The Islamic world has begun to receive deserved recognition as one such global site of this cultural energy. The publication of complete translations of into Arabic has stimulated fresh critical explorations from a multiplicity of perspectives: historicist, comparative and theological. Attention to spatially and religiously diverse influences and reception contexts offers new avenues of approach into masterpieces including , and , as well as into the cultural forces these texts represent, reimagine and contest. By exploring how Milton, Islam and the Middle East address and implicate one another, this collection asks how, why and Milton matters. This book was originally published as a special issue of