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Related papers
Contradictory Muslims in the Literature of Medieval Iberian Christians
2023
This book argues that literary and historiographical works written by Iberian Christians between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries promoted contradictory representations of Muslims in order to advocate for their colonization through the affirmation of Christian supremacy. Ambivalent depictions of cultural difference are essential for colonizers to promote their own superiority, as explained by postcolonial critics and observed in medieval and early modern texts in Castilian, Catalan, and Portuguese, such as the Cantar de mio Cid, Cantigas de Santa Maria, Llibre dels fets, Estoria de España, Crónica geral de 1344, Tirant lo Blanch, and Os Lusíadas. In all these works, the contradictions of Muslim enemies, allies, and subjects allow Christian leaders to prevail and profit through their opposition and collaboration with them. Such colonial dynamics of simultaneous belligerence and assimilation determined the ways in which Portugal, Spain, and later European powers interacted with non-Christians in Africa, Asia, and even the Americas.
Parergon, 2018
What did medieval Christians know about the history of Islam? This paper takes as a case study the situation of medieval Spain, focusing on a series of chronicles produced in Christian Spain from the late ninth to mid-twelfth centuries. It examines how their authors framed the Islamic world, in answer to their contemporary interests; in other words, how they translated within their own historical traditions the history of Islam. It argues that far from being absent in the texts analysed, the history of Islam provided a background, albeit diffuse, informing both the chroniclers' view of the world they lived in, and the rationale of their works.
Book Review of Brian Catlos: Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom
2015
Catlos takes on the Herculean task of examining Muslim communities of Latin Christendom. This subject has been studied piecemeal over the years, but no one—until Catlos—undertook a study of all Muslim subjects (Mudejars) under the yoke of pre-modern Christian rulers. Catlos covers the gamut of medieval Christian realms ruling Muslims over five centuries, from Iberia (with the largest and longest-lasting Mudejar population) to Norman Sicily, Hungary, and the Crusader States. He begins in the mid- eleventh century when Muslim rule in Iberia and Sicily started to unravel and the Church and kings of the Latin West took an active interest in Islam. He concludes with the forcible conversion and expulsion of Muslims in Iberia by the early sixteenth to seventeenth centuries.