John Tolan, "Islam: A New History from Muhammad to the Present" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Dec 16, 2025

John Tolan, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Nantes and author of a groundbreaking work on Islamic history, explores the rich tapestry of Islam from its origins to today. He discusses the complexities of Muslim identities shaped by Sufism, legalism, and political currents. Tolan highlights the historical interplay between Muslims and Christians, the mischaracterization of Islam, and offers insights into Islam's future amid modern challenges. His analysis sheds light on the diverse and evolving nature of this faith across cultures.

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INSIGHT

Rethinking Islam's Origins

Early Islamic sources are late and mixed, so historians must prioritize the Quran and recent scholarship to reconstruct origins.
John Tolan emphasizes Fred Donner's approach that 'believers' in the Quran likely included Jews and Christians alongside future Muslims.

INSIGHT

Islamic Institutions Evolved Politically

Key Islamic symbols and social hierarchies were shaped under the Umayyads as political tools across a religiously mixed empire.
Tolan argues that practices like the Shahada and communal distinctions evolved gradually in the Umayyad and Abbasid periods.

ADVICE

Declare Your Perspective Upfront

Be transparent about your standpoint when writing on another tradition and acknowledge limitations.
Tolan models this by declaring he is not Muslim or a theologian and focuses on lived history, not doctrinal definition.

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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 has been experiencing 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 right-wing 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 a 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.

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