Worlds of Islam

A Global History

James McDougall

$85

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Allen Lane
21 April 2026

General & world history; Religion & beliefs; History of religion; Islam; Islamic studies

An expansive history of Islam, tracing the 1400-year evolution of a diverse community of faith and its place in the modern world

From its birth in seventh-century Arabia, Islam has been a faith on the move.

In Worlds of Islam, James McDougall explores its origins and transformations from Late Antiquity to the digital age.

Over the span of a thousand years, armies, missionaries, and merchants carried it to the edges of Europe, the coasts of Southeast Asia, and the remote interior of China. By the nineteenth century, Islam encompassed a world of great diversity, from Muslim-ruled empires to nations where Muslims lived out their faith among many others. In the twentieth century, while monarchs in the Gulf asserted dynastic privilege and fundamentalists in Egypt and Pakistan preached social morality, revolutionaries from Algeria to Indonesia fought for national self-determination, and activists in North America and Europe campaigned for civil liberties and social justice.

As empires fell and new superpowers rose, Muslims proved to be as adaptable and dynamic as modernity itself. Sweeping and authoritative, Worlds of Islam narrates the epic story of how Muslims emerged as a community, built empires, traversed the globe, came to number in the billions, and became modern.

By: James McDougall
Imprint: Allen Lane
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 40mm
Weight: 750g
ISBN: 9780241528488
ISBN 10: 0241528488
Pages: 608
Publication Date: 21 April 2026
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

James McDougall has taught history at Princeton; the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; and Oxford, where he has been a Fellow of Trinity College since 2009, and where from 2018 to 2025 he was Professor of Modern and Contemporary History. The author of two previous books, his writing has appeared in The Guardian, Foreign Affairs, and The New Statesman.