Long before Thomas Jefferson confronted the Barbary Pirates, Queen Elizabeth sent a secret message to the Ottoman Sultan Murad II, inviting him to open his markets to her merchants and to embark on a pathbreaking new alliance. Islam and the West crossed paths much earlier than we think—and originally the Muslims had the upper hand.

This marked the beginning of an extraordinary alignment with Muslim powers and of economic and political exchanges with the Islamic world of a depth not again experienced until the modern age.

In this groundbreaking book, Jerry Brotton reveals that Elizabethan England's relationship with the Muslim world was far more amicable—and far more extensive—than we have ever appreciated as he tells the riveting story of the businessmen and adventurers who first went east to make their fortunes.