Profile Books has acquired Marc David Baer's history of Muslim-Jewish relations

Profile Books has acquired Children of Abraham: The Story of Muslim-Jewish Relations by Marc David Baer, whose most recent work, The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs (Basic Books), was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize.

Editorial director Nick Humphrey acquired world all-language rights from Adam Gauntlett at PFD, with US rights already sold to Brian Distelberg at Basic Books. Profile has also accepted a pre-empt for German rights from Rowohlt Verlag, and is expecting "major interest" in translation rights at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The book will be published by Profile Books in April 2026.

The author is professor of international history at the London School of Economics and is an expert on the Ottoman Empire and reconciliation between Jews, Muslims and Christians.

The synopsis states: "In Children of Abraham, Marc David Baer – bestselling author of The Ottomans – paints a rich picture of Muslim-Jewish relations, from Muhammad’s first interactions with Jewish Arabs in the 7th century, shared struggles after the Spanish Reconquista, the Jewish Khazar kingdom in the Black Sea region and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Free from the myths and counter-myths of Muslim-Jewish history, this is an essential retelling of two communities’ histories, whose relations will shape global politics for decades to come."

Baer said: "I have been profoundly upset by the suffering of civilians in the ongoing war in Israel and Gaza, and by the antiSemitism and islamophobia in the Middle East, Europe and North America unleashed by the conflict. As a historian who has been researching, writing and teaching about Jewish and Muslim encounters for the past three decades, I know that Jews and Muslims have experienced both days of onion and days of honey with the other, as the Sephardic Jewish and Palestinian proverb expresses it best. My aim in writing this book about their relations from the time of Muhammad in the 7th century to the present is to explore what brings them together, and what keeps them apart."

Humphrey added: "The current conflict in the Middle East focuses our attention on the breakdown of Jewish-Muslim relations, but Children of Abraham will reveal a much more nuanced history. It will be a timely book – and an important one. I’m thrilled to be bringing a historian of Marc’s calibre to the Profile list."