Over the past few decades, traditional narratives of European history and archaeology have been called into question, and the traditional evolutionary picture of European civilisation is progressively being replaced by a more complex and nuanced approach to the past. Yet, the presence of Muslim-ruled societies in the European continent is still seen as an uncomfortable parenthesis; an interruption of ‘natural’ historical developments. The presence of Islamicate culture in Europe is often approached from a perspective that distinctly emphasises its ‘otherness’. The time is ripe for a reassessment of the role played by Islamicate societies in European history, and archaeology must assume a leading part in this process. In this introductory paper, we ask: what is the future of Islamicate archaeology in Europe, and what should our role be in shaping this?

The discipline of archaeology has a long history of remaining silent about the political, in the name of objectivity. In spite of repeated pleas for us to engage more meaningfully with public dialogues that use our evidence, the majority of academic archaeologists remain wary of doing so, lest we face accusations of bias. Yet the perceived neutral ‘backdrop’ to European archaeology serves a particular agenda around what Europe is, and who should be included in (and excluded from) it. In an idea of Europe that has been constructed largely in opposition to an ‘Islamic East’, this means that Islamicate archaeology and cultural heritage must always be framed as Other. In this scenario, the ‘silent violence’ of academics is in fact deeply political, as it contributes to the maintenance of a status quo that has little to do with past realities, and obscures their true complexity, impoverishing our understanding of the past itself, and diluting its relevance to the present day.

The present chapter addresses the evolution of the archaeology of al-Andalus within the framework of broader historiographical and political trends. It is argued that the political setting in which the discipline crystallised and developed has had a longlasting effect on the academic and theoretical structure of the study of the archaeology of medieval Iberia in general, and that of al-Andalus in particular. The need to adapt to an overwhelming national narrative has resulted in a discipline that, to a large extent, follows the discursive guidelines set from other fields (Arabism, Art History, Anthropology, History, etc.) without having a clear voice of its own. While acting as an auxiliary to these other disciplines, Andalusi archaeology has formulated few truly archaeological questions. Some exceptions to this general situation are also examined, and their potential to put Andalusi archaeology in a new footing is assessed.

The present chapter has a two-fold aim: to discuss, in archaeological and historical terms, how gender can be performed and enacted in Islamicate societies; and to put the focus on women and their position within these societies. The study of women in al-Andalus is inlaid with multi-layered signifiers that influence gender performance beyond religion, including ethnicity, or coexistence with non-Muslim populations. In trying to go beyond the image of Islamicate women as ‘Other’, this chapter will study how hegemonies of femininity were created and encoded, taking a closer look onto domestic spaces, as well as the written sources.

Islamic ceramics are often studied as objects of aesthetic value, with texts and elite material culture privileging views of acculturation and political subjugation. Here we redress the balance, allowing everyday pottery to shine, through an appreciation of its technology, exchange and consumption. This offers insight into the lives of the ordinary inhabitants of Sicily, during the transition from Byzantine to Islamic rule. Such an approach has increased relevance with recent concerns over migration in the Mediterranean. By investigating cultural links, by prioritising human lives over an artefact’s value or otherness, we suggest an ethical approach to cultural contact and change.

Recent scholarship in Islamic art and architecture has seen a growing interest in art from the borderlands – including the borders of empires, peoples, religions and practices. In this context, the art made by Muslim populations in medieval, post-Islamic Spain should be front and centre, as prime examples of Islamic art from the borders. Instead, the art of Muslims from medieval Christian Spain has remained in relative obscurity, languishing under the antiquated classifications of ‘Hispano-Moresque’ and mudéjar. This paper will examine the art of one of these border communities – the ceramics made in Paterna near Valencia in the 14th century – in a focused study of their production, distribution, excavation and display. It will consider how encounters with the material culture of these border communities have been inflected by the politics of excavation, museum display and academic scholarship and question whether the porous borders implicit in the term Islamicate might offer a more fitting classification than mudéjar or ‘Hispano-Moresque’.

The Nasrid kingdom of Granada was the last Islam-ruled territory in the Iberian Peninsula. It occupied a region in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula between the 13th and 15th centuries. Archaeological analysis of the Nasrid Kingdom is a relatively recent phenomenon, although substantial progress has been made in recent years. The study of this kingdom by archaeological methods has greatly contributed to its historical reconstruction. The present paper aims to examine and understand the territorial projection and implications of political power at all levels in order to analyse the changes undergone by this Late Medieval Islamicate society and their archaeological expression. I intend to show that archaeology is well-poised to reconstruct a historical period and the role played in it by political power, a subject traditionally regarded as the exclusive abode of historians working with the written record. A new open and holistic approach to archaeology presents the material projection of different power structures, including no only political power, but also other economic and social manifestations.

The Muslim occupation of Menorca lasted approximately four centuries and had a deep, if little known, impact on the island. Muslim heritage may be found in material culture, artefacts and sites, as well as in surviving modern toponyms. The landscape was also heavily transformed, not only by the reoccupation of prehistoric sites but also the cultivation of new land and the introduction of new agricultural crops. The imprint of these centuries is still very much present on the island, but has attracted little archaeological or historiographical attention. Only in the past couple of decades has there been some interest in the medieval Andalusi past of Menorca. Scattered teams have investigated irrigation systems, land cultivation, domestic spaces and necropolis. Archaeological excavation has yielded substantial evidence, and a new picture of the almost four centuries of Arab influence can now begin to be drawn.

The Ottoman empire left a deep imprint in the social, cultural, economic and political life of the Balkan peninsula. The Balkan states, however, never fully accepted the Ottoman heritage as their own. De-Ottomanization became an essential factor of nation and country building in the Balkans. An integral part of this process was the destruction of Ottoman architecture. Greek Macedonia ceased to be part of the Ottoman Empire and was incorporated into the Greek state in 1912-13. In Greek Macedonia a policy of deOttomanization was also implemented. This article concerns the management of the Ottoman/Islamic architectural heritage in the region from its annexation to the Greek state, to the present. I have attempted to describe how the Ottoman monuments were used by public and private agents and if they were destroyed or preserved. Regarding those preserved I am discussing their uses in the past and their present condition. During one century of Greek rule the greatest part of the Ottoman architectural heritage was destroyed. After the removal of the Ottoman buildings the urban and rural landscapes of the area were altered, material evidence of otherness were erased and Macedonia was finally Hellenized.

The transition from a predominantly Christian to an Ottoman Islamic cultural system in Bosnia in the late 15th century led to the emergence of different funerary styles. The process of conversion to Islam among the local population, which occurred in several waves after the fall in 867 H/ 1463 CE, left lasting effects on local death culture, funerary markers, and commemorative sensibilities. This change in the religious landscape paved the way to new modes of marking death and remembering the ancestors. This paper focuses on the funerary images and texts of the early period between the late 15th and late 17th centuries and examines the role of gravestones and other burial markers for a better understanding of the complex cultural shifts and exchange that unfolded between Bosnian Christians (Orthodox and Catholic) and Muslims. The funerary objects under consideration are treated as dynamic cultural spaces that inscribe memory, history, and heritage in addition to being texts that display, in image and word, partial biographical information about the dead. They tell a different story from the official documents and conventional history books, according to which the administrative grouping of the religious communities/millets kept clear lines of separation in the Ottoman Balkans. Most notably, the funerary texts reflect an important process of transculturation, which entailed a dynamic interaction across the religious divide whereby all groups underwent an uneven acquisition and loss of elements of their funerary culture. In unpacking the role that gravestones played in such historical and cultural permutations, the article advocates the importance of considering the gravestones’ relevance in understanding the European Islamicate heritage as a product of interactive spaces of cultural contact and exchange, which severely undermines the Christian/Muslim dichotomy common to the modern European understanding of the self.

The city of Bolgar was active between the 10th and the 15th centuries, acting as the capital of the Golden Horde Empire between the second half of the 13th and the early 14th centuries. The population of the city was multi-ethnic and multi-confessional, but the Islamic component was dominant. The city comprised wooden houses and approximately 20 public stone and brick buildings (mosques, baths, mausoleums). During the excavations of 1989-1990 and 2011-2016, the remains of a stone-and-brick central bazaar, similar to Middle-Eastern examples, occupied by merchants who specialised in luxury goods (including textiles from Flanders and China), were investigated. The bazaar was built in the 1350’s and collapsed after a fire in the 1360s-1370s.

Islam arrived in the Caspian Steppe from the territories of the Caliphate in the 9th-10th centuries CE. Its influence and material culture have been found throughout Eastern Europe and even in Scandinavia. This cultural transmission of goods and people was often facilitated by the nomadic communities of the Eurasian Steppe, such as the Khazars, Oghuz, and Bulghars, who themselves began converting to Islam. Nomadic Islam however is generally poorly understood. This chapter demonstrates that archaeological research is in a unique position to provide evidence for the Islamization of nomadic people and for the pluralistic practices that followed this process.

This chapter critically surveys the exhibition of Islamic material and visual culture in museums of Europe from Medieval times to the present.2 Until the late 20th century, the terms ‘Islamic’ and ‘Muslim’ were used interchangeably in museums as umbrella taxonomies attached to art, architecture and material culture manufactured in Muslim-dominant countries, mentally situated outside of Europe and constructed as inherently alien to its cultural production. In this period, since the 1970s, transformations in the social sciences and new consideration for cultural diversity, have led to a reconsideration of this cultural dichotomy, especially in art museums, with curators and archaeologists considering Islamic material culture and archaeological remains as intra-European heritage, and, more recently, as part and parcel of ‘national heritage’, in an attempt to mitigate Islamophobia. This re-evaluation is happening hand-in-hand with a surge of Muslim-led museum projects. I argue that in these museums, Islamic collections are exhibited as living diasporic heritage, revealing new transcultural spaces of contact which pushes against previous understandings of the category ‘Islamic’ in museums.

This paper argues that the history and archaeology of Muslims in Europe has often been caught between the urge to exclude Muslims from nationalist historiography and the wish to generate apologetic histories that celebrate this history. I advocate use of Marshall Hodgson’s coinage ‘Islamicate’ as a starting point of differentiating for differentiating between forms cultural change that result of textual traditions that are applied in practice and those that stem from the dissemination of practices within the shared networks of Muslim polities.