Morocco, 1359. The people of Fes are living in deprivation under the rule of an unjust sultan. Zakaria is a young Muslim scholar trying to sustain his family while committing to a rigid moral code. To provide for his sickly daughter, he sacrifices his principles and seeks a job at the palace, where he gradually becomes entangled in a web of intrigue, his conscience tormented by serving the sultan. In the hope of fleeing from the constraints of his world, he joins the quest of Muhammad ibn Yusuf, the exiled king of Granada, and his enchanting sister, Aisha, to reclaim their throne. Together, they set out to Andalusia on a journey that will call into question all of Zakaria’s beliefs and change the history of the Iberian Peninsula for decades to come.
Then He Sent Prophets is a story about the suffering of young idealists in a world of inevitable compromise. Throughout his journey, Zakaria faces internal struggles that are timeless and universal, strives to reconcile his faith with the world, doubts the motives behind his desire to live morally, and ends up wondering whether a life consisting of one compromise after another is one worth living.
Then He Sent Prophets is a novel for our moment. Set around the political struggles of fourteenth-century Granada, it is a deeply sympathetic and passionately human look at how one might make—or fail to make—moral, decent choices when living in a violent, indecent world.
— Marcia Lynx Qualey, founding editor of ArabLit
Circumstances present Zakaria with a position at the palace. […] Can someone critical of the sultan and conscious of his corruption maintain integrity while serving at the palace? And what’s the line between complete innocence and partial complicity? These are the questions at the crux of his ethical dilemma. […] It’s easy to make connections between Zakaria’s inner dilemmas and those many of us grapple with today.
— Hafsa Lodi in The New Arab
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Mohamed Seif El Nasr grew up in Cairo, Egypt, attended the Collège de la Sainte Famille du Caire, received his bachelor’s degree in history and political science from the American University in Cairo, and worked for over a decade in…
Table of Contents 4
Epigraph 6
Introduction 7
1 The Eyebrow 10
2 Blamed for Everything 15
3 The Cursed Child 19
4 The Slippers 23
5 The Enemy of Horses 28
6 Tamima’s Stone 33
7 Except the Sultan 39
8 The Piece of Cloth 44
9 Muslims and Mujrims 49
10 No Musicians or White Storks 55
11 The Royal Chancery 61
12 Are We Not All Muslims? 66
13 On Ethics and Rituals 71
14 The Voice of Fes 75
15 The Rift 78
16 A Cup of Milk 83
17 A Year to Forget 89
18 The Bad Smell 93
19 A Sultan’s Verdict 98
20 Um al-Wazir 103
21 The Journey 111
22 The Caravan 114
23 The Race 118
24 The Princess 121
25 The Savior 125
26 An Eye Without an Eyebrow 130
27 The Sword Verse 135
28 The Philosopher King 138
29 The Mad Scholar 143
30 Jahannam 148
31 The Crow 153
32 The Fall 158
33 The Frying Pan 163
34 The Hypocrite 166
35 Reunion 172
36 A Knight Without a Horse 175
37 An Innocent Soul 179
38 The Mirror 183
39 Gold and Diamonds 189
40 The Red Prophet 193
Author’s Note 196
About the Author 197
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In the remnants of a fractured UK, England is on the brink of collapse where far-right militias rise to power. As Islamophobia and English nationalism ignite brutal violence, 19-year-old Marah Sultana is thrust into a fight for survival. Hunted by forces seeking control, she carries a secret powerful enough to change the course of the war—and the future of the world. In a world in which America’s reign as a superpower has crumbled, its mercenaries now rule in its shadow,
In The Second Coming, Tariq Mehmood delivers a searing, unflinching narrative that mirrors his own lifelong struggle for justice. This novel is not just fiction—it’s a reflection of real-world battles. Mehmood’s powerful storytelling compels readers to confront uncomfortable truths while offering a gripping, emotional journey of resistance and survival.
A dystopian desi mash-up of The Handmaid’s Tale, Clockwork Orange, and V for Vendetta. The Second Coming warns of the dangers of right-wing nationalism and white supremacy and imagines where such hate could take England if it is not, somehow, nipped in the bud. — Paul Cochrane, journalist, Middle East Eye
A must-read dystopian fantasy about race, religion, and love. Unmissable – Melvin Burgess, novelist, winner of the Carnegie Medal and the LA prize for Teenage Fiction
An unforgettable novel, both vivid and nightmarishly plausible. — Peter Kalu, novelist, storyteller, playwright and poet.
A story of resilience and hope told against the brutal realities of patriarchy and colonial violence.
— Amrit Wilson, activist, feminist, and author of Finding a Voice: Asian Women in Britain (Daraja Press)
Pius Adesanmi died in the doomed Ethiopian Airline flight 302 on March 10, 2019. Wreaths for a Wayfarer: An Anthology in Honour of Pius Adesanmi is an assemblage of 267 original poems written by 127 established and emerging African writers. While some of the poets celebrate Adesanmi, others reflect philosophically on existence, mortality, immortality and/or offer hope for the living. In this memorably textured collection, the poets – some who knew, and some who did not know Adesanmi – exorcise the pains of loss through provocative poems that pour out their beating hearts with passion.
Pius Adesanmi died in the doomed Ethiopian Airline flight 302 on March 10, 2019. Wreaths for a Wayfarer: An Anthology in Honour of Pius Adesanmi is an assemblage of 267 original poems written by 127 established and emerging African writers. While some of the poets celebrate Adesanmi, others reflect philosophically on existence, mortality, immortality and/or offer hope for the living. In this memorably textured collection, the poets – some who knew, and some who did not know Adesanmi – exorcise the pains of loss through provocative poems that pour out their beating hearts with passion.
Beside the Sickle Moon is near future literary activism based on Israel’s occupation of Palestine. The story tells a first person narrative through Laeth Awad, a Palestinian who lives above his convenience store experiencing days pass through smoke clouds with his cousin Aylul. One night upon returning to their village from Ramallah they encounter an Israeli checkpoint within the buffer zone that hadn’t been there before. It isn’t long until the two stumble upon Israel’s plans to construct a luxury hotel for incoming settlers, Ma’al Luz. Demolition crews and military personnel are due to fulfill this contract in the months to come and with them as overseer is the infamous Meir Cohen, a Mossad operative who played a key role in the fall of Gaza.
Aylul believes from their father, an Al Qassam militant who died in the battle for Jericho, that only the threat of annihilation breeds the best of human action. They use their contacts to connect with the factions, who grant them strength to defend their village from occupation. With these resources in hand Aylul forms Al Mubarizun, a group crowning themselves Palestine’s final resistance.
Laeth doubts the existence of a future, lost in philosophical ambivalence as he tries to follow his cousin into the depths of guerrilla warfare. He questions the futility of resistance when all former allies have normalized relations with Israel. And what of the innocents on the other side of the Wall who had no say in where they were born? Though a minority of the population, he is not alone in this sentiment. Palestinian youth begin to empathize with this logic enough to create a new social movement, the Forgotten Ones. Coining the derogatory term that their critics slung, the NGO advocates for a peaceful transition to Israel’s colonization where most Palestinians hear whimpers of surrender.
Set in a hauntingly plausible future, where Israel has marked a century of Palestinian occupation … As a novel of the future, Beside the Sickle Moon is, unsurprisingly, preoccupied with temporality, attempting to reconcile the vastness of macro-historical events with the immediacy of everyday life. … One of the most chilling features of Husien’s novel as history is the world’s renewed abandonment of Palestine. In a future of systemic global crisis, nations have closed ranks and shut their eyes. Israeli mines run on the slave labor of Palestinian captives, and refugee camps have become invisibilized death zones … — Londiwe Gamedze https://africasacountry.com/2024/11/reading-the-present-as-history
In thirty chapters, the narrative develops the incredible story of how a boy (Younis/Eunus/Euno) captured as a slave in Afamia, Syria challenges the Roman Empire in Sicily, circa 140-132 BCE. The chapters dramatize the circumstance of his capture, his experiences as a tutor, the growth of his prophetic and magical abilities, events that fomented the uprising (cruelties, rapes, crucifixions), the role of female characters, connections to other historical events (e.g., the destruction of Carthage), as well as scenes of an exorcism, an ancient marriage ceremony, a play performed outside a besieged city, and several battles against the Roman legions. An epilogue by an imagined contemporary narrator, who explains why she wrote the novel, ends the work. In the chapters and epilogue, while using ancient sources to some extent (sparse and biased as they are), the work departs from them to resolve contradictions, fill in gaps, and present an alternative narrative of historical and cultural issues. It’s intended to remedy the neglect of this story in both ancient and modern sources, reverse the demonization explicit and implicit in them, and remedy the imbalance in the dominant constructs. It promotes the event as significant, certainly just as important as (if not more than) the Spartacus rebellion seven decades afterwards, or others that are commonly recounted. A significant aspect of this revolt comes from the fact that Younis was able to forge a coalition of slaves, farmers and herders that defeated Roman armies and established an independent entity on more egalitarian principles. The novel also touches on a range of topics, such as prophecy, magic, languages, the construct of Western civilization, representation of regional cultures, customs, and mythologies. An idealized statue of this rebel stands today in Enna, Sicily, along with an inscription that seems designed to appeal to tourists, yet Younis’ rebellion contradicts the dominant notions promoted in Italy and throughout the West, especially the identification with imperial Rome. This novel is intended to remedy his legacy. A fictionalised account of a slave rebellion in Roman Sicilia more than sixty years before Spartacus, it tells the story of the slave Younis from Afamia (now in Syria), a mystic and seer who led a great uprising sustained much longer than Spartacus’.
Cradles is a collection poems on the nature(s) and nurturing that cradle us. They are divided into four parts: Womb is the first cradle, both ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’, under-acknowledged and often unmentioned. Beyond the physical womb of individuals, there are collective wombs that incubate on yet grander and greater scales. Land(s) are the cradles we typically identify as our ‘origins’, but as the Cradle of Humankind teaches, the many lands of today are interlaced in many concealed ways and originated in a single, little understood place. Tides are the many migrations and cycles of time that shape us. They can shift, upset and remake the nurturing of cradles; but also cradle us in cycles of wreckage. Wind sets us free of places and times of origin. This detachment can bring freedom, a sense of loss/lostness, and the many things in between. The freedom/loss/lostness spiral whirls with the wind and transforms. In surrendering to it we can alter its pace to our needs and desires.
One brother goes missing in action in Afghanistan, the other falls in love with an Afghan girl in England.
Bitter divisions engulf an English town where young Muslims oppose the British army’s presence in Afghanistan, whilst white youth condemn the Muslims as traitors.
To the disgust of his white friends, 17-year-old Jake Marlesden, whose brother is missing in action in Afghanistan, is in love with Leila Khan, an Afghan. When Jake tries to find out what happened to his brother, neighbour turns against neighbour and lover against lover.
Leila joins young Muslims protesting against the returning bodies of dead British soldiers, and Jake stands with the families of the soldiers. The lovers fall apart.
But far off events, and sinister forces at home, bring the lovers together again in a journey in which they will not only discover themselves, but also heal the wounds of their families and friends.
This is the sequel to You’re Not Proper.
This was Tariq Mehmood’s first novel, published by Penguin Books in 1983, charting the experience of the second generation migrants to the UK. Set in the declining textile industry of the North of England, it is a raw story of pain and anger at the relentlessness of British racism, from the street to the state – a story of an unquenchable desire for justice, and reclaiming human dignity. A dignity that is wrapped around new questions of Identity, a crossroad between religion, language, history and resistance. It is a little big story, that talks to the extremities of social, political and literary issues today? Can stories of a generation be appropriated? How important is religion in identity? If all you have is a story to tell, who should you tell it? Are the issues of today, just the issues of today or can we learn something from the past? In these stories, friendship is not defined by religion or colour, but by humanity. And racism is much more than skin deep. It is an exhilarating read that bears witness to the urgent 80’s battles against state and popular racism. As important now as then. In this new edition, Mehmood provides a Foreword that describes how the novel came to be written and the lives of real people on whom the characters were created. In the Afterword, Mehmood revisits some of the characters who are now 40-years older, and reflects on how the book would have been written today where the conditions of mass mobilizations no longer exist in neoliberal Britain.
ArabLit
I want to start by saying I really enjoyed reading this novel. When I was away from it, I wanted to get back to this world, to re-immerse myself. A large part of that drive was Zakaria, who wants so much to do right in the world (even as he sometimes gets in a muddle, can be jealous and short-tempered). Was Zakaria based on a historical figure or historical sources? Or is he built from inspirations nearer to us in time?
Mohamed Seif El Nasr: Concerning Zakaria’s character, I believe it is a blend of what you mentioned. The critical thinking and rationality part of his character is based historically on Muhammad al-Abili, Ibn Khaldun’s tutor. Al-Abili, who was known throughout the Maghreb as the great master of the rational sciences, was a fascinating figure with unconventional views. He actively tried to avoid official posts throughout his life, famously refused to write books, and was heavily critical of the schooling (madaress) system at the time of the Marinid dynasty, which followed a curriculum imposed by the authorities and which, he believed, created restrained mentalities.
As for the morality part of Zakaria’s personality, his desire to do right in the world, and his struggle to understand the motives behind his desire to be moral, I believe my main inspiration was my own experience and that of my close friends. On the one hand, many of our generation here in Egypt had our moral compass sharpened during the Arab Spring, became driven by the desire to do right in the world, and tried to identify ourselves within the global political spectrum (which would naturally lead anyone to lean left). On the other hand, and this is heavily alluded to in the novel as part of Zakaria’s character development, once you try to associate yourself with people who are supposedly doing right in the world, there’s always the sad discovery, which would come sooner or later, that many of them are more motivated by egoism rather than love for the people and a genuine desire to help others—that depressing realization that social activism is oftentimes a mask for personal egoism—and then you find yourself questioning your own motives. ArabLit
Usman Butt
Then He Sent Prophets cuts across many issues that would be all too familiar to us today, but it also illuminates the past. Zakaria’s ideals and ambitions are both naive and relatable, wanting to remake the world and being weighed down by family and social obligations could be the tale of much university or college graduates the world over. The concerns that religiosity is lax, declining and those charged with educating people of their religious obligations are corrupt and distort the true message, is certainly a message that will resonate with many religious believers today. In some ways, it reminds us that our concerns are not new and are, in fact, as old as religion itself, these are the key themes that make the novel feel contemporaneous. Those seeking a book that speaks to present concerns will certainly find this novel to be just that, but it is also rooted in the past and so there are many elements that are so very different from our times. What made this novel fascinating to read was the blend of the two, while being firmly set in the past. Then He Sent Prophets is a fun, enjoyable, relatable and intriguing read and excellent work of historical fiction. — Usman Butt TheUsmanButt.
Sherine Elbanhawy
Mohamed Seif El Nasr’s debut novel, Then He Sent Prophets, is a sweeping historical narrative set in the 14th century, a period marked by the decline of the Marinid dynasty in Morocco and the tumultuous Emirate of Granada in Islamic Spain. It is a masterful blend of historical fiction, philosophical inquiry, and human drama featuring real historical figures like Ibn Khaldun, Pedro I, and Muhammad V. For example, Ibn Khaldun’s observation that “when a ruler makes his people too weak to keep their affairs going, their weakness recoils on him and weakens him” critiques Sultan Abu Salem’s governance, reinforcing the cyclical nature of oppression. This insight is paired with vivid depictions of medieval society, such as the fleeting legacy of Sultan Abu Salem: “Of the short reign of Sultan Abu Salem, people have a recollection of only two events: the giraffe from Mali and the day the overthrown king of Granada departed to reclaim his throne.” — Sherine Elbanhawy, Rowayat.org