Book Review: Minarets in the Mountains

Minarets in the Mountains by Tharik Hussain is published by Bradt Guides. It has been Longlisted for The Ballie Gifford prize for non-fiction.

This is a book about another Europe, one that is rarely heard from or seen. A Europe that is home to an indigenous Muslim population, that is too often forgotten, or worse, deliberately ignored.

In 2016, Londoner Tharik Hussain set off for the western Balkans along with his wife and two young daughters. Over the course of several weeks, they travelled through Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro. Each of the countries is home to sizeable Muslim populations – communities that were first established centuries ago, during the reign of the Ottomans.

Since the decline and eventual collapse of the Ottoman empire in the region, the subsequent emergence of nation states and a Christian resurgence in the 19th century, some of these Muslim communities faced increasing hostility and uncertain futures. Others saw their heritage threatened by secularisation and communism. Despite periods of violence, the worst of which saw ethnic cleansing and the attempted erasure of an entire heritage, the Muslim culture and legacy of Europe, still lives on today.

The author visits historic mosques and old bridges, Sufi lodges and Ottoman hammams, all the while seamlessly weaving in tales of sultans and imperial architects. Tharik’s literary companion for his journey, is the Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi, who wrote his own travel account while visiting the Balkans in the 17th century. Tharik follows in his footsteps, often visiting the same sites as Çelebi, thereby providing the reader with a perspective from the past, when the Balkans were very much a part of the Ottoman empire.  He visits historic Muslim towns in the mountains, long forgotten or barely known by most Muslims today.

In Western Europe, any mention of the Balkans most likely dredges up images of conflict. The Bosnian war in the 1990’s and the subsequent ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims by Serbian forces, saw the deaths of thousands of Bosnians- a truly immeasurable loss. While reflecting on the tragedy during his visit to the country, Tharik also highlights the cultural achievements and historic legacy that that survives today – something that often goes unnoticed in the long shadow cast by war.  

As a reader (and history buff), the most eye-opening chapters were those on Serbia; I was surprised to learn that not only does Muslim heritage still survive in the country, but so too do sizeable Muslim communities. Tharik was surprised too: “Pork? Hmph. No pork. Novi Pazar Muslim town!” the pizza maker replied when asked about if the sausage pizza was halal. Novi Pazar is an Ottoman town that was established in the 15th century, the same year as Sarajevo in neighbouring Bosnia – and by same individual, Isa-Beg Ishaovic, then governor of Bosnia. “…like Bosnia’s capital city, Novi Pazar is very much a Muslim town with over eighty per cent of the urban population professing the faith, making the Serbian town more Muslim than some ‘Muslim’ countries.” After collapse of Yugoslavia in 90s, it became part of modern day Serbia. 

Guided by two young local boys, Tharik visits an Ottoman hamman, and two historic mosques in the town. The first, the Arap Mosque was built in 1528, while the second, a 16th century building, was designed by Ottoman architect Muslihudin Abdulgani. 

While walking through the main shopping street in the town, Tharik reflects that his literary companion Evliya “would’ve noted every single one of those trades as he walked down this very street all those years ago. He kept a detailed inventory of all the trades, buildings, monuments and shrines in any place he visited- to the point of tedium…It felt amazing to be literally walking in the great Ottoman’s footsteps along a road that had probably changed very little since his time.” 

Here, as with elsewhere on the journey, Tharik and his family encountered the legendary generosity of Balkan Muslims towards travellers like themselves, when a vendor refused to take money for his daughter’s candy floss.

Minarets in the Mountains is a travel narrative, but it is also a book about the author himself. Bangladesh born Tharik grew up in 1980’s East London, where he faced his own challenges as an immigrant during a time in which racism and xenophobia was on the rise. The book explores the historic roots of Islamophobia in Europe, as the author grapples with his multi-faceted identity, and considers where he and his mixed race Muslim family (Tharik’s wife, Tamara, is English), fit into modern Europe. In this context, visiting indigenous Muslim communities, who are a part of Europe’s very fabric, becomes more pertinent. 

I first met Tharik a year or so before he set off on his Balkans journey. Not your typical Insta-traveller (a ‘job’ role that was then still in its infancy), Tharik struck me as a ‘proper’ travel writer and someone who meticulously researched the locations he was visiting. He was driven and passionate, and understood the need for Muslims to tell their own stories. 

As Tharik himself notes, English speaking travel writers who have visited and written about the Balkans in recent times, have tended to leave out any mention of Muslim communities or the Muslim heritage of the region. Writers who have mentioned them, particularly those writing during a period of European colonisation, have done so through a lens of orientalism, unable to hide their own sense of cultural and evolutionary superiority (hence, as Tharik notes, American writer Rose Wilder Lane claims in 1921, that Albanians are “living still in the childhood of the Aryan race,” whilst she is a “daughter of a century that is, to them, in the far and unknown future.”).

Minarets in the Mountains is the first English travel narrative to explore indigenous Muslim Europe in the 21st century- and the first to do so through the eyes of a Muslim writer. It should not be significant that this is a book by a Muslim writer, but in an industry still dominated by White voices, and White perspectives, it is significant – and something worth celebrating. While modern travel literature has moved on from the stark racist language of the colonial period, it cannot be denied that in the works of even the most well intentioned travel writers, the vestiges of orientalist writing are often still apparent, with local people in the countries being written about routinely ‘othered’ through language. That element is noticeably and refreshingly absent in Tharik’s writing.

And even without all that, Minarets in the Mountains is a genuinely entertaining and readable book, and like the best books of this genre, it seamlessly combines the writer’s personal travel narrative with a historical perspective, allowing the reader to travel through both time and space.