This history of Spain in the period between the end of Roman rule and the time of the Arab conquest challenges many traditional assumptions about the history of this period. Presents original theories about how the Visigothic kingdom was governed, about law in the kingdom, about the Arab conquest, and about the rise of Spain as an intellectual force. Takes account of new documentary evidence, the latest archaeological findings, and the controversies that these have generated. Combines chronological and thematic approaches to the period. A historiographical introduction looks at the current state of research on the history and archaeology of the Visigothic kingdom.

CALIPHS AND KINGS: SPAIN, 796-1031 The last twenty-five years have seen a renaissance of research and writing on Spanish history. Caliphs and Kings offers a formidable synthesis of existing knowledge as well as an investigation into new historical thinking, perspectives, and methods. The nearly three-hundred-year rule of the Umayyad dynasty in Spain (756-1031) has been hailed by many as an era of unprecedented harmony and mutual tolerance between the three great religious faiths in the Iberian Peninsula – Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – the like of which has never been seen since. And yet, as this book demonstrates, historical reality defies the myth. Though the middle of the tenth century saw a flowering of artistic culture and sophistication in the Umayyad court and in the city of Córdoba, this period was all too shortlived and localized. Eventually, twenty years of civil war caused the implosion of the Umayyad regime. It is through the forces that divided – not united – the disparate elements in Spanish society that we may best glean its nature and its lessons. Caliphs and Kings is devoted to better understanding those circumstances, as historian Roger Collins takes a fresh look at certainties, both old and new, to strip ninth- and tenth-century Spain of its mythic narrative, revealing the more complex truth beneath.

The structures of the late ancient Visigothic kingdom of Iberia were rooted in those of Roman Hispania, Santiago Castellanos argues, but Catholic bishops subsequently produced a narrative of process and power from the episcopal point of view that became the official record and primary documentation for all later historians. The delineation of these two discrete projects—of construction and invention—form the core of The Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia. Castellanos reads documents of the period that are little known to many Anglophone scholars, including records of church councils, sermons, and letters, and utilizes archaeological findings to determine how the political system of elites related to local communities, and how the documentation they created promoted an ideological agenda. Looking particularly at the archaeological record, he finds that rural communities in the region were complex worlds unto themselves, with clear internal social stratification little recognized by the literate elites.

Including maps, an extensive introduction and notes and commentary by the translator, Early Islamic Spain is the first English language translation of the important history of Islamic Spain by Ibn al-Qutiyyah, one of the earliest and significant histories of Muslim Spain and an important source for scholars.

A finalist for World Magazine's Book of the Year! Scholars, journalists, and even politicians uphold Muslim-ruled medieval Spain—"al-Andalus"—as a multicultural paradise, a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in harmony. There is only one problem with this widely accepted account: it is a myth. In this groundbreaking book, Northwestern University scholar Darío Fernández-Morera tells the full story of Islamic Spain. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise shines light on hidden history by drawing on an abundance of primary sources that scholars have ignored, as well as archaeological evidence only recently unearthed. This supposed beacon of peaceful coexistence began, of course, with the Islamic Caliphate's conquest of Spain. Far from a land of religious tolerance, Islamic Spain was marked by religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life and the marginalization of Christians and other groups—all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise provides a desperately needed reassessment of medieval Spain. As professors, politicians, and pundits continue to celebrate Islamic Spain for its "multiculturalism" and "diversity," Fernández-Morera sets the historical record straight—showing that a politically useful myth is a myth nonetheless.

This bibliography is a supplement to the one previously published by Brill in 1988. This one covers material from 1984 to 2003. The chronology has been expanded to begin in the fourth century. Numerous Iberian Church Fathers not represented in the first one are now incorporated. The book contains author and subject indexes and is cross-referenced throughout.

This handbook offers an overview of the main issues regarding the political, economic, social, religious, intellectual and artistic history of the Iberian Peninsula during the period of Muslim rule (eighth–fifteenth centuries). A comprehensive list of primary and secondary sources attests the vitality of the academic study of al-Andalus (= Muslim Iberia) and its place in present-day discussions about the past and the present. The contributors are all specialists with diverse backgrounds providing different perspectives and approaches. The volume includes chapters dealing with the destiny of the Muslim population after the Christian conquest and with the posterity of al-Andalus in art, literature and different historiographical traditions. The chapters are organised in the following sections: Political history, concentrating on rulers and armies Social, religious and economic groups Intellectual and cultural developments Legacy and memory of al-Andalus Offering a synthetic and updated academic treatment of the history and society of Muslim Iberia, this comprehensive and up-to-date collection provides an authoritative and interdisciplinary guide. It is a valuable resource for both specialists and the general public interested in the history of the Iberian Peninsula, Islamic and Medieval studies.

This volume is dedicated to eliciting the interactions between localities across late antique and early medieval Europe and the wider Mediterranean. Significant research has been done in recent years to explore how late "Roman" and post-"Roman" cities, towns and other localities communicated vis-à-vis larger structural phenomena, such as provinces, empires, kingdoms, institutions and so on. This research has contributed considerably to our understanding of the place of the city in its context, but tends to portray the city as a necessarily subordinate conduit within larger structures, rather than an entity in itself, or as a hermeneutical object of enquiry. Consequently, not enough research has been committed to examining how local people and communities thought about, engaged with, and struggled against nearby or distant urban neighbors.Urban Interactions addresses this lacuna in urban history by presenting articles that apply a diverse spectrum of approaches, from archaeological investigation to critical analyses of historiographical and historical biases and developmental consideration of antagonisms between ecclesiastical centers. Through these avenues of investigation, this volume elucidates the relationship between the urban centers and their immediate hinterlands and neighboring cities with which they might vie or collaborate. This entanglement and competition, whether subterraneous or explicit across overarching political, religious or other macro categories, is evaluated through a broad geographical range of late "Roman" provinces and post-"Roman" states to maintain an expansive perspective of developmental trends within and about the city.

This book examines a pivotal period in ancient human history: the fall of the Roman Empire and the birth of a new European civilization in the early Middle Ages. The Early Medieval World: From the Fall of Rome to the Time of Charlemagne addresses the social and material culture of this critical period in the evolution of Western society, covering the social, political, cultural, and religious history of the Mediterranean world and northern Europe. The two-volume set explains how invading and migrating barbarian tribes—spurred by raiding Huns from the steppes of Central Asia—contributed to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and documents how the blending of Greco-Roman, Germanic, and Christian cultures birthed a new civilization in Western Europe, creating the Christian Church and the modern nation-state. A-Z entries discuss political transformation, changing religious practices in daily life, sculpture and the arts, material culture, and social structure, and provide biographies of important men and women in the transitional period of late antiquity. The work will be extremely helpful to students learning about the factors that contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire—an important and common topic in world history curricula.