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Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500
This is a richly detailed account of Muslim life throughout the kingdoms of Spain, from the fall of Seville, which signaled the beginning of the retreat of Islam, to the Christian reconquest.
"Harvey not only examines the politics of the Nasrids, but also the Islamic communities in the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula. This innovative approach breaks new ground, enables the reader to appreciate the situation of all Spanish Muslims and is fully vindicated. . . . An absorbing and thoroughly informed narrative."—Richard Hitchcock, Times Higher Education Supplement
"L. P. Harvey has produced a beautifully written account of an enthralling subject."—Peter Linehan, The Observer
"Harvey not only examines the politics of the Nasrids, but also the Islamic communities in the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula. This innovative approach breaks new ground, enables the reader to appreciate the situation of all Spanish Muslims and is fully vindicated. . . . An absorbing and thoroughly informed narrative."—Richard Hitchcock, Times Higher Education Supplement
"L. P. Harvey has produced a beautifully written account of an enthralling subject."—Peter Linehan, The Observer
386 pages, Paperback
First published December 15, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 6, 2013
This book got a middling-star-ranking solely because of its awkward arrangement. A superb opening couple chapters were followed by a series of chapters on the unique problems of Mozarabs and Mujedars in smaller Islamic kingdoms which taxed the reader's patience at times. But the persistent reader is rewarded with a thrilling and tragic narrative from mid-book on, describing the last decades of Islam in the isolated kingdom of Granada, and its offshoot kingdoms in Malaga and Murcia. The second half of the book on its own might warrant close to five stars. Perhaps the distracting chapters could be rearranged as an appendix.
While Harvey takes up his story in 1250, it would be wrong to think that al-Andalus was still in its glory by that time. Islamic Spain was at its height under the Umayyad caliphate, from 700 to roughly 1000 A.D. This was followed by more puritanical and primitive rule from the Almoravid and Almohad caliphates, not unlike today's Salafists. By the time Christian armies took major cities like Cordoba and Seville, Harvey said, the fate of Islam in Spain already was sealed.
From the perspective of the citizen within surviving Spanish Islamic states, rulers always had to compromise themselves by making truces and paying vassal money to Castile (and to Aragon and Navarre on occasion). Thus, palace intrigue and citizen unrest were constant companions to rulers inside the Alhambra. Externally, the Islamic states in the Morocco-Tunisia region no longer were as unified as they were in Umayyad and taifa days. They could send small raiding parties to try and re-take coastal Spanish cities like Tarifa and Algeciras, but the days of sending large armies across the Straits of Gibraltar were gone for good.
Harvey is eloquent in giving us the details of a story you realize cannot end any way but in tragedy. We already know that Christian soldiers relied on pretty flimsy crusade excuses to raid Granada, but we learn of some unusual characters involved in this business, such as the obviously delusional crusader, Martin Yanez de Barbudo, who tried to take Granada in 1394 with 200 men and a cross slung over his shoulder. Needless to say, no claimed 'protection of Christ' could keep Martin and his devout clique of lunatics from being wiped out. Harvey also makes interesting analogies between the jueces de frontera (frontier justice) of the late 1300s and the American Wild West of the post-Civil War era.
The final few decades of the split Granada-Malaga kingdom are depressing to read. Even those who see the removal of Islamic influence from the Iberian Peninsula as a good thing, will find it embarrassing to see just how wicked the Christian kings were in betraying Muslims. Spain was not heavily into the politics of Catholic doctrine prior to Ferdinand and Isabella's rise, but the evil acts of the Christian kingdoms set the stage for 500 years of Catholic folly in Spain. The early 16th-century betrayal of the Capitulations of 1491, and the forced expulsion of Jews and Muslims shortly thereafter, served as previews for five centuries of the ugly Spain, from Inquisition to Franco dictatorship.
While Harvey takes up his story in 1250, it would be wrong to think that al-Andalus was still in its glory by that time. Islamic Spain was at its height under the Umayyad caliphate, from 700 to roughly 1000 A.D. This was followed by more puritanical and primitive rule from the Almoravid and Almohad caliphates, not unlike today's Salafists. By the time Christian armies took major cities like Cordoba and Seville, Harvey said, the fate of Islam in Spain already was sealed.
From the perspective of the citizen within surviving Spanish Islamic states, rulers always had to compromise themselves by making truces and paying vassal money to Castile (and to Aragon and Navarre on occasion). Thus, palace intrigue and citizen unrest were constant companions to rulers inside the Alhambra. Externally, the Islamic states in the Morocco-Tunisia region no longer were as unified as they were in Umayyad and taifa days. They could send small raiding parties to try and re-take coastal Spanish cities like Tarifa and Algeciras, but the days of sending large armies across the Straits of Gibraltar were gone for good.
Harvey is eloquent in giving us the details of a story you realize cannot end any way but in tragedy. We already know that Christian soldiers relied on pretty flimsy crusade excuses to raid Granada, but we learn of some unusual characters involved in this business, such as the obviously delusional crusader, Martin Yanez de Barbudo, who tried to take Granada in 1394 with 200 men and a cross slung over his shoulder. Needless to say, no claimed 'protection of Christ' could keep Martin and his devout clique of lunatics from being wiped out. Harvey also makes interesting analogies between the jueces de frontera (frontier justice) of the late 1300s and the American Wild West of the post-Civil War era.
The final few decades of the split Granada-Malaga kingdom are depressing to read. Even those who see the removal of Islamic influence from the Iberian Peninsula as a good thing, will find it embarrassing to see just how wicked the Christian kings were in betraying Muslims. Spain was not heavily into the politics of Catholic doctrine prior to Ferdinand and Isabella's rise, but the evil acts of the Christian kingdoms set the stage for 500 years of Catholic folly in Spain. The early 16th-century betrayal of the Capitulations of 1491, and the forced expulsion of Jews and Muslims shortly thereafter, served as previews for five centuries of the ugly Spain, from Inquisition to Franco dictatorship.
November 17, 2024
I’m not sure what I thought I would be getting when I purchased this book...but vaguely thought that I would get some sort of record of religions mixing in the Spanish Peninsular and hybrid beliefs emerging which were subsequently seen as heretical and purged savagely by the inquisition.
In fact, there is virtually nothing much abut the inquisition; its main impact came later. But I had a vague idea of Spanish history ...and the reconquest but I’d never realised how complex the situation was. The reconquest actually happened over a period of hundreds of years and was not simply a matter of Ferdinand and Isabel pushing the moors out in one campaign.
There were three main kingdoms around the 1450s: Aragon, Castilla and Al Andalus (Granada) and they fought internally and externally...Christian Kingdom against Christian kingdom and against The Moorish kingdoms\;.....sometimes collaborating with the Moorish kingdoms against another Christian Kingdom. Within each of the main kingdoms there were cities and large landholders who were important players in their own right and played various power-roles...supporting the kings or withholding support etc. Added to this mix were the religious orders such as the knights of Calatrava who played their own power games and all of this was superimposed on the three major religions: Christians, Jews and Muslims. For hundreds of years the Muslims had managed with Jews and Christians in their kingdoms....certainly discriminated against and taxed rather heavily but present nevertheless. Likewise, in Castilla and Aragon there were Muslims living and practicing their faith. It was interesting to me to note that the “ The military orders naturally held much land in Extremadura. It may seem a contradiction that such Christian bodies, set up in order to combat Islam, should frequently have shown a preference for settling their lands with Muslim tenantry, but that is the case”. Likewise, the muslims (and jews) were discriminated against and taxed for their faith but they existed nevertheless and from time to time when things became too oppressive, both Christians and Muslims rebelled against their masters and pogroms followed.
I guess, the over-riding impression that I’ve taken away from this book is the sheer complexity of the politics of the time. Plus, perhaps, the double-dealing and dishonesty of major players. They relied upon the output of the peasantry and artisans but showed them little respect in return. Military campaigns were bloody and cruel , followed by looting and enslavery of the defeated. (And probably rape though this is not mentioned in this book).
One thing that did strike me was how difficult it was for people to change their religious beliefs despite the horrific alternatives being offered.....Usually slavery or emigration to Africa and an uncertain future. And it would have been very hard to live for a lifetime of , say, 70 years without having been involved in wars and disruption throughout the period 1250-1500.
However, I didn’t pick up much about the syncretism of religions...a little but not much. Which I found surprising. It is interesting that the muslim population by the end of the period had pretty much lost their Arabic and were relying on translations of the Koran. Also interesting to me that one of the Muslim hadiths has Mahommed talking about Al Andalus in the Koran, hundreds of years before Al Andalus came into being.
Here are some extracts that I found significant:
For a quarter of a millennium at the end of the Middle Ages Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula had a simple choice: either to accept subject Muslim (Mudejar) status within one of the Christian states (Aragon, Castile, Navarre) or live within the Islamic kingdom of Granada.
None of the these would-be Islamic states was to last for very long, and most of the political entities mentioned here were very small indeed.
None of the would-be states that failed possessed all the elements—a mountainous situation facilitating defence, distance from centers of Christian population, and a long sea coast, through which could pass military aid from North Africa—which in combination were probably the underlying reasons for Granada’s success......In the history of Islam in Spain there was a constant pattern of alternation between stability under central rule and near-anarchic proliferation of petty states wherever the central authority was absent or unable to function effectively.
Spain.......As for the ḣadīth (tradition) which allegedly praises life in Al-Andalus, that was not a place name that existed in the seventh century. The alleged words of Muḥammad are a fabrication, beyond any shadow of doubt......Christian clergy and Muslim fuqahāʾ (jurists) alike called for apartheid. Interfaith contact was to be eschewed, if possible banned altogether......Muslims had somehow to come to terms with the fact that some Muslims were now living on a permanent basis within Christian states in a way never envisaged when Islam was first preached.
The subject Muslims of the Christian kingdoms sought to have no history, to live discreetly and unperceived......There were a number of morerías of note. The largest in 1495 was Agreda, near to Soria, with 122 households contributing to the community tax; others included Cervera with 40, Deza with 47, Aranda with 29, Molina de Aragon (in the province of Guadalajara) with 45,......Madrid with 50, Talavera with 33, and Toledo with 43. Whether figures were so low in the thirteenth century is not known
The military orders naturally held much land in Extremadura. It may seem a contradiction that such Christian bodies, set up in order to combat Islam, should frequently have shown a preference for settling their lands with Muslim tenantry, but that is the case.
The Christian rulers had to develop their own legal codes and enactments as a framework to permit them to govern their new subject populations, and the Muslims themselves had to discover how to follow the precepts of their faith in the quite new circumstances in which they found themselves.
The translations of Koranic texts which we find in use among the Muslims of Spain in the periods subsequent to this all to some degree inject into Spanish features of the Semitic morphology and syntax of the holy text. A new Arabized Spanish emerged as the literary language of the Muslims;
specialists generally refer to it now as aljamía. One of the features of aljamía is usually that it is written in the Arabic alphabet.
One of Ice de Gebir’s great contributions to the survival of Islam in Spain during the final period of the Middle Ages and in the sixteenth century was that he provided his coreligionists not only with a translation of their scriptures into their vernacular and a textbook of their religious law, but also, a language that was theirs in the sense that it was based on their own Castilian, but was also theirs in the sense that it had Islamic roots.
ICE DE GEBIR’S SUNNĪ BREVIARY
This chapter is such a succinct statement of Mudejar beliefs that it will be translated here without any omissions: Principal Commandments and Prohibitions Worship the Creator alone, attributing to him neither image nor likeness, and honoring his chosen and blessed Muḥammad.
Desire for your neighbor [proximo] that good which you desire for yourself.
Keep constantly pure by means of the minor and major ritual ablutions, and the five prayers. Be obedient to your father and your mother, even though they be unbelievers.
Do not swear in the name of the Creator in vain.
Do not kill, do not steal, do not commit fornication with any creature. Pay the canonical alms [azaque, i.e., zakāt].
Fast during the month of Ramadan. Make the Pilgrimage [ḥajj].
Do not sleep with your wife unless both you and she are in a state of ritual purity.
Honor the day of Assembly [i.e., Friday], above all during the holy times, with all purity and with devout prayers, and with visits to the holy men of the law and to the poor.
Etc.,
This thirteen-article creed had the widest circulation among the Muslims of Ice’s day and after. It is a perplexing document in that it resembles no creedal statement known in Arabic, but is very close indeed to a summary of Islamic belief in twelve articles given by Lull (ca. 1272) in The Book of the Gentile and the Three Sages.
Life was lived by these Muslims in expectation of the imminent blast on Isrāfīl’s trumpet, which would mark “the bringing to an end of this present age” (el afinamento deste presente siglo).
In 1449 we find a most unusual pattern of alliances: Granada and Navarre versus Castile. That the two small kingdoms had a common cause is obvious enough; within half a century both were to be gobbled up by Castile. We have also seen how the house of Navarre relied on its own Muslim minority population to provide an important contingent in its army. However, the distance separating the two states made effective coordination of effort difficult.
Once again Castilian policy proved unworkable. If the Castilians found somebody to act as their nominee, either he became so unpopular he could not rule, or he asserted his independence and spoke up for his subjects against the Castilian demands.
In order to place the feuding of the Granadans in perspective, we should bear in mind that on the Christian side of the frontier equally destructive outbreaks of violence set Christians one against another.
Granada fell because it was economically and demographically weaker, and because Castile’s cruel long-term policy of wrecking Granadan agriculture was making it difficult for even the hard-working and skilled Granadan farmers to survive.
At the end of the month there was an agreement. This hardly mentions the fate of the Muslim people who had been laying down their lives in defense of their homelands, it is concerned instead with the interests of the Muslim ruling class and with the subterfuges that would permit Sīdī Yaḥyā, Muslim commander, to transmogrify himself safely and profitably into Don Pedro de Granada Venegas.
Many Christians must have been privy to the negotiations, but it did not fit in with the powerful myth of the Reconquest for the truth to be known. Nobody wished it to be public knowledge that the gates of the city were waiting to be opened, with the only outstanding obstacle a problem of public relations and of news management. In January 1492 it would not have been thinkable that the campaign to end all campaigns was consummated thanks to treason at the top of the Granadan state rather than to the heroism of the Castilians.
The agreement had been made for the Alhambra to be handed over at the Epiphany [January 6] as stated.
Yuse Banegas (a member of a distinguished Granadan family) preached a little sermon, [to a visiting Morisco author].
“My son: I am quite aware that you know little of the things of Granada, but do not be surprised if I recall them, for there is not a moment when it does not all reverberate within my heart; there is no minute, no hour when it does not tear at my entrails. . . . In my opinion nobody ever wept over such a misfortune as that of the sons of Granada. Do not doubt what I say, because I am one myself, and an eye-witness, for with my own eyes I saw all the noble ladies, widows and married, subjected to mockery, and I saw more than three hundred maidens sold at public auction; [Many people were sold as slaves following the siege of Malaga in 1487] I will tell you no more, it is more than I can bear. I lost three sons, all of them died in defence of the religion [he uses the word addin], and I lost two daughters and my wife, and this one daughter was left to be my consolation: she was seven months old at the time.”
He said more: “Son: I do not weep over the past, for to it there is no return. But I weep for what you will see in your own lifetime, and what you can expect in this land, in this Peninsula of Spain. May it please God, because of the nobility of our honoured Koran, that what I have to say be proved unfounded, and that it does not turn out as I see it, but even so our religion will suffer. What will people say? Where has our prayer gone to? What has happened to the religion of our forefathers?
My overall take on the book. Hard going (to read) and an almost never-ending repetition of wars and skirmishes; of kings being killed and palace coups, of intrigue and treaties being made and broken ...yet through it all, the common people getting along with each other and just living despite religious differences. Four stars from me.
In fact, there is virtually nothing much abut the inquisition; its main impact came later. But I had a vague idea of Spanish history ...and the reconquest but I’d never realised how complex the situation was. The reconquest actually happened over a period of hundreds of years and was not simply a matter of Ferdinand and Isabel pushing the moors out in one campaign.
There were three main kingdoms around the 1450s: Aragon, Castilla and Al Andalus (Granada) and they fought internally and externally...Christian Kingdom against Christian kingdom and against The Moorish kingdoms\;.....sometimes collaborating with the Moorish kingdoms against another Christian Kingdom. Within each of the main kingdoms there were cities and large landholders who were important players in their own right and played various power-roles...supporting the kings or withholding support etc. Added to this mix were the religious orders such as the knights of Calatrava who played their own power games and all of this was superimposed on the three major religions: Christians, Jews and Muslims. For hundreds of years the Muslims had managed with Jews and Christians in their kingdoms....certainly discriminated against and taxed rather heavily but present nevertheless. Likewise, in Castilla and Aragon there were Muslims living and practicing their faith. It was interesting to me to note that the “ The military orders naturally held much land in Extremadura. It may seem a contradiction that such Christian bodies, set up in order to combat Islam, should frequently have shown a preference for settling their lands with Muslim tenantry, but that is the case”. Likewise, the muslims (and jews) were discriminated against and taxed for their faith but they existed nevertheless and from time to time when things became too oppressive, both Christians and Muslims rebelled against their masters and pogroms followed.
I guess, the over-riding impression that I’ve taken away from this book is the sheer complexity of the politics of the time. Plus, perhaps, the double-dealing and dishonesty of major players. They relied upon the output of the peasantry and artisans but showed them little respect in return. Military campaigns were bloody and cruel , followed by looting and enslavery of the defeated. (And probably rape though this is not mentioned in this book).
One thing that did strike me was how difficult it was for people to change their religious beliefs despite the horrific alternatives being offered.....Usually slavery or emigration to Africa and an uncertain future. And it would have been very hard to live for a lifetime of , say, 70 years without having been involved in wars and disruption throughout the period 1250-1500.
However, I didn’t pick up much about the syncretism of religions...a little but not much. Which I found surprising. It is interesting that the muslim population by the end of the period had pretty much lost their Arabic and were relying on translations of the Koran. Also interesting to me that one of the Muslim hadiths has Mahommed talking about Al Andalus in the Koran, hundreds of years before Al Andalus came into being.
Here are some extracts that I found significant:
For a quarter of a millennium at the end of the Middle Ages Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula had a simple choice: either to accept subject Muslim (Mudejar) status within one of the Christian states (Aragon, Castile, Navarre) or live within the Islamic kingdom of Granada.
None of the these would-be Islamic states was to last for very long, and most of the political entities mentioned here were very small indeed.
None of the would-be states that failed possessed all the elements—a mountainous situation facilitating defence, distance from centers of Christian population, and a long sea coast, through which could pass military aid from North Africa—which in combination were probably the underlying reasons for Granada’s success......In the history of Islam in Spain there was a constant pattern of alternation between stability under central rule and near-anarchic proliferation of petty states wherever the central authority was absent or unable to function effectively.
Spain.......As for the ḣadīth (tradition) which allegedly praises life in Al-Andalus, that was not a place name that existed in the seventh century. The alleged words of Muḥammad are a fabrication, beyond any shadow of doubt......Christian clergy and Muslim fuqahāʾ (jurists) alike called for apartheid. Interfaith contact was to be eschewed, if possible banned altogether......Muslims had somehow to come to terms with the fact that some Muslims were now living on a permanent basis within Christian states in a way never envisaged when Islam was first preached.
The subject Muslims of the Christian kingdoms sought to have no history, to live discreetly and unperceived......There were a number of morerías of note. The largest in 1495 was Agreda, near to Soria, with 122 households contributing to the community tax; others included Cervera with 40, Deza with 47, Aranda with 29, Molina de Aragon (in the province of Guadalajara) with 45,......Madrid with 50, Talavera with 33, and Toledo with 43. Whether figures were so low in the thirteenth century is not known
The military orders naturally held much land in Extremadura. It may seem a contradiction that such Christian bodies, set up in order to combat Islam, should frequently have shown a preference for settling their lands with Muslim tenantry, but that is the case.
The Christian rulers had to develop their own legal codes and enactments as a framework to permit them to govern their new subject populations, and the Muslims themselves had to discover how to follow the precepts of their faith in the quite new circumstances in which they found themselves.
The translations of Koranic texts which we find in use among the Muslims of Spain in the periods subsequent to this all to some degree inject into Spanish features of the Semitic morphology and syntax of the holy text. A new Arabized Spanish emerged as the literary language of the Muslims;
specialists generally refer to it now as aljamía. One of the features of aljamía is usually that it is written in the Arabic alphabet.
One of Ice de Gebir’s great contributions to the survival of Islam in Spain during the final period of the Middle Ages and in the sixteenth century was that he provided his coreligionists not only with a translation of their scriptures into their vernacular and a textbook of their religious law, but also, a language that was theirs in the sense that it was based on their own Castilian, but was also theirs in the sense that it had Islamic roots.
ICE DE GEBIR’S SUNNĪ BREVIARY
This chapter is such a succinct statement of Mudejar beliefs that it will be translated here without any omissions: Principal Commandments and Prohibitions Worship the Creator alone, attributing to him neither image nor likeness, and honoring his chosen and blessed Muḥammad.
Desire for your neighbor [proximo] that good which you desire for yourself.
Keep constantly pure by means of the minor and major ritual ablutions, and the five prayers. Be obedient to your father and your mother, even though they be unbelievers.
Do not swear in the name of the Creator in vain.
Do not kill, do not steal, do not commit fornication with any creature. Pay the canonical alms [azaque, i.e., zakāt].
Fast during the month of Ramadan. Make the Pilgrimage [ḥajj].
Do not sleep with your wife unless both you and she are in a state of ritual purity.
Honor the day of Assembly [i.e., Friday], above all during the holy times, with all purity and with devout prayers, and with visits to the holy men of the law and to the poor.
Etc.,
This thirteen-article creed had the widest circulation among the Muslims of Ice’s day and after. It is a perplexing document in that it resembles no creedal statement known in Arabic, but is very close indeed to a summary of Islamic belief in twelve articles given by Lull (ca. 1272) in The Book of the Gentile and the Three Sages.
Life was lived by these Muslims in expectation of the imminent blast on Isrāfīl’s trumpet, which would mark “the bringing to an end of this present age” (el afinamento deste presente siglo).
In 1449 we find a most unusual pattern of alliances: Granada and Navarre versus Castile. That the two small kingdoms had a common cause is obvious enough; within half a century both were to be gobbled up by Castile. We have also seen how the house of Navarre relied on its own Muslim minority population to provide an important contingent in its army. However, the distance separating the two states made effective coordination of effort difficult.
Once again Castilian policy proved unworkable. If the Castilians found somebody to act as their nominee, either he became so unpopular he could not rule, or he asserted his independence and spoke up for his subjects against the Castilian demands.
In order to place the feuding of the Granadans in perspective, we should bear in mind that on the Christian side of the frontier equally destructive outbreaks of violence set Christians one against another.
Granada fell because it was economically and demographically weaker, and because Castile’s cruel long-term policy of wrecking Granadan agriculture was making it difficult for even the hard-working and skilled Granadan farmers to survive.
At the end of the month there was an agreement. This hardly mentions the fate of the Muslim people who had been laying down their lives in defense of their homelands, it is concerned instead with the interests of the Muslim ruling class and with the subterfuges that would permit Sīdī Yaḥyā, Muslim commander, to transmogrify himself safely and profitably into Don Pedro de Granada Venegas.
Many Christians must have been privy to the negotiations, but it did not fit in with the powerful myth of the Reconquest for the truth to be known. Nobody wished it to be public knowledge that the gates of the city were waiting to be opened, with the only outstanding obstacle a problem of public relations and of news management. In January 1492 it would not have been thinkable that the campaign to end all campaigns was consummated thanks to treason at the top of the Granadan state rather than to the heroism of the Castilians.
The agreement had been made for the Alhambra to be handed over at the Epiphany [January 6] as stated.
Yuse Banegas (a member of a distinguished Granadan family) preached a little sermon, [to a visiting Morisco author].
“My son: I am quite aware that you know little of the things of Granada, but do not be surprised if I recall them, for there is not a moment when it does not all reverberate within my heart; there is no minute, no hour when it does not tear at my entrails. . . . In my opinion nobody ever wept over such a misfortune as that of the sons of Granada. Do not doubt what I say, because I am one myself, and an eye-witness, for with my own eyes I saw all the noble ladies, widows and married, subjected to mockery, and I saw more than three hundred maidens sold at public auction; [Many people were sold as slaves following the siege of Malaga in 1487] I will tell you no more, it is more than I can bear. I lost three sons, all of them died in defence of the religion [he uses the word addin], and I lost two daughters and my wife, and this one daughter was left to be my consolation: she was seven months old at the time.”
He said more: “Son: I do not weep over the past, for to it there is no return. But I weep for what you will see in your own lifetime, and what you can expect in this land, in this Peninsula of Spain. May it please God, because of the nobility of our honoured Koran, that what I have to say be proved unfounded, and that it does not turn out as I see it, but even so our religion will suffer. What will people say? Where has our prayer gone to? What has happened to the religion of our forefathers?
My overall take on the book. Hard going (to read) and an almost never-ending repetition of wars and skirmishes; of kings being killed and palace coups, of intrigue and treaties being made and broken ...yet through it all, the common people getting along with each other and just living despite religious differences. Four stars from me.
July 22, 2018
Very academic work about Islamic Spain during this period. Talks about both the Nasrid Granada as well as Muslims living under Christian kingdoms. A lot of interesting and unique themes: living as minority as well as Granada's struggle to remain independent against larger kingdoms. The author is very knowledgeable, he cites various sources from many sides and languages, and draw from his own knowledge about Islamic teachings and practices as well.
March 30, 2021
The way this author describes this history is super confusing. So in the beginning he goes over a lot of linguistic stuff including the fact that Spaniards would have specific words for converts, Muslims under Christian rule, different Muslim groups, etc. But I fail to see how that is supposed to help me when the author just states all possible terms in quick secession without explaining which will be relevant to this historical period and which can just be described by an English phrase in order to consolidate the number of terms in other languages as to keep English readers focused.
Also he doesn't really give us an insight into who Muhammed the First even is by describing what he cares about, his goals, his personality, his upbringing. The author skips this entirely and just gets into "Muhammed the First, you must know him already right? Of course you do! So anyways, he was making political policies in Granada....". It threw me off. And the introduction didn't do well in setting the stage or even giving me an idea as what this book will have in store for me, the reader.
The author just states that the Spanish Christians are attacking with no explanation and since he doesn't describe strategy or action or any kind for the most part on the Moors side, it kind of infantilizes Muslim-ruled Spain and the Moors and makes them seem incapable of intelligent action or defending themselves, which I know is highly unlikely to have been the case.
This probably wasn't the authors intention, but this book is so strangely written that I'm not sure what this author's intention was.
I might attempt to read this again at a later date but for now, this was pretty off-putting.
Also he doesn't really give us an insight into who Muhammed the First even is by describing what he cares about, his goals, his personality, his upbringing. The author skips this entirely and just gets into "Muhammed the First, you must know him already right? Of course you do! So anyways, he was making political policies in Granada....". It threw me off. And the introduction didn't do well in setting the stage or even giving me an idea as what this book will have in store for me, the reader.
The author just states that the Spanish Christians are attacking with no explanation and since he doesn't describe strategy or action or any kind for the most part on the Moors side, it kind of infantilizes Muslim-ruled Spain and the Moors and makes them seem incapable of intelligent action or defending themselves, which I know is highly unlikely to have been the case.
This probably wasn't the authors intention, but this book is so strangely written that I'm not sure what this author's intention was.
I might attempt to read this again at a later date but for now, this was pretty off-putting.
April 7, 2024
Don't know why I had the impression this would be a more general reader type trot—it isn't. This is a scholarly history. The title could perhaps be more descriptive, as this is really a survey covering the reconquest in its final centuries. After some context setting in the opening chapters (perhaps the most interesting portion of the text), this settles down into a reign by reign, blow by blow, betrayal by betrayal account of how the last redoubts of Al-Andalus were won town by town, siege by siege, assault by assault. It can be a fairly unedifying slog, as, apparently, was the reconquest. The final century, with its seemingly never-ending roundelay of betrayals by one leader after another (most of whom were kin), makes one wonder why the reconquest took as long as it did. The author uses the standard materials available from various Iberian sources and makes as much of a meal as possible of the extant works in Arabic covering the same time period, with useful caveats everywhere warning against the score-settling, propagandistic nature of many narratives. Where motives remain hard to parse (as with Boabdil, late in the game), Harvey is judicious and careful and clear about what is speculation rather than hard fact. Not really for generalists, this volume will be of use primarily to historians and scholars. What might tempt a civilian is the fact that Harvey writes largely free of jargon and theory.
October 31, 2024
Book that (mostly) captures the histories of the Islamic Kings and Princes in the waning years of the Reconquest. Book has some insights of life in both Kingdoms, but could have perhaps better incorporated more about the life of the people (and in the Royal Courts) and less a history of a succession of kings.
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