Medievalism Re-oriented

This chapter examines interfaith encounter and conflict in the Islam Quintet, a suite of historical novels written between 1992 and 2010 by British-Pakistani author and commentator Tariq Ali. It explores the novels’ engagement with ‘Clash of Civilisations’ ideologies and with neocolonial politics, particularly in the three novels that are set in medieval Islamicate contexts shaped by interfaith and intercultural encounters: Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, set in fifteenth-century al-Andalus, A Sultan in Palermo, set in twelfth-century Sicily, and The Book of Saladin, set in Crusade-era Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. The chapter argues that the novels develop a tension between convivencia, interfaith cohabitation achieved under Arab governance, and occupation, a hostile monocultural regime imposed under Christian rule. The chapter does not recuperate the Islamicate world into Western chronologies; rather, it complicates Western understandings of ‘the medieval’ by exploring how these novels highlight the linked destinies of Western and Islamic societies.