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Throughout the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the so-called Muslim question has intermittently, though persistently, taken centre stage in Western media and political discourses. In terms of culture within the European context, there is also a substantial body of literature that has engaged with Western anxieties projected onto the Muslim "Other" and, in particular, the Muslim migrant "Other". Literary criticism of Muslim writing and writing about Muslims in Europe has often highlighted the need to offer a more nuanced articulation of Muslim identity that contributes to challenging such othering practices.

Critical studies on Muslim writing produced over the last two decades have predominantly focused on contemporary literature, and the novel in particular, and they have often centred on specific linguistic and national frameworks. This collection of essays adds complexity to existing analyses of contemporary Muslim writing and writing about Muslims and Islam in the European context by emphasizing the comparative perspective of writings produced in different epochs and different linguistic and cultural contexts. Drawing on transcultural and world literature perspectives, Muslim writing is redefined so as to incorporate genres other than the novel and critical approaches that expand on disciplinary redefinitions of literature and literary studies.

The thematic focus and the rigorous in-depth analysis of the different case studies will make this collection relevant to students and academics within the fields of literary and cultural studies, sociology and anthropology, as well as to those in European studies and global studies.

This chapter examines the cultural impact of the captivity of Miguel de Cervantes and Antonio de Sosa in Algiers in the second half of the sixteenth century. It concentrates in particular on the representations and attributes of Islamic marabouts in Sosa’s chronicle Topography of Algiers and their relationship with the Arab narrator Cide Hamete Benengeli in Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote. Marabouts, renowned for their saint-like qualities and multifaceted roles, played a significant role in the multicultural society of Algiers. Both texts were composed during the time of Spanish censorship. Sosa critiques marabouts from a Catholic perspective, whereas Cervantes employs Benengeli to undermine narrative reliability. Both authors use marabouts, or aspects of them, to investigate the fluid cultural boundaries and the intricate dynamics between Islam and Christianity in the context of the conflicts between the Ottoman and Spanish empires.