ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the legacy of this civilization in contemporary Anglophone literature by South Asian writers of Muslim heritage. It considers how writers such as Tariq Ali, Agha Shahid Ali, Imtiaz Dharker, and Salman Rushdie do so by exploring Europe's suppressed narrative: that of an influential, tolerant, symbiotic Euro-Arab culture that flourished in Spain and which the Arabs called al-Andalus. A discussion of the Quintet is beyond the scope of the chapter, but the series includes two particularly rewarding novels, The Book of Saladin and A Sultan in Palermo, set in the twelfth century and describing a wider Muslim world related to the culture of Andalusia. Similarly, in the body of work discussed in this chapter, the focus on the intertwining of histories and cultures and the merging of Islamic and European influences, asserts but a normal, natural progression in the story of humankind.
