Islam in the West

Muslims have been part of European history since the eighth century, through the civilisation of al-Andalus in Iberia, the Arab and Norman periods in Sicily, the long Ottoman presence in the Balkans, and the migrations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In North America the presence begins with enslaved African Muslims and becomes a settled community in the modern period.

This collection gathers the articles that follow those histories, together with those on what passed between the Muslim world and Europe — the transmission of learning out of al-Andalus, and the convivencia of the Iberian centuries.

Al-Andalus has a collection of its own, which holds its rulers, cities and scholars in full; what sits here are the articles whose subject is the wider encounter rather than the Andalusi state.