Fifteen years ago, I sought out the oldest surviving folios of Plato’s philosophy. My hunt took me first to the Bodleian library in Oxford, and then past vats of indigo and pens of chickens in the souk in Fez, through the doors of al-Qarawiyyin mosque and up some back stairs to its archive storeroom. There, copied out and annotated by the scribes of al-Andalus, was a 10th-century edition of Plato’s works: in my hands was evidence of a Renaissance, in Islamic lands, three centuries before “the Renaissance” was supposed to have happened.

The jibe too often heard today that Islam is stuck in the dark ages is simplistic and lazy – as evidenced by this vigorous and thoughtful book about Islamic peoples’ encounters with western modernity. One of the pertinent questions Christopher de Bellaigue asks is: did a rational enlightenment follow on from Islam’s deep-rooted interest in the works of Plato and other classical philosophers? The answer he gives is: yes, in certain places and at certain times.

The author has a keen eye for a story, and our companions as we follow his argument are those vivid heroes (and occasionally heroines) who had the vision and the guts to bring about reform. The narrative takes us through Napoleonic Egypt, Tanzimât Istanbul and Tehran in the 19th century, and the swirl of nationalism and counter-enlightenment beyond. De Bellaigue makes it clear that in the Islamic east, after Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, a lot happened – in some cases reformation, enlightenment and industrial revolution – in very little time. The telegraph appeared within a heartbeat of the movable-type printing press; trains arrived at the same time as independent newspapers. Many of the challenging concepts being gingerly embraced by Islamic pioneers were also being given a name for the first time in the west – “human rights” in the 1830s, feminism in the 1890s. The tsunami of modernity was both thrilling and fearful.

On occasion, as with the Albanian-born Muhammad Ali Pasha of Egypt and the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II, the enlighteners were “both modernisers and martinets”. Often they died for their ideas. The story of the Persian feminist-martyr Fatemeh Zarrin Taj Baraghani, who read too much, wrote too much and, veil-less, promoted the social vision of the Bahá’ís (a united, anti-nationalist, monolingual world), is poignantly told. As well as big history analysis there are delightful incidental details. Egyptians, for instance, were horrified to discover that Napoleon’s troops trod on carpets with their boots and didn’t shave their pubic hair – at a time when Egypt was instituting such hygiene reforms as the fumigation of letters before delivery.

Egyptians were horrified to learn Napoleon’s troops trod on carpets with their boots and didn’t shave their pubic hair

Economic, political and military intervention following the first world war is frequently blamed for current friction between east and west. De Bellaigue’s assured opinion is that we need to push the explanation back to when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798 and western banking systems encouraged the Ottoman empire to borrow – and then called in those debts. With “enlightenment” came a forced lightening of the purses of the east; Egypt’s debt soared from £3m in 1865 to £91m just over a decade later. What’s more, as early as 1832, Muhammad Ali’s Egyptian army routed Ottoman troops at Homs in Syria using textbook Franco-British military strategy.

I would move the globalisation marker even further down the timeline. The presence of industrial quantities of Byzantine pottery dating from the sixth century AD on the headland at Tintagel, Chinese silk in the tombs around Mecca and “Arabic” numerals in the 13th-century beams of Salisbury Cathedral tell us we have been interdependent not for decades but across millennia. Whereas 13% of the world’s population are currently migrants, bone analysis now suggests that following the Roman period the figure was closer to 30%.

On the other hand, cosmopolitan, cross-border influence cannot be the only explanation for the rise of the rule of law and representative government in nearly all Islamic societies. People seek change not only when threats and opportunities appear, but when we get tired of the ways things are. De Bellaigue lionises the innovations of men such as Rifa’a al-Tahtawi who, finding Islamic dependence on tradition stultifying, made it his life’s work to prove that reason and Islam were compatible.

This book also elegantly offers a reminder that we are the stories that we tell about ourselves. The Islamic world did not feel itself a “victim” compared with the west. Muslims saw Islam not as the Johnny-come-lately of the Abrahamic faiths but as its zenith. Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and transubstantiation were seen as superstitious and baffling. The word “America” probably didn’t appear in the Persian language until the end of the 18th century – but then with a documented past stretching back at least 5,000 years, the east had riches of its own.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Interdependent with the west for centuries … the Topkapı palace in Istanbul, Turkey. Photograph: Alamy

Yet De Bellaigue’s story also heads in another direction: thanks to demonisation by ulemas and conservatives, modernisation was often deliberately slowed. While 19th-century Istanbullu women could read liberating articles that promoted education, questioned polygamy and campaigned against inferior, women-only berths on the ferries across the Bosphorus, other commentators declared that the independent newspapers of Ottoman Turkey were part of a European plot to “destroy Islam and destabilise the country”. One wonders whether President Trump is aware of this Islamic manifestation of “fake news”.

Research has identified 8,000 women who taught and preached within 150 years of the death of the Prophet Muhammad

One popular Arabic proverb declared that “men’s exertions uproot mountains”, and yes, Muhammad Ali Pasha transformed and modernised Alexandria in the early 19th century – but he was in many ways returning it to its cosmopolitan splendour in the fourth century BC. Yes, a government report under Sultan Mahmud II in 1850s Istanbul read “religious knowledge serves salvation in the world to come, but science serves perfection of man in this world”, but I know old men in Istanbul who still believe djinns inhabit the damp corners of the city. Recent research has identified 4,000 named women who taught and indeed preached at mosques in Cairo, Jerusalem and Medina within 150 years of the death of the Prophet Muhammad – so 1,300 years ago there seems to have been no gender separation in these sacred spaces. One question this book doesn’t fully answer – and it is a crucial one – is why this kind of liberality was followed by centuries of retrenchment.

De Bellaigue has lived in and reported from the Middle East, and this study seems to be a personal mission to rescue lambent examples from a drab procession of sameness. Adding to its pleasures are smart concepts crisply delivered (“Progress is its own propaganda”). The fact that some of his chosen protagonists were celebrities in their own lifetimes (the Times reported on Fatemeh’s execution, describing her as “the fair prophetess of Qazvin”) might provoke the query that these reformists whom he extols were exceptional rather than representative figures. Yet De Bellaigue has written a (beautifully illustrated) book that prompts an important conversation, and is extremely useful for our times. As well as introducing neglected histories and characters about which and whom we need to care, the work itself incarnates the essence of enlightenment.

• Bettany Hughes’s Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The Islamic Enlightenment is published by Bodley Head. To order a copy for £21.25 (RRP £25) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.