This guide was created to accompany the Muslim Journeys Bridging Cultures Bookshelf exhibit and events during 2013-2014. They contents are not currently being updated, other than maintaining links. We hope you enjoy the information within!
The Ornament of the World: how Muslims, Jews, and Christians created a culture of tolerance in medieval Spain by 
The House of Wisdom: How Arabic science saved ancient knowledge and gave us the Renaissance by 
In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale by 
When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks who Created the 'Riches of the East' by 
Leo Africanus by "Centuries before the dawn of the modern age, the world was already a surprisingly interconnected place. Readings for this theme introduce a way of understanding the past in which Islam and the West are seen as products of a shared, cosmopolitan, and inextricably intertwined past. These books help envision the world of our ancestors, which was as complex and dynamically interconnected as the world we live in today.
Centuries before the dawn of the modern age—even before the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan—the world was already a surprisingly interconnected place. Braving the high seas and the desert sands, merchants peddled their wares from the Mediterranean to China. Scientists and scholars, drawn to the far corners of the world by a thirst for knowledge, traveled just as far, searching out their peers and sharing the latest ideas about the mysteries of nature. And missionaries and holy men, as they spread the good word of their respective faiths, plied the same roads—inevitably meeting one another, debating the merits of their divergent creeds, and taking inspiration from each other as they pondered the meaning of life and the nature of the divine.
All of the books in this list 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."
Developed by Giancarlo Casale, University of Minnesota.
Rethinking World History: essays on Europe, Islam, and world history by 
The Introduction of Arabic Philosophy into Europe by 