Islam: A New History from Muhammad to the Present

by John Tolan

A concise new narrative history of Islam that draws on the transformative insights of recent research to emphasize the diversity and dynamism of the tradition

Today’s Muslim world is in upheaval: legalists and mystics engage in intense debates, radical groups invoke Sharia, Muslim immigrants in the West face prejudice and discrimination, and Muslim feminists advocate new interpretations of the Koran. At the same time, Islam is mischaracterized as unitary and unchanging by people ranging from rightwing Western politicians claiming that Islam is incompatible with democracy to conservative Muslims dreaming of returning to the golden age of the prophet. Against this contentious backdrop, this book provides an essential and timely new history of the religion in all its astonishing richness and diversity as it has been practiced by Muslims around the world, from seventh-century Mecca to today.

Most popular histories of Islam continue to repeat conventional pietistic accounts. In contrast, John Tolan draws on decades of new historical research that has transformed knowledge of the origins and development of the Muslim faith. He shows how the youngest of the three great monotheisms arose in close contact with Jewish, Christian, and other religious traditions in a mixture of cultures, including Arab, Greek, Persian, and Turkish; how Islam spread across an enormous territory encompassing hundreds of languages and cultures; how Muslims have forged widely different beliefs and practices over fourteen centuries; and how Islamic history provides crucial context for understanding contemporary debates in the Muslim world.

At a time when much talk about Islam is filled with misunderstanding, stereotypes, and bias, this book provides a fresh and lucid portrait of the continuous and ongoing transformations of a religion of tremendous variety and complexity.

Genres: History, Religion, Islam, Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published May 13, 2025

About the author

John V. Tolan works on the history of religious and cultural relations between the Arab and Latin worlds in the Middle Ages. He received a BA in Classics from Yale, an MA and a PhD in History from the University of Chicago, and an Habilitation à diriger des recherches from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has taught and lectured in universities in North America, Europe Africa and the Middle East and is currently Professor of History at the University of Nantes. He currently is director of a major project funded by the European Research Council, “RELMIN: The legal status of religious minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean world (5th-15th centuries)” (www.relmin.eu).

Reviews

[Sophia Griemert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a really accessible and interesting overview of the history of islam (for someone who knew nothing going in)! I learned so much! I especially liked the discussion about interfaith relations throughout history. Some parts were a bit dense with names, but overall would recommend if you like history and religious studies :)

[Aron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I rarely don’t finish books but this one was so unappealing I stopped inside chapter 3, 20% in. I don’t want to waste my time and will seek alternatives to read. DNF

Having read Tom Holland’s take on the history of Islam, I wanted to find a book on Islam written by an historian who could perhaps provide a more nuanced less hyperbolic view. I wanted a more up to date book than say Bernard Lewis’ “The Arabs in History” which I read nearly fifty years ago.

I really tried to give this brand new book a chance but it is truly a bad read. The author notes he is basing this history on the most up-to-date and contemporary scholarship. However it seems either he doesn’t want to offend believers or he feels the need to be protective of Islam against contemporary critics, so he prioritizes the emic view of events, over the etic perspective (which he does present but in quite muted terms). To make matters worse, his explanations are telegraphic, without providing much context or elaboration around events. In the same cryptic vein, he throws out names, places and concepts in Arabic often without explaining them, assuming the reader is already familiar with these. This is absolutely the worst way to present history.

In the end this approach will satisfy neither the curious non-Muslim nor the pious believer and you end up with an awful hodgepodge.

I give it two stars and not one, because I am completely confident that the author knows what he is talking about and is a respected scholar and expert on this topic, and he conveys that in his writing. He just did a very poor job of presenting the subject to a broad and curious audience.

[Kalyan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is more of a short, objective history than a deep exploration. The author mentions other books that call for modernization and reinterpretation of Islam and touches on current issues, but he doesn’t take a position. There’s nothing like an in-your-face style here, not that I expected it in the first place.

I wouldn’t recommend it. You could get similar information from a good Wikipedia article. The book mostly just presents facts without much interpretation or opinion.

One thing that stood out to me was the explicit mention of the Bharatiya Janata Party, along with the statement that they have passed laws discriminating against Muslims and Christians. I emailed the author to ask what sources he used for this comment, so I’ll see if he responds.

Overall, I didn’t enjoy the book.

[Randall Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book and learning the grainy details of Islam's founding and evolution over time. Believe I probably knew most of the basics from previous study. Despite that, Tolan's deep dive was wide-ranging, informative, thought-provoking, and edifying.

The early chapters about the Prophet and the early formation of the Koran were fascinating. Like the Bible, Tolan reports that the Koran had a lot of early editors over time by people with different understandings and motives. They wanted the book to reflect their specific interpretations.

What the Koran came to be was not necessarily what it was originally, or originally meant to be. Those discrepancies/differences are a large source of the Sunni/Shia spilt that colors our perceptions of Islam to this day. That's a gross simplification but an easy example to illustrate the spectrum of differences among Muslims across the globe.

Tolan does a good job of identifying, and explaining to his Western readers, the various schools of Islamic thought and interpretation. In addition to Shia and Sunni, there are Ismailis, Wahhabis, Sufis, et al., that often complicate Western understanding of a very diverse and complicated religion.

Our cultural blinders in the West often lead us forget the diversity of Islamic beliefs, and falsely assume Islam is one monolithic religion with one set of basic beliefs held equally by adherents across the globe. We tend to focus on those elements we find most distasteful, e.g., jihad and Sharia law, without fully understanding exactly what those terms mean to the devout.

Probably not the volume for the casual reader. I had a lot of trouble keeping up with the diverse cast of characters and schools of thought in the early chapters. Keeping track of the Arabic names of the clerical and laical actors kept me flipping back to previous pages to keep them all straight. Realize that is my issue due to my cultural parochialism as an English speaking westerner. This didn't make the narrative any less comprehensive or illuminating, just harder for an old guy like me to keep track of the dramatis personae.

This, or some Cliff Notes version of this story, should be required reading for all of us in the West, especially those who cast aspersions upon an entire religion without fully comprehending, or trying to comprehend, its basics - let alone the diversity of thought and opinion with the third great monotheistic religion. This ignorance gets in the way of our understanding, as well as our acceptance of, adherents of this great religion. A good read for the curious, those interested in religious thought and history, the Middle East, and anyone wanting a better understanding of Islam than most other Western sources provide.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty solid narrative history. Not a thriller, necessarily, and not a popular history in that engagingly-readable sense we know, but an intelligent, measured, and paced story that digs into a lot of interesting crevices. There's a whole Ibn Battuta chapter, which I approve of on general principles, and he covers the world, literally, with chapters on African Muslim empires, a surprising (for me) take on how complex a lot of the armies were in various places at various times, and a real focus on interpretive multiplicity that brings in a lot more thinkers than I knew, which is really useful and educational. Excerpted a few bits for teaching, since he provides crisp short summaries of various positions on the hijab, attitudes toward jihad, the suspiciousness of many later supposed ahadith, many of them invented to justify Abbasid power, and helpful quick discussions of, for instance, what more recent research has shown about diversity in subject populations.

If there's a big theme, which I think a popular history would push harder, it's not just that there are "Islams" rather than Islam, and pretty much always have been, but that the interplay and fluidity of "Muslim" countries has always involved multi-religious populations, lots more doctrinal flexibility on all sides than you might expect, and a whole bunch of accommodations. Would be nice for him to explore how much of a change he sees recently and why, since the overall narrative does feel somewhat underpowered. But given the amount of material he covers and the cogency with which he takes the reader through political/interpretive hot spots, I found this useful, interesting much of the time, and valuably comprehensive. Not the zingiest read, but you can't win 'em all.

[Zaynab]

this book is 250 pages. flat.