Wales: land of legendary dragons and male-voice choirs, of the cragged beauty of Snowdonia and the indefatigable lungs of the singer Tom Jones. Or land of old Arabic coins and lost Qurans, Sufi mystics and Muslim sons of empire. In this episode, we uncover fascinating and surprising facets of Islamic history in this little-known corner of Europe. We begin by introducing Wales itself, then asking what it was about this country that attracted Muslim individuals and artifacts alike. Suitably prepared, we board our podcast tour bus, stopping at key sites with very different stories. Along the way, we take in the library of a Christian monastery, the dockyards of the capital Cardiff, and the seaside resort of sunny Rhyl during the dark days of World War Two. Nile Green talks to Abdul-Azim Ahmed, author of Muslim Wales: A History in 9 Places (Seren Books, 2026).

Muslims have always recognized the Gospels, or Injil, as a holy book. But for most of Islamic history, such recognition was more theoretical than practical, with the Gospels discussed in the abstract than actually read. After all, Muslim scholars studied Arabic, not the Greek or Syriac in which copies of the New Testament were available to them. However, the 19th century saw European Christian missionaries make the Gospels far more widely available to Muslims by printing translations in Arabic, Persian, Urdu and other languages. Among the learned Muslim who responded was one of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the modern era: Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98). In this episode, we explore what motivated him to write a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew in his Urdu work, Tabyin al-Kalam (Elucidation of the Word); how he understood the Christian scripture as a Muslim; and how he used his newfound knowledge of the Injil to argue for the consistency of Muslim and Christian beliefs. Nile Green talks to Charles Ramsey, co-translator of Sir Sayyid’s Commentary of the Gospel: Tabyīn al-Kalām, Part 3 (Brill and Maktaba Jadid, 2017).

Rumi is perhaps the most famous Sufi of all time. For centuries after he died in 1273, his Persian poems were read and recited from the Balkans to Bengal. But his teachings were also passed down through the Mevlevi order that was established after his death in Konya (in present-day Turkey). From their headquarters around Rumi’s shrine in Konya, then subsequently from the Ottoman capital of Istanbul, the Mevlevis became one of the most influential Sufi orders in the eastern Mediterranean. Wrapping Rumi’s poetry into a larger package of ritual, music, meditation, and dance, the Mevlevis explored the many layers of meaning in Rumi’s masterpiece the Masnavi, on which several Mevlevi leaders penned commentaries. In this episode, we trace the development and teachings of the Mevlevi order, with a focus on the distinct emotional style that characterized its spirituality. Nile Green talks to Jamal J. Elias, author of After Rumi: The Mevlevis and Their World (Harvard University Press, 2025).

Of all the world’s Muslim communities, the multiethnic Muslims of China are perhaps the least known, as though secluded by a Great Wall of linguistic, geographical and political dimensions. Yet preserved in mosques and shrines across the whole length of China—as well as India and Thailand —are manuscripts, woodblock prints and lithographs that reveal the interconnections of China’s Muslims with their coreligionists in other parts of Asia. In this episode, we travel far and wide by following these books and their authors from Nanjing and Xinjiang to Kanpur, Sri Lanka and Mecca. We learn about such influential figures as Wang Daiyu (c.1570-1660) and Ma Lianyuan (1842-1903), who not only wrote books in Chinese and Persian but also pioneered the development of Muslim printing. We also see how their teachings and travels linked China’s Muslims to various regions of Asia beyond that illusory Great Wall. Nile Green talks to Rian Thum, author of Islamic China: An Asian History (Harvard University Press, 2025).

In the years after 9/11, madrasas became a major concern of serious newspapers throughout the Western world. But two decades later, how many of us can really say we know what a madrasa is – still less, what actually goes on in one of them? This episode dispenses with theoretical abstractions to explore the realities of lived experience, with a focus on South Asia (specifically India). We’ll learn what madrasa students actually do day to day. Then we’ll turn to the kinds of texts that are taught, along with the distinct modes of teaching that characterize a madrasa education. Here we examine the concept of the maslak (meaning ‘way’ or ‘method’)—and the disagreements between proponents of rival maslaks. We’re fortunate in being guided by an ‘insider/outsider’ and self-described ‘friendly critic’ of the traditional madrasa system. Nile Green talks to Ebrahim Moosa, author of What is a Madrasa? (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

How should one go about translating a text that is untranslatable? Especially when the text is believed to be the living word of God? Muslims have pondered this dilemma for more than a millennium, because a standard doctrine of Islam is the ‘inimitability of the Quran’ (i‘jaz al-Qur’an). This principle was often taken to imply the untranslatability of the Quran. But even in the first centuries of Islam, the conversion on non-Arabs created the practical need for translation. This episode explores the different solutions Muslims found, whether through interlinear summaries and tafsir commentaries in premodern times or via the proliferation of full-blown translations in the modern age of print—and nationalism. From multilingual manuscripts to state-sanctioned translations, we trace the different ways in which the Quran has been read over the centuries. Nile Green talks to M. Brett Wilson, author of Translating the Qur’an in an Age of Nationalism: Print Culture and Modern Islam in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Over the past few decades, archaeologists have excavated the remnants of a little-known Muslim kingdom from beneath hotels, parking lots, and even a convent in the Spanish city of Murcia. Cast into the shadows by the splendors of Granada, in its heyday Murcia was a flourishing kingdom that welcomed both Sufi mystics and Italian merchants. The main figure responsible for this was a man of many names. He was officially known on the coins he minted as Muhammad ibn Saʿd, but he was more widely known in Arabic by the mysterious moniker Ibn Mardanish. And to the Christians of Spain—who were often his allies—he was el Rey Lobo: the Wolf King. In this episode, we take a historical tour of medieval Murcia and the stylish palace of Ibn Mardanish, before tracing how in later centuries his memory was burdened with various competing messages. Nile Green talks to Abigail Krasner Balbale, author of The Wolf King: Ibn Mardanish and the Construction of Power in al-Andalus (Cornell University Press, 2022).

Everyone has heard of Mecca. But few people outside Pakistan have heard of Makli, or “Little Mecca,” the sacred cemetery that is both the holiest place in Sindh and a UNESCO World Heritage site. The site is actually huge, with up to a million people buried there, so the “little” reflects respect for Mecca rather than the size of Makli. More important than Makli’s size, though, is its beauty. From the fourteenth onwards, rulers and aristocrats from the local Samma, Arghun, then Mughal dynasties commissioned elegant carved stone mausoleums around the burial places of the saints who rendered Makli sacred. In this episode, we’ll take an audio tour of its beautiful buildings, looking at their decorative symbolism and Arabic inscriptions, before delving further into the history of this extraordinary necropolis of the holy, powerful, and poor alike. Nile Green talks to Fatima Quraishi, author of Palimpsests Past and Present: The Sufis and Sultans of the Makli Necropolis (1380–1660) (University of North Carolina Press, 2026).