Dávid Biró. From Iberia to China: Some Interactions of the Islamic World with the West and the East. (2023) HISTORICAL STUDIES ON CENTRAL EUROPE, 258-260. (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Islamic West (North Africa, Iberia and Sicily), 700–1492
Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture, Volume 1, Murray Fraser (ed.) and Catherine Gregg (managing ed.), 2019
The new Banister Fletcher is Winner of the Colvin Prize for 2020 as awarded by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (https://www.sahgb.org.uk/colvin-prize). The volume, which comprises 88 essays, also received an Honourable Mention in the American Library Association's 2019 Dartmouth Medal Awards. My essay surveys the architecture of the medieval Islamic West (North Africa, Iberia, and Sicily) from the 8th to the 15th centuries.
The Impact of Islamic Civilization and Culture in Europe During the Crusades
2012
Abstract: Crusades occurred between Muslims and Christians in 1097 to 1291, which its main aim was to recapture Jerusalem by the Christians. During this time, Europeans had enough opportunity to learn about Islamic civilization and its cultural and economic benefits. Although these were ended with the political and military victory of Muslims enabling them to keep their lands, Europeans were much benefited of the economy, culture and civilization.
This essay analyzes the travel account authored by Moroccan ambassador Muhammad al-Ghass^ an^ ı, who visited Spain in 1690 –91. The account shows the evolution of the early modern frontier between Christian Europe and Islamic North Africa, from a militarized boundary to the development of diplomatic relations. Both an agent and witness of that history, al-Ghass^ an^ ı describes a heterogeneous space: he surveys the border, explores the foreign land of modern Spain, and reimagines the memory of al-Andalus. His important account, based on sharp observation and serious research, helps nuance the prevailing view that Arab culture had ignored Europe before the nineteenth century.
During the last two decades, it has become fashionable not merely to write about issues concerning the exchange of knowledge between Jesuits and China or the acquisition of goods and knowledge in the Iberian colonial empires, as was previously the case. Historians of science now direct their attention also to other areas of the globe, where such processes took place during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Depending on their specific expertise, they focus on Dutch trade in what is called today Southeast Asia, networks of knowledge in the Mediterranean or in the Transatlantic world or on colonial institutions in the western parts of the Spanish colonial empire. The actors relevant to these broader historical explorations are mostly men from a selected number of states in Christian Europe. The exclusion of most parts of the world, among them many parts of Europe, from these new narratives continues to be their most glaring deficit. In this paper, I will highlight the continued, even if at times submerged, existence of Eurocentric views and attitudes as expressed in some highly appreciated publications of the last twenty years.