This volume offers a reconstruction of the court culture of the taifa kings of al-Andalus (11th century A.D.), using both visual and textual evidence. A focus of particular attention is the court of the Banū Hūd at Zaragoza, and that dynasty's palace, the Aljaferia. Principle written sources are not histories and chronicles, but the untranslated poetic anthologies of al-ḥimyarī and al-Fatḥ ibn Khāqān. The first part of the book addresses taifa visual and literary languages, with especial emphasis on connections between the literary and visual aspects of...

This volume deals with the medieval shu'ūbiyyah movement (in which non-Arab Muslims sought equality of power and status with Arabs) in al-Andalus, Muslim Spain. By analysing a letter composed by Ibn Garcia during the 11th century, the tensions between Arab and non-Arab Muslims are discussed in detail. Symbols, stories and legends used in the shu'ūbiyyah corpus of writings are analysed in the light of the political and theological development in al-Andalus and the Muslim world. Authority, legitimacy and power are central both to the discussion of Ibn Garcia's letter and the history...

This book is a comprehensive bibliography of publications on strophic poetry and music which originated in the urbanized society of al-Andalus in the 9th century and spread over the Iberian Peninsula, Southern France, North Africa, Egypt and the Near East. It contains an alphabetic catalogue of 2800 titles: books, articles, congress papers, reviews, CD's and a movie. Some titles have annotations. The catalogue is followed by a register of kharjas and two useful indices: of names and subjects. A short introductory guide precedes the catalogue and a selective discography ends the volume....

This groundbreaking monograph explores the fascinating social context of "witchcraft" trials in Portugal during the long eighteenth century, when conventional medical practitioners, motivated by a desire to promote "scientific" medicine, worked within the Holy Office to prosecute superstitious folk healers.

This bibliography is a supplement to the one previously published by Brill in 1988. This one covers material from 1984 to 2003. The chronology has been expanded to begin in the fourth century. Numerous Iberian Church Fathers not represented in the first one are now incorporated. The book contains author and subject indexes and is cross-referenced throughout.

Thomas Glick presents a comparative history of the Islamic and Christian areas of Spain in the period between A.D. 711 and 1250 when these areas emerged as distinct political, social, and cultural entities. The author accounts for the social, political, and ethnic structures that developed between the frontiers of Muslim and Christian territories and explores the cross-cultural relationships and the transmission of ideas and techniques, mainly from the Islamic culture to the Christian culture in Spain. Glick argues that science and technology are key indicators of cultural influence. The...

This book is a valuable contribution to the study of messianism and millenarianism in the history of Muslim Spain and pre-Modern Morocco presented in a broader framework of research on Muslim eschatological beliefs and Islamic ideas on legitimate power.

Queen as King traces the origins of San Isidoro in Leon as a royal monastic complex, following its progress as the site changed from a small eleventh-century palatine chapel housed in a double monastery to a great twelfth-century pilgrimage church served by Augustinian canons. Its most groundbreaking contribution to the history of art is the recovery of the lost patronage of Queen Urraca (reigned 1109-1126). Urraca maintained yet subverted her family's tradition of patronage on the site: to understand her history is to hold the key to the art and architecture of San Isidoro. This new...

Till God Inherits the Earth deals with the origins and evolution of the Islamic institution of pious endowments in al-Andalus, analysing its juridical basis and its social-economic role. Evidence is primarily drawn from Andalusi Maliki jurisprudence and from narrative and biographical traditional sources as well. Separate chapters examine private and public donations and special importance is given to the analysis of the public goals of the institution, namely, charitative, religious (mosques, rabitas), educational and for the jihad. The book is completed with several appendices...

Nuanced understanding of the reciprocal nature of Spanish-Italian relations and the rich cultural production that was the product of the far-reaching exchanges between the two peninsulas throughout the early modern period guides the nineteen essays in this volume. The key political reality of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish imperial domination in Italy--formal (Sicily, Sardinia, Naples, Milan), informal (Rome, Genoa, Tuscany), and more neutral or independent (Venice)--introduces the investigation in this volume into the methods and mechanisms of control and collaboration,...