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

Dec 15, 2025

John Tolan, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Nantes, delves into his latest work, which offers a fresh narrative of Islam's complex history. He challenges common misconceptions and highlights the religion’s inherent diversity, from Sufism to legalism. Tolan discusses the historical evolution of Islamic practices, the interplay of cultures from early Mecca to contemporary debates, and how figures like Rabia al-Adawiyya symbolize this richness. He also critiques Arab nationalism's impact on modern movements and anticipates a future filled with transformative possibilities.

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INSIGHT

Islam Evolved Over Centuries

Early Islamic identity formed gradually over the first centuries, not instantly at Muhammad's death.
Umayyad policies shaped symbols and hierarchies that defined Muslims versus non-Muslims.

INSIGHT

Plural Ways Of Being Muslim

Islam has always contained multiple legitimate ways of understanding belief and practice.
Legalistic, mystical, and political readings have coexisted and often clashed across time and regions.

ANECDOTE

Why Rabia Graces The Cover

Tolan chose Rabia al-Adawiya for the cover to surprise readers and highlight diversity and continuity in Islam.
The 18th-century Mughal image links an Iraqi Sufi saint to global Muslim devotion across centuries.

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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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