Building Legitimacy

Building Legitimacy

Author: Isabel Alfonso

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 9789004133051

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This volume provides relevant insights into medieval political legitimation, and its impact on political competition and notions of power. With a main focus on medieval Castile, the political discourses purporting to legitimate practices of power are discussed, both as pieces of textual material and in their wider historical context.


Alfonso X, the Cortes, and Government in Medieval Spain

Alfonso X, the Cortes, and Government in Medieval Spain

Author: Joseph F. O'Callaghan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13:

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The studies included in this volume, written over a period of nearly thirty years, deal principally with two major themes, namely, the reign of Alfonso X, el Sabio (1252-84), one of the great kings of medieval Spain, and the development of the cortes of Castile-León, a characteristc example of the emergence of European representative parliamentary institutions. An introductory study describes the integration of medieval Spain into western Europe in the late eleventh century.


Double Diaspora in Sephardic Literature

Double Diaspora in Sephardic Literature

Author: David A. Wacks

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2015-05-11

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 0253015766

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The year 1492 has long divided the study of Sephardic culture into two distinct periods, before and after the expulsion of Jews from Spain. David A. Wacks examines the works of Sephardic writers from the 13th to the 16th centuries and shows that this literature was shaped by two interwoven experiences of diaspora: first from the Biblical homeland Zion and later from the ancestral hostland, Sefarad. Jewish in Spain and Spanish abroad, these writers negotiated Jewish, Spanish, and diasporic idioms to produce a uniquely Sephardic perspective. Wacks brings Diaspora Studies into dialogue with medieval and early modern Sephardic literature for the first time.


Astronomy and Astrology in al-Andalus and the Maghrib

Astronomy and Astrology in al-Andalus and the Maghrib

Author: Julio Samsó

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-05-31

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1000951553

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This new volume of papers by Julio Samsó deals with the development of astronomy and astrology in al-Andalus and the Maghrib between the 10th and the 19th centuries. Opening with a survey of the social history of the exact sciences in al-Andalus, the book then looks at astronomical tables: the first stages of the introduction of al-Khwarizmi's and al-Battani's tables through the school of Maslama al-Majriti, the development of Ibn al-Zarqalluh/ Azarquiel's theories in Maghribi zijes (Ibn al-Banna' and Ibn Azzuz) and the abandonment of this tradition towards the end of the 14th century. From this period onwards new Eastern zijes (Muhyi al-Din al-Maghribi, Ibn al-Shatir, Ulugh Beg) are introduced in the Maghrib and, towards the beginning of the 17th century, a translation of Abraham Zacut and José Vizinho's Almanach Perpetuum (end of the 15th century) becomes well known in the whole Islamic world, from Morocco to the Yemen. As well as zijes themselves, the author also deals with theoretical astronomy (the use of an elliptical deferent for Mercury in Ibn al-Zarqalluh's equatorium and the criticisms of Ibn al-Haytham and Jabir b. Aflah on Ptolemy's determination of the parameters of the same planet), and with the use of zijes for the calculation of horoscopes, and an experimental astrological method for the correction of mean motion planetary tables (Ibn Azzuz).


The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus

The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus

Author: Dwight Reynolds

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-31

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 1000289540

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The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus is a critical account of the history of Andalusian music in Iberia from the Islamic conquest of 711 to the final expulsion of the Moriscos (Spanish Muslims converted to Christianity) in the early 17th century. This volume presents the documentation that has come down to us, accompanied by critical and detailed analyses of the sources written in Arabic, Old Catalan, Castilian, Hebrew, and Latin. It is also informed by research the author has conducted on modern Andalusian musical traditions in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. While the cultural achievements of medieval Muslim Spain have been the topic of a large number of scholarly and popular publications in recent decades, what may arguably be its most enduring contribution – music – has been almost entirely neglected. The overarching purpose of this work is to elucidate as clearly as possible the many different types of musical interactions that took place in medieval Iberia and the complexity of the various borrowings, adaptations, hybridizations, and appropriations involved.


The Visual Culture of al-Andalus in the Christian Kingdoms of Iberia

The Visual Culture of al-Andalus in the Christian Kingdoms of Iberia

Author: Inés Monteira

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-10-11

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 104022671X

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This book addresses the reception of Islamic visual culture by the northern Iberian kingdoms, by systematically comparing works of art from both sides and fleshing out their historical context. This study includes figurative and iconographic motifs, architectural forms, and even the spolia from constructions and Arabic inscriptions that were embedded in Christian buildings. The Islamic visual culture of al-Andalus was often transformed as it was recreated by Christian hands, bringing to the fore various nuances in the relationship between the two religious communities. Artistic transfer was conditioned by social coexistence between Christians and Muslims—both in the caliphate al-Andalus and in the northern realms—and military conflict. To approach the different ways in which Andalusi visual culture was received in the northern kingdoms, while embracing the vast diversity of case studies available, this book is divided into three thematic sections: Reinterpretation, Appropriation, and Artistic Transfers. This book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, and medieval studies.


The Gibraltar Crusade

The Gibraltar Crusade

Author: Joseph F. O'Callaghan

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-03-17

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0812204638

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The epic battle for control of the Strait of Gibraltar waged by Castile, Morocco, and Granada in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries is a major, but often overlooked, chapter in the history of the Christian reconquest of Spain. After the Castilian conquest of Seville in 1248 and the submission of the Muslim kingdom of Granada as a vassal state, the Moors no longer loomed as a threat and the reconquest seemed to be over. Still, in the following century, the Castilian kings, prompted by ideology and strategy, attempted to dominate the Strait. As self-proclaimed heirs of the Visigoths, they aspired not only to reconstitute the Visigothic kingdom by expelling the Muslims from Spain but also to conquer Morocco as part of the Visigothic legacy. As successive bands of Muslims over the centuries had crossed the Strait from Morocco into Spain, the kings of Castile recognized the strategic importance of securing Algeciras, Gibraltar, and Tarifa, the ports long used by the invaders. At a time when European enthusiasm for the crusade to the Holy Land was on the wane, the Christian struggle for the Strait received the character of a crusade as papal bulls conferred the crusading indulgence as well as ancillary benefits. The Gibraltar Crusade had mixed results. Although the Castilians seized Gibraltar in 1309 and Algeciras in 1344, the Moors eventually repossessed them. Only Tarifa, captured in 1292, remained in Castilian hands. Nevertheless, the power of the Marinid dynasty of Morocco was broken at the battle of Salado in 1340, and for the remainder of the Middle Ages Spain was relieved of the threat of Moroccan invasion. While the reconquest remained dormant during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, the last Muslim outpost in Spain, in 1492. In subsequent years Castile fulfilled its earlier aspirations by establishing a foothold in Morocco.