Brian A. Catlos

An in-depth portrait of the Crusades-era Mediterranean world shares insights into the forces that shaped it, challenging modern opinions about its religious extremism while discussing such topics as the coexistence of people of differing faiths and the period's military and cultural practices.

Faith, Power, and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad

Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors

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.

A New History of Islamic Spain

Kingdoms of Faith

Mark D. Meyerson

Thomas E Burman

Texts from the Middle is a companion primary source reader to the textbook The Sea in the Middle. It can be used alone or in conjunction with the textbook, providing an original history of the Middle Ages that places the Mediterranean at the geographical center of the study of the period from 650 to 1650. Building on the textbook’s unique approach, these sources center on the Mediterranean and emphasize 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. The supplementary reader mirrors the main text’s fifteen-chapter structure, providing six sources per chapter. The two texts 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.

Documents from the Mediterranean World, 650–1650

Texts from the Middle

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

Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c.1050–1614

"Schwungvoll, sachkundig und originell: Dies ist die Schlüsselgeschichte des Maurischen Spanien." Elizabeth Drayson, University of Cambridge Muslime, Christen und Juden schufen im Süden Spaniens über acht Jahrhunderte hinweg eine höchste bemerkenswerte Zivilisation, deren große Zeugnisse - wie die Alhambra - uns mit ihrer überwältigenden Schönheit bis heute in den Bann schlagen. Brian C. Catlos, einer der weltweit besten Kenner, legt eine neue große Darstellung vor, die zeigt, dass al-Andalus weder ein Paradies aufgeklärter Toleranz noch ein Schlachtfeld der Kulturen war. Sein schwungvoll geschriebenes Buch räumt mit Geschichtsmythen auf und belegt eindrucksvoll, wie vielschichtig die Koexistenz der Ethnien und Religionen in diesem einzigartigen Kulturraum war.

Geschichte des islamischen Spanien

al-Andalus

Sharon Kinoshita

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.

Brian A. Catlos

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