…Explore this theme of ‘connected histories,’ a new way of understanding the past in which Islam and the West, far from being locked in an endless ‘clash of civilizations,’ are seen instead as products of this cosmopolitan and inextricably intertwined history. By highlighting the intellectual inheritance shared by Islam and the West, their mutual bonds of monotheism, and the surprising intensity of their cultural and commercial interaction, as well as the individual experiences of the many merchants, missionaries, and other adventurers who journeyed ‘to the other shore,’ these books all chart a path to a new vision of the world of our ancestors, a world that was as remarkably complex and dynamically interconnected as the one we live in today."
Connected Histories was developed by Giancarlo Casale, who holds a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, and is currently associate professor of the history of the Islamic World at the University of Minnesota.