Alan Mikhail

“To think beyond the familiar narratives handed down to us by generations of historians is to see that Columbus’s life simply cannot be understood without taking Islam into account.”
― Alan Mikhail, God's Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World

“GOD’S SHADOW THUS SERVES as a revisionist account, providing a new and more holistic picture of the last five centuries, and demonstrating Islam’s constituent role in forming some of the most fundamental aspects of the history of Europe, the Americas, and the United States. If we do not place Islam at the center of our grasp of world history, we will never understand why Moor-slayers are memorialized on the Texas–Mexico border or, more generally, why we have blindly, and repeatedly, narrated histories that miss major features of our shared past. As we chronicle Selim and his age, a bold new world history emerges, one that overturns shibboleths that have held sway for a millennium. Whether politicians, pundits, and traditional historians like it or not, the world we inhabit is very much an Ottoman one. This is a story only Selim can tell.”
― Alan Mikhail, God's Shadow: The Ottoman Sultan Who Shaped the Modern World