Possessing the Land is the first comprehensive treatment of Christian Aragon's expansion under Alfonso I (1104-1134) into a major arena of medieval Christian/Islamic contact: the Islamic Ebro River march of Aragon. Based on an extensive examination of primary and secondary sources, the book's insights into the social and political processes of Christian settlement and the fate of post-conquest Islam are of particular importance. Its conclusions that the freeholding of land characterized the Ebro's Christian settlement, and not heavy seignorialization, and that Christian settlement...