Lost Islamic History: Reclaiming Muslim Civilisation from the Past

This is the clearest book I’ve ever read so far on the history of Islam. It is focused, it has a clear timeline, and it is very concise, with no distracting facts that are irrelevant with the narrative. It is detailed enough, but without being complicated.

As a result, we can easily follow the development of Islam since its birth in the 600s until now 1400 years later, spanning territory from Muslim Spain to the Middle East and Africa to India and South East Asia, complete with all the ideological debates, the spiritual struggles, and all the many political frictions and conquerings.

Indeed, it is a perfect book to understand the complete picture, before proceeding to other books with more in-depth topics such as the life of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslim Heroes, the Muslim Empires, Islam and Science, the interpretations of Al Quran, the validity of Hadiths, the theological debates between the Fiqh, Islamic fundamentalism and its terrorists, and so much more.

By the time I finish reading this book I have this great sense of clarity of what Islam is about, and why the many different beliefs, sects, organisations or customs – from the liberals to the moderates to the conservatives – behave the way they do, something that no other book on Islam have managed to summarise so far.

I am a history fan. More so, a fan of studying what shapes our various faiths and forms of worship; why we believe what we believe; ideologies prompted or inspired by our cultural queues, ancient political and economic forces, and sometimes, charismatic thinkers, teachers, and leaders. I have enjoyed studying the history of Christianity, Judaism, some Buddhism, Hinduism, and Daoism, but I had never found a good, thorough read on Islamic history. Now I have. I didn’t just want to know what happened and when, but why. What wars, politics, culture, traditions, honor codes, parochialism, and business negotiations came into play to form an ideological movement that became, in this case, Islam. This book answers those questions.

It is well organized and very well written. It is concise and clear. A perfectly enjoyable read! I will probably read it another two or three times. Proud to give this book 5 stars. Congrats and a huge thank you to the author!

This book, as the author states in the introduction, was written to fulfill a need that the author had for a single-volume Islamic history which could be taught to his students, many of whom were second-generation immigrants at te Darul Qasim school in Chicago. He wanted a book to connect his students with an Islamic past that gets very little coverage in American history curricula. In this, he succeeded. The book does a good job of covering everything from Mohammed’s birth to the Arab Spring, as well as various ideologies of Islam, aspects of jurisprudence, contributions to science, and many other Muslim contributions to the world.

My only complaint is that if you are looking for a serious history book, this won’t fit your needs. The history as told is somewhat whitewashed, and some of the less pride-inspiring aspects of the Muslim past are glossed over, as well as some of the more divisive events of the 20th century (Iranian Revolution, Palestinian Liberation Order, Hezbollah). In spite of this, the amount of anti-Muslim writing in the west and the void of unbiased Islamic history is so great that I can hardly fault the book’s slight superficiality. Historical nuance belongs to the nations that have time to catch a breath and reflect on the past, and the Muslim diaspora (the Ummah) has hardly had the chance in the face of rampant Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism in the West.

It is impossible to write a book about the history of Muslim peoples that is accurate, gives necessary information without name/date overload but still covers areas as far flung as Spain and China – and still make it short enough and interesting enough that youth will read it. However this book comes pretty close to doing all of that. Definitely the best book I’ve seen that could be used to teach Islamic history.

Lost Islamic History is one of the best history books I have read in the English language. I highly recommend this book and hope it will eventually become part of Muslim High Schools’ History syllabus.

It is a very important work outlining the most important highs and lows of Muslim history in a balanced manner.

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