In Aesthetics in Arabic Thought from Pre-Islamic Arabia through al-Andalus José Miguel Puerta Vílchez analyzes the discourses about beauty, the arts, and sense perception that arose within classical Arab culture from pre-Islamic poetry and the Quran (sixth-seventh centuries CE) to the Alhambra palace in Granada (fourteenth century CE). He focuses on the contributions of such great thinkers as Ibn Ḥazm, Avempace, Ibn Ṭufayl, Averroes, Ibn ʿArabī, and Ibn Khaldūn in al-Andalus, and the Brethren of Purity, al-Tawḥīdī, al-Fārābī, Avicenna, Alhazen, and al-Ghazālī in the East....

The development of the Spanish Navy in the early modern Mediterranean triggered a change in the balance of political and economic power for the coastal populations of the Hispanic Monarchy. The establishment of new permanent squadrons, endowed with very broad jurisdictional powers, was the cause of many conflicts with the local authorities and had a direct influence on the economic and production activities of the region. Manuel Lomas analyzes the progressive consolidation of these institutions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, their influence on the mechanisms of justice and...

The Nasrid Kingdom of Granada (1232-1492) was the last Islamic state in al-Andalus. It has long been considered a historical afterthought, even an anomaly, but this impression must be rectified: here we place the kingdom in a new context, within the processes of change that were taking place across all Western Islamic societies in the late Middle Ages. Despite being the last Islamic entity in the Iberian Peninsula, Granada was neither isolated nor exclusively associated with the nearest Islamic lands. The special relationship between Nasrid territory and the surrounding Christian states...