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Prior accounts have portrayed Islamic Spain either as a paradise of enlightened tolerance, or as the site where civilisations clashed. Award-winning historian Brian A. Catlos taps a wide array of original sources to paint a more complex picture, showing how Muslims, Christians, and Jews together built a sophisticated civilisation that transformed the Western world, even as they waged relentless war against each other and amongst themselves. Religion was often the language of conflict, but seldom its cause--a lesson we would do well to learn in our own time.Kingdoms of Faith rewrites Spain's Islamic past from the ground up, evoking the cultural splendour of al-Andalus and the many forces that shaped it.
An innovative study which explores how the presence of Muslim communities transformed Europe and stimulated Christian society to define itself.
The Sea in the Middle presents an original and revisionist narrative of the development of the medieval west from late antiquity to the dawn of modernity. This textbook is uniquely centered on the Mediterranean and emphasizes the role played by peoples and cultures of Africa, Asia, and Europe in an age when Christians, Muslims, and Jews of various denominations engaged with each other in both conflict and collaboration. Key features: Fifteen-chapter structure to aid classroom use Sections in each chapter that feature key artifacts relevant to chapter themes Dynamic visuals, including 190 photos and 20 maps The Sea in the Middle and its sourcebook companion, Texts from the Middle, pair together to provide a framework and materials that guide students through this complex but essential history—one that will appeal to the diverse student bodies of today.
This is a revisionary study of Muslims living under Christian rule during the Spanish 'reconquest'. It looks beyond the obvious religious distinctions and delves into the subtleties of identity in the thirteenth-century Crown of Aragon, uncovering a social dynamic in which sectarian differences comprise only one of the many factors in the causal complex of political, economic and cultural reactions. Beginning with the final stage of independent Muslim rule in the Ebro valley region, the book traces the transformation of Islamic society into mudéjar society under Christian domination. This was a case of social evolution in which Muslims, far from being passive victims of foreign colonisation, took an active part in shaping their institutions and experiences as subjects of the Infidel. Using a diverse range of methodological approaches, this book challenges widely held assumptions concerning Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle Ages, and minority-majority relations in general.
A magisterial, myth-dispelling history of Islamic Spain spanning the millennium between the founding of Islam in the seventh century and the final expulsion of Spain's Muslims in the seventeenth In Kingdoms of Faith, award-winning historian Brian A. Catlos rewrites the history of Islamic Spain from the ground up, evoking the cultural splendor of al-Andalus, while offering an authoritative new interpretation of the forces that shaped it. Prior accounts have portrayed Islamic Spain as a paradise of enlightened tolerance or the site where civilizations clashed. Catlos taps a wide array of primary sources to paint a more complex portrait, showing how Muslims, Christians, and Jews together built a sophisticated civilization that transformed the Western world, even as they waged relentless war against each other and their coreligionists. Religion was often the language of conflict, but seldom its cause -- a lesson we would do well to learn in our own time.
This volume is a collection of essays on medieval Spain, written by leading scholars on three continents, that celebrates the career of Thomas F. Glick. Using a wide array of innovative methodological approaches, these essays offer insights on areas of medieval Iberian history that have been of particular interest to Glick: irrigation, the history of science, and cross-cultural interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. By bringing together original research on topics ranging from water management and timekeeping to poetry and women’s history, this volume crosses disciplinary boundaries and reflects the wide-ranging, gap-bridging work of Glick himself, a pivotal figure in the historiography of medieval Spain.
The Sea in the Middle presents an original and revisionist narrative of the development of the medieval west from late antiquity to the dawn of modernity. This textbook is uniquely centered on the Mediterranean and emphasizes the role played by peoples and cultures of Africa, Asia, and Europe in an age when Christians, Muslims, and Jews of various denominations engaged with each other in both conflict and collaboration. Key features: Fifteen-chapter structure to aid classroom use Sections in each chapter that feature key artifacts relevant to chapter themes Dynamic visuals, including 190 photos and 20 maps The Sea in the Middle and its sourcebook companion, Texts from the Middle, pair together to provide a framework and materials that guide students through this complex but essential history—one that will appeal to the diverse student bodies of today.
This book provides a systematic framework for the emerging field of Mediterranean studies, collecting essays from scholars of history, literature, religion, and art history that seek a more fluid understanding of “Mediterranean.” It emphasizes the interdependence of Mediterranean regions and the rich interaction (both peaceful and bellicose, at sea and on land) between them. It avoids applying the national, cultural and ethnic categories that developed with the post-Enlightenment domination of northwestern Europe over the academy, working instead towards a dynamic and thoroughly interdisciplinary picture of the Mediterranean. Including an extensive bibliography and a conversation between leading scholars in the field, Can We Talk Mediterranean? lays the groundwork for a new critical and conceptual approach to the region.
The conflict and contact between Muslims and Christians in the Middle Ages is among the most important but least appreciated developments of the period from the seventh to the fourteenth century. Michael Frassetto argues that the relationship between these two faiths during the Middle Ages was essential to the cultural and religious developments of Christianity and Islam—even as Christians and Muslims often found themselves engaged in violent conflict. Frassetto traces the history of those conflicts and argues that these holy wars helped create the identity that defined the essential characteristics of Christians and Muslims. The polemic works that often accompanied these holy wars was imp...
Why did the last of the major European campaigns to reclaim Jerusalem end in an attack on Tunis, a peaceful North African port city thousands of miles from the Holy Land? In the first book-length study of the campaign in English, Michael Lower tells the story of how the classic era of crusading came to such an unexpected end. Unfolding against a backdrop of conflict and collaboration that extended from England to Inner Asia, the Tunis Crusade entangled people from every corner of the Mediterranean world. Within this expansive geographical playing field, the ambitions of four powerful Mediterranean dynasts would collide. While the slave-boy-turned-sultan Baybars of Egypt and the saint-king Lo...