Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c.1050–1614

Brian A. Catlos

Mrt. 2014 · Cambridge University Press

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Through crusades and expulsions, Muslim communities survived for over 500 years, thriving in medieval Europe. This comprehensive study explores how the presence of Islamic minorities transformed Europe in everything from architecture to cooking, literature to science, and served as a stimulus for Christian society to define itself. Combining a series of regional studies, Catlos compares the varied experiences of Muslims across Iberia, southern Italy, the Crusader Kingdoms and Hungary to examine those ideologies that informed their experiences, their place in society and their sense of themselves as Muslims. This is a pioneering new narrative of the history of medieval and early modern Europe from the perspective of Islamic minorities; one which is not, as we might first assume, driven by ideology, isolation and decline, but instead one in which successful communities persisted because they remained actively integrated within the larger Christian and Jewish societies in which they lived.

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Brian Catlos spent over a decade living and travelling in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, North Africa and Asia before completing his PhD (Medieval Studies, Toronto) and joining the History Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a former President of the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain, Co-Director of the Mediterranean Seminar, PI of the University of California Multi-Campus Research Project on Mediterranean Studies, an affiliate of the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, an associate of Spain's national research council (CSIC), and a member of several journal boards. He has published extensively on religious minorities and Christian-Muslim-Jewish relations in medieval Europe and the Islamic world, and has received numerous grants and awards, including an NEH Faculty Fellowship. His first academic book, The Victors and the Vanquished, was awarded two prizes by the American Historical Association, and recent articles, 'The de Reys' and 'Accursed, Superior Men', won the Bishko Prize and the Webb Prize. In 2009 he was appointed to Religious Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, with cross-appointments in Jewish Studies and Humanities. He appeared in the PBS documentary 'Cities of Light', and writes travel guide books.