“Alan Mikhail is a very original and inventive historian.”
—Orhan Pamuk, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Winner, Gold Medal in World History, Independent Publisher Book Awards
Finalist, Connecticut Book Award
Longlisted, Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
Editors’ Choice, New York Times Book Review
2020 Books of the Year, Times Literary Supplement, Publishers Weekly, History Today, & Glamour
Best Books of August 2020, Amazon & Book Browse
Books of the Week, Publishers Weekly, The Week, & the Humboldt Foundation
“The highest praise for a history book is that it makes you think about things in a new way.” —Ian Morris, New York Times Book Review
“Captivating. . . . A welcome and important corrective, Mikhail’s recalibration of the modern era is ambitious and provocative. . . . Mikhail writes authoritatively, as one would expect from so accomplished a historian. He writes accessibly and vividly, too, which means that the book, while scholarly, is readable, enjoyable, and relatable. . . . A terrific guide to the Ottomans during a period of profound change.” —Peter Frankopan, Air Mail
“Seeing the Ottoman Empire as pivotal in shaping the Western world, this history casts developments such as the Reconquista, the Inquisition, the Reformation, and exploration of the New World as responses to rising Islamic power. . . . European rulers obsessively feared Muslim expansion; Mikhail traces the influence of this paranoia on the Islamophobia that continues to inform American politics.” —The New Yorker
“Mikhail’s ambitions, like those of his subject, are bold, and in God’s Shadow he has given us three or four books in one. At the centre is a fast-paced biography of its subject whose killing of his siblings, the alleged murder of his father and battlefield exploits makes the work highly readable.” —Mark Mazower, Financial Times
“Mikhail draws on sources in several languages to tell this gripping story; he wields a lucid and fast-moving prose, and his analysis is full of surprises. For like a skilled janissary—one of those elite troops that made Ottoman armies so formidable in the field—Mr. Mikhail has more than one string to his bow. He sets Selim’s accomplishments within an exceedingly wide context. . . . Mr. Mikhail makes his case convincingly.” —Eric Ormsby, Wall Street Journal
Long neglected in world history, the Ottoman Empire was a hub of intellectual fervor, geopolitical power, and enlightened pluralistic rule. At the height of their authority in the sixteenth century, the Ottomans, with extraordinary military dominance and unparalleled monopolies over trade routes, controlled more territory and ruled over more people than any world power, forcing Europeans out of the Mediterranean and to the New World.
Yet, despite its towering influence and centrality to the rise of our modern world, the Ottoman Empire’s history has been distorted in the West for centuries. Aware of this misrepresentation and often suppression, Alan Mikhail presents a vitally needed recasting of Ottoman history, retelling the story of the Ottoman conquest of the world through the dramatic biography of Sultan Selim I (1470-1520).
Born to a concubine, and the fourth of his sultan father’s ten sons, Selim was never meant to inherit the throne. With personal charisma and military prowess—as well as the guidance of his remarkably gifted mother Gülbahar—Selim claimed power over the empire in 1512 and, through ruthless ambition, nearly tripled the territory under Ottoman control, building a governing structure that lasted into the twentieth century. At the same time, Selim—known by his subjects as “God’s Shadow on Earth”—fostered religious diversity, welcoming Jews among other minority populations into the empire; encouraged learning and philosophy; and penned his own verse.
Drawing on previously unexamined sources from multiple languages, and with original maps and stunning illustrations, Mikhail’s game-changing account “challenges readers to recalibrate their sense of history” (Leslie Peirce), adroitly using Selim’s life to upend prevailing shibboleths about Islamic history and jingoistic “rise of the West” theories that have held sway for decades. Whether recasting Christopher Columbus’s voyages to the “Americas” as a bumbling attempt to slay Muslims or showing how the Ottomans allowed slaves to become the elite of society while Christian states at the very same time waged the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, God’s Shadow radically reshapes our understanding of the importance of Selim’s Ottoman Empire in the history of the modern world.
“[Mikhail] masterfully juxtaposes the triumphs of Selim I’s reign with events taking place elsewhere in the rapidly globalizing world of the early sixteenth century. . . . God’s Shadow is a revisionist history in the best sense of the term. It offers readers a distinct prism through which to view a familiar and, at times, unfamiliar chronicle of events. . . . For readers unfamiliar with pre-modern Middle Eastern history, God’s Shadow will be an excellent starting point. . . . Mikhail’s erudition is global in scope, enabling him to make concrete connections between contemporaneous events in the West and the Middle East.” ―The New Criterion
“You end up seeing world history from a completely different perspective. . . . I couldn’t put it down. It was like Pringles potato chips.” —John McWhorter, Lexicon Valley Podcast
“Global history with a compellingly readable narrative that challenges settled views of how the past 500 years can be explained as ‘the rise of the West’. What inspired western European nations to begin the explorations that initiated the Age of Discovery? Why did Columbus sail westward into the Atlantic in 1492, a year that changed the world? What goaded Martin Luther into proclaiming his ‘Ninety-Five Theses’ that sparked the Protestant Reformation? Mikhail’s answer is Islam and the Ottoman Empire, which together posed an existential threat to Christian Europe. . . . Mikhail convincingly puts the Ottomans at the centre of modern global history.” —Gerald MacLean, Times Literary Supplement
“Gripping biography.” —The Times
“Mikhail. . . makes it his mission to demonstrate how this utterly compelling leader helped define his age, bending the world to his will. And he succeeds with a flourish. . . . Mikhail is right to argue that Ridaniya ‘changed the world’. Henceforth Selim stood at the very pinnacle of Muslim power, with Istanbul the bona fide capital of Islam. . . . Mikhail offers a refreshingly Ottoman-centric picture of the 15th- and 16th-century Mediterranean.” —Justin Marozzi, The Spectator
“I just read Alan Mikhail’s God’s Shadow, which is about Sultan Selim. That is an interesting book.” —Mo Willems, Boston Globe
“Refreshingly readable history. . . that offers a new world view.” —Diana Darke, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year
“With scrupulous scholarship and a storyteller’s spirit. . . . Mikhail broadens his account to defy the usual concentration that’s so tempting when recounting Selim’s turbulent life. God’s Shadow gives us far more than simply Selim the warrior, mercilessly climbing to power and then mercilessly retaining it. . . . This portrait of Selim and the world he did so much to shape feels like a great gust of fresh air in off the Bosphorus. It’s no hagiography itself—the Selim in these pages is, among other things, a brute and a slave-trader—and it all feels bracingly real.” —The Daily Star
“If you want a ticket out of 2020, may I recommend this biography of bloodthirsty Ottoman Sultan Selim I (1470–1520)?” —Sandi Tan, Glamour
“Over more than 600 years, from the mid-1300s CE, the Ottoman Empire grew to sprawl across three continents, dominating southeastern Europe, the Middle East and much of North Africa. . . . [Mikhail] has written an eye-opening account of its impacts on global history, which turn out to be numerous, deep, and not often considered, especially in the West.” —Tom Verde, AramcoWorld
“An impressive revisionist history. . . . Mikhail draws on world-spanning source material to demonstrate the enormous, long-felt influence of the Islamic empire. . . . In sharply drawn chapters, many of which contain enough ideas for a separate book, Mikhail restores the Ottoman Empire to its rightful place as a ‘fulcrum’ of global power. . . . A massively ambitious study, largely accessible and percolating with ideas for further study.” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred)
“Readers gain insight into the incredible influence of the Ottoman civilization at the dawn of modern history. But Mikhail goes even further, placing Ottoman civilization in its global context. He shows that it is no accident that Columbus’s 1492 voyage coincides with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, or that Martin Luther could use the Sultan’s long shadow as fuel against the Pope. Global economics and politics are well illuminated, as are the connections and relationships between Eurasia and the Americas. Excellent maps and illustrations throughout detail the cities, societies, and cultural regions in circa 1500. . . . A wonderful, exciting, engaging, scholarly yet accessible work for all readers of world history, a book that addresses a critical but often overlooked axis of global history.” —Library Journal (Starred)
“In this revelatory and wide-ranging account, Yale historian Mikhail . . . recreates the life of Sultan Selim I (1470-1520) and makes a convincing case for the outsize impact of the Ottoman Empire and Islamic culture on the history of Europe and the Americas. . . . Mikhail also sheds new light on female political power during the era, and offers intriguing discussions on topics ranging from the Sunni-Shiite split to the discovery of coffee. Written with flair and deep insight, this thought-provoking account is both a major historical work and a genuine page-turner.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred)
“Richly detailed, epic history. . . . Notable for its revisionist views of the role of Islam and the [Ottoman] empire in defining and shaping the New World.” —Booklist
“The Ottoman Empire lurks behind much of the modern world. Alan Mikhail’s new book makes a great introduction to one of the key figures in Ottoman history, Sultan Selim I.” —Mary Beard, author of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
“The life of the Ottoman Sultan Selim I, as told by the gifted historian Alan Mikhail, is an astonishing and thrilling story, worthy of Game of Thrones. . . . God’s Shadow is a radical revision of the narrative of modern history.”—Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
“This deeply researched and elegantly written book restores the Ottoman Empire to its rightful place in world history. Mikhail deftly reminds us that leaders outside of Europe had a strong hand in shaping the world as we know it.” —Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
“Alan Mikhail’s bold study of Sultan Selim, his conquests, and reforms rightfully gives the Ottoman Empire and Islam a central place in early modern history. An important book and a lively read as well.” —Natalie Zemon Davis, author of Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between World
“Alan Mikhail’s God’s Shadow is a stunning work of global history. . . . Mikhail offers a bold and thoroughly convincing new way to think about the origins of the modern world. . . . A tour de force.” —Greg Grandin, author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America
“Alan Mikhail’s sprawling book is a geo-political tour de force in which the West’s vaunted primacy receives a deeply researched, much merited, long overdue recalibration of its historic, ethnocentric self-regard. God’s Shadow is a major learning experience.” —David Levering Lewis, author of God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215
“In God’s Shadow, Alan Mikhail challenges readers to recalibrate their sense of history. In his telling of the age of conquest and exploration, it is the Ottoman Sultan Selim who takes pride of place, not Columbus or Vasco da Gama. This warrior sultan doubled the extent of the already vast domains he ruled over, rendering the empire a tri-continental threat. Mikhail traces the global reverberations of this seismic development from China to Mexico, arguing that the Ottoman sultanate was the pivotal power in a world of ambitious polities.” —Leslie Peirce, author of Empress of the East: How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire
“What does the history of the world look like when we tell it from a different point of view? In vivid prose Alan Mikhail offers us a history written not from the cramped confines of Europe’s kingdoms but from the heights of the Ottoman Empire, circa 1492. While Sultan Selim and his armies conquered vast swathes of the then-known world, Columbus and a handful of companions looked for a way around the great Muslim power. What did these two world-historical events have to do with each other? God’s Shadow asks that question, and its answers will change how you think about both the past and the present.” —David Nirenberg, author of Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today
“In God’s Shadow, Alan Mikhail astutely recovers the revealing life of a Turkish sultan who lived in the time of Columbus. Bent on global power, Selim dramatically expanded his Ottoman Empire at the expense of eastern neighbors and European Christians. That drive helped to shape Europe’s counter-push across the Atlantic to build a crusader empire in the Americas. By exploring the rivalry and mutual influence of Islam and Christianity in the past, Mikhail offers fresh insights on our world.” —Alan Taylor, author of Thomas Jefferson’s Education
Published in the US by Liveright/W. W. Norton, in the UK by Faber and Faber, in Canada by Penguin Random House, in Chinese by CITIC, in Dutch by Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep, in German by C.H. Beck, in Turkish by Epsilon, in Italian by Einaudi, in Korean by Cum Libro, in Slovenian by Beletrina Academic Press