Product Description

The documents collected here date mostly from the eighth through the fifteenth centuries and have been translated from Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Castilian, Catalan, and Portuguese by many of the most eminent scholars in the field of Iberian studies. The selections include chronicle materials, poetry, and legal and religious sources, and each is accompanied by a brief introduction placing the text in its historical and cultural setting. Arranged chronologically, the documents are also keyed so as to be accessible to readers interested in specific topics such as urban life, the politics of the royal courts, interfaith relations, or women, marriage, and the family. For some historians, medieval Iberian society was primarily one of peaceful coexistence and cross-cultural fertilization; others have sketched a harsher picture of Muslims and Christians engaged in an ongoing contest for political, religious, and economic advantage culminating in the fall of Muslim Granada and the expulsion of the Jews in the late fifteenth century. The reality that emerges in Medieval Iberia is more nuanced than either of these scenarios can comprehend; this monumental collection offers unparalleled access to the multicultural complexity of the lands that would become modern Portugal and Spain.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #209783 in Books
• Published on: 1997-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 456 pages

Review
"The editor is to be warmly congratulated for having gathered together an impressive collection of sources which should prove of great interest to specialist and nonspecialist alike."-English Historical Review "With the assistance of a large team of acknowledged experts, Constable has succeeded in assembling a distinguished miscellany of unusual interest which deserves to be warmly and widely welcomed."-History Today

About the Author
Olivia Remie Constable is Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame and author of Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula, 900-1500.

Customer Reviews

Peculiar, but an adequate introduction to Christian sources
This book actually focuses largely (almost entirely) on Christian sources for medieval Spain (hardly "Iberia," since with one exception Portugal, for instance, is not mentioned). Muslim sources are few and the obvious ones, and the rare and altogether inadequate Jewish sources are thrown in as an afterthought. Still, a useful undergraduate textbook, perhaps.

The best anthology of primary sources available
This is the most thorough and up-to-date collection of primary sources relating to the history of medieval Spain yet available. It brings together a vast ocean of important and illustrative Jewish, Christian and Muslim sources, many of which have never before been translated. Readers, especially historians, will find much of value in this carefully-selected and thoughtfully arranged anthology. Few other collections give such a sense of the richness and diversity of medieval Iberian society.