An innovative study which explores how the presence of Muslim communities transformed Europe and stimulated Christian society to define itself.

An innovative study which explores how the presence of Muslim communities transformed Europe and stimulated Christian society to define itself.

An innovative study which explores how the presence of Muslim communities transformed Europe and stimulated Christian society to define itself.

Through crusades and expulsions, Muslim communities survived for over 500 years, thriving in medieval Europe. This comprehensive study explores how the presence of Islamic minorities transformed Europe in everything from architecture to cooking, literature to science, and served as a stimulus for Christian society to define itself. Combining a series of regional studies, Catlos compares the varied experiences of Muslims across Iberia, southern Italy, the Crusader Kingdoms and Hungary to examine those ideologies that informed their experiences, their place in society and their sense of themselves as Muslims. This is a pioneering new narrative of the history of medieval and early modern Europe from the perspective of Islamic minorities; one which is not, as we might first assume, driven by ideology, isolation and decline, but instead one in which successful communities persisted because they remained actively integrated within the larger Christian and Jewish societies in which they lived.

This book analyses the artistic and cultural legacy of Western Islamic societies and their interactions with Islamic, Christian and Jewish societies in the framework of the late medieval Mediterranean, from a range of multi-disciplinary perspectives. The book, organised in four parts, addresses the Andalusi legacy from its presence in the East and the West; analyses the relations and transfers between Al-Andalus and the artistic productions of the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula; explores other manifestations of the Andalusi legacy in the fields of knowledge, construction, identity and religious studies; and reconsiders ornamental transfers and exchanges in artistic manifestations between East and West across the Mediterranean basin. Chapter 2 is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

This book tells stories of interaction, conflict and common exchange between Berbers, Arabs, Latins, Muslims, Christians and Jews in North Africa and Latin Europe. Medieval Western European and North African history were part of a common Western Mediterranean culture. Examining shared commerce, slavery, mercenary activity, art and intellectual and religious debates, this book argues that North Africa was an integral part of western Medieval History. The book tells the history of North Africa and Europe through the eyes of Christian kings and Muslim merchants, Emirs and Popes, Sufis, Friars and Rabbis. It argues North Africa and Europe together experienced the Twelfth Century Renaissance and the Commercial Revolution. When Europe was highly divided during twelfth century, North Africa was enjoying the peak of its power, united under the Berber, Almohad Empire. In the midst of a common commercial growth throughout the medieval period, North Africa and Europe also shared in a burst of spirituality and mysticism. This growth of spirituality occurred even as representatives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam debated and defended their faiths, dreaming of conversion even as they shared the same rational methods. The growth of spirituality instigated a Second Axial Age in the history of religion. Challenging the idea of a Mediterranean split between between Islam and Christianity, the book shows how the Maghrib (North Africa) was not a Muslim, Arab monolith or as an extension of the exotic Orient. North Africa, not the Holy Land to the far East, was the first place where Latin Europeans encountered the Muslim other and vice versa. Medieval North Africa was as diverse and complex as Latin Europe. North Africa should not be dismissed as a side show of European history. North Africa was, in fact, an integral part of the story.

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.

This book explores several fascinating medieval Christian and Islamic artworks that represent and reimagine Jerusalem’s architecture as religious and political instruments to express power, entice visitors, console the devoted, offer spiritual guidance, and convey the city’s mythical history.

In The Last Ta'ifa, Anthony H. Minnema shows how the Banu Hud, an Arab dynasty from Zaragoza, created and recreated their vision of an autonomous city-state (ta'ifa) in ways that reveal changes to legitimating strategies in al-Andalus and across the Mediterranean. In 1110, the Banu Hud lost control of their emirate in the north of Iberia and entered exile, ending their century-long rule. But far from accepting their fate, the dynasty adapted by serving Christian kings, nurturing rebellions, and carving out a new state in Murcia to recover, maintain, and grow their power. By tracing the Banu Hud across chronicles, charters, and coinage, Minnema shows how dynastic leaders borrowed their rivals' claims and symbols and engaged in similar types of military campaigns and complex alliances in an effort to cultivate authority. Drawing on Arabic, Latin, and vernacular sources, The Last Ta'ifa uses the history of the Banu Hud to connect the pursuit of legitimacy in al-Andalus to the politics of other emerging kingdoms and emirates. The actions of Hudid leaders, Minnema shows, echoed across the region as other kings, rebels, and adventurers employed parallel methods to gain power and resist the forces of centralization, highlighting the constructed nature of legitimacy in al-Andalus and the Mediterranean.

This book of eleven essays by an international group of scholars in medieval studies honors the work of Barbara H. Rosenwein, Professor emerita of History at Loyola University Chicago. Part I, “Emotions and Communities,” comprises six essays that make use of Rosenwein’s well-known and widely influential work on the history of emotions and what Rosenwein has called “emotional communities.” These essays employ a wide variety of source material such as chronicles, monastic records, painting, music theory, and religious practice to elucidate emotional commonalities among the medieval people who experienced them. The five essays in Part II, “Communities and Difference,” explore different kinds of communities and have difference as their primary theme: difference between the poor and the unfree, between power as wielded by rulers or the clergy, between the western Mediterranean region and the rest of Europe, and between a supposedly great king and lesser ones.