets and libraries, and how Muslims, Jews and Christians lived and worked side by side there.
Read it with
Amin Maalouf · Saqi
The Crusades told from the Arab chroniclers who lived through them, from the arrival of the Franks in 1096 to the fall of Acre in 1291.
Read it with
Michael A. Gomez · Princeton University Press
Early and medieval West Africa, from Ghana to Mali and Songhai, and the place of Islam and its scholars in those empires.
Read it with
Caroline Finkel · Basic Books
The Ottoman state from its beginnings around 1300 to its end in 1923, in one volume.
Read it with
Two classics written in the middle of the story itself, both in readable abridged translations.
Ibn Battutah, edited by Tim Mackintosh-Smith · Picador
The fourteenth-century traveller’s own account of nearly thirty years on the road, from Tangier to Makkah, India, China and Mali.
Read it with
Ibn Khaldun, translated by Franz Rosenthal · Princeton University Press, abridged
Written in 1377 as the introduction to his history: why dynasties rise and fall, and his idea of ‘asabiyyah, the bond that holds a people together.
المزيد
Keep going
Our sites to read alongside this shelf, and the next shelf along.