The Last Taifa

Risk everything... fight to the last. The relics of Christendom have been plundered during the long Moorish conquest of the Iberian peninsula. Newly minted Templar Sergeant Arnau de Vallbona must recover one of the most elusive to save his priory at Rourell in Spain. Travelling to Majorca on a stealth mission to retrieve the bones of St Stephen, Arnau soon discovers the raid is more complex than it first appears: the mighty Almohad dynasty has laid claim to the island, and will fight them every step of the way. Along with his companion, the aged warrior Balthesar, Arnau is in desperate straits. Surrounded on all sides by hostile forces, it will take all their cunning and strength to escape with their prize – and their lives.... A thrilling and unexplored account of the Knights Templar, grounded in extraordinary research, The Last Emir is perfect for fans of Bernard Cornwell, K.M. Ashman and C.F. Iggulden.

In The Last Ta'ifa, Anthony H. Minnema shows how the Banu Hud, an Arab dynasty from Zaragoza, created and recreated their vision of an autonomous city-state (ta'ifa) in ways that reveal changes to legitimating strategies in al-Andalus and across the Mediterranean. In 1110, the Banu Hud lost control of their emirate in the north of Iberia and entered exile, ending their century-long rule. But far from accepting their fate, the dynasty adapted by serving Christian kings, nurturing rebellions, and carving out a new state in Murcia to recover, maintain, and grow their power. By tracing the Banu Hud across chronicles, charters, and coinage, Minnema shows how dynastic leaders borrowed their rivals' claims and symbols and engaged in similar types of military campaigns and complex alliances in an effort to cultivate authority. Drawing on Arabic, Latin, and vernacular sources, The Last Ta'ifa uses the history of the Banu Hud to connect the pursuit of legitimacy in al-Andalus to the politics of other emerging kingdoms and emirates. The actions of Hudid leaders, Minnema shows, echoed across the region as other kings, rebels, and adventurers employed parallel methods to gain power and resist the forces of centralization, highlighting the constructed nature of legitimacy in al-Andalus and the Mediterranean.

A Companion to Islamic Granada gathers, for the first time in English, a number of essays exploring aspects of the Islamic history of this city from the 8th through the 15th centuries from an interdisciplinary perspective. This collective volume examines the political development of Medieval Gharnāṭa under the rule of different dynasties, drawing on both historiographical and archaeological sources. It also analyses the complexity of its religious and multicultural society, as well as its economic, scientific, and intellectual life. The volume also transcends the year 1492, analysing the development of both the mudejar and the morisco populations and their contribution to Grenadian culture and architecture up to the 17th century. Contributors are: Bárbara Boloix-Gallardo, María Jesús Viguera-Molíns, Alberto García-Porras, Antonio Malpica–Cuello, Bilal Sarr-Marroco, Allen Fromherz, Bernard Vincent, Maribel Fierro–Bello, Ma Luisa Ávila–Navarro, Juan Pedro Monferrer–Sala, José Martínez–Delgado, Luis Bernabé–Pons, Adela Fábregas–García, Josef Ženka, Amalia Zomeño–Rodríguez, Delfina Serrano–Ruano, Julio Samsó–Moya, Celia del Moral-Molina, José Miguel Puerta–Vílchez, Antonio Orihuela–Uzal, Ieva Rėklaitytė, and Rafael López–Guzmán.

From 711 when they arrived on the Iberian Peninsula until 1492 when scholars contribute a wide-ranging series of essays and catalogue entries which are fully companion to the 373 illustrations (324 in color) of the spectacular art and architecture of the nearly vanished culture. 91/2x121/2 they were expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella, the Muslims were a powerful force in al-Andalus, as they called the Iberian lands they controlled. This awe-inspiring volume, which accompanies a major exhibition presented at the Alhambra in Granada and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is devoted to the little-known artistic legacy of Islamic Spain, revealing the value of these arts as part of an autonomous culture and also as a presence with deep significance for both Europe and the Islamic world. Twenty-four international Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In The Last Ta'ifa, Anthony H. Minnema shows how the Banu Hud, an Arab dynasty from Zaragoza, created and recreated their vision of an autonomous city-state (ta'ifa) in ways that reveal changes to legitimating strategies in al-Andalus and across the Mediterranean. In 1110, the Banu Hud lost control of their emirate in the north of Iberia and entered exile, ending their century-long rule. But far from accepting their fate, the dynasty adapted by serving Christian kings, nurturing rebellions, and carving out a new state in Murcia to recover, maintain, and grow their power. By tracing the Banu Hud across chronicles, charters, and coinage, Minnema shows how dynastic leaders borrowed their rivals' claims and symbols and engaged in similar types of military campaigns and complex alliances in an effort to cultivate authority. Drawing on Arabic, Latin, and vernacular sources, The Last Ta'ifa uses the history of the Banu Hud to connect the pursuit of legitimacy in al-Andalus to the politics of other emerging kingdoms and emirates. The actions of Hudid leaders, Minnema shows, echoed across the region as other kings, rebels, and adventurers employed parallel methods to gain power and resist the forces of centralization, highlighting the constructed nature of legitimacy in al-Andalus and the Mediterranean.

A magisterial, myth-dispelling history of Islamic Spain spanning the millennium between the founding of Islam in the seventh century and the final expulsion of Spain's Muslims in the seventeenth In Kingdoms of Faith, award-winning historian Brian A. Catlos rewrites the history of Islamic Spain from the ground up, evoking the cultural splendor of al-Andalus, while offering an authoritative new interpretation of the forces that shaped it. Prior accounts have portrayed Islamic Spain as a paradise of enlightened tolerance or the site where civilizations clashed. Catlos taps a wide array of primary sources to paint a more complex portrait, showing how Muslims, Christians, and Jews together built a sophisticated civilization that transformed the Western world, even as they waged relentless war against each other and their coreligionists. Religion was often the language of conflict, but seldom its cause -- a lesson we would do well to learn in our own time.

A finalist for World Magazine's Book of the Year! Scholars, journalists, and even politicians uphold Muslim-ruled medieval Spain—"al-Andalus"—as a multicultural paradise, a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in harmony. There is only one problem with this widely accepted account: it is a myth. In this groundbreaking book, Northwestern University scholar Darío Fernández-Morera tells the full story of Islamic Spain. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise shines light on hidden history by drawing on an abundance of primary sources that scholars have ignored, as well as archaeological evidence only recently unearthed. This supposed beacon of peaceful coexistence began, of course, with the Islamic Caliphate's conquest of Spain. Far from a land of religious tolerance, Islamic Spain was marked by religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life and the marginalization of Christians and other groups—all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise provides a desperately needed reassessment of medieval Spain. As professors, politicians, and pundits continue to celebrate Islamic Spain for its "multiculturalism" and "diversity," Fernández-Morera sets the historical record straight—showing that a politically useful myth is a myth nonetheless.

In 1482, Abu Abdallah Muhammad XI became the twenty-third Muslim King of Granada. He would be the last. This is the first history of the ruler, known as Boabdil, whose disastrous reign and bitter defeat brought seven centuries of Moorish Spain to an end. It is an action-packed story of intrigue, treachery, cruelty, cunning, courtliness, bravery and tragedy. Basing her vivid account on original documents and sources, Elizabeth Drayson traces the origins and development of Islamic Spain. She describes the thirteenth-century founding of the Nasrid dynasty, the cultured and stable society it created, and the feuding which threatened it and had all but destroyed it by 1482, when Boabdil seized the throne. The new Sultan faced betrayals by his family, factions in the Alhambra palace, and ever more powerful onslaughts from the forces of Ferdinand and Isabella, monarchs of the newly united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. By stratagem, diplomacy, courage and strength of will Boabdil prolonged his reign for ten years, but he never had much chance of survival. In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella, magnificently attired in Moorish costume, entered Granada and took possession of the city. Boabdil went into exile. The Christian reconquest of Spain, that has reverberated so powerfully down the centuries, was complete.

This is the first study in English of the political history of Muslim Spain and Portugal, based on Arab sources. It provides comprehensive coverage of events across the whole of the region from 711 to the fall of Granada in 1492. Up till now the history of this region has been badly neglected in comparison with studies of other states in medieval Europe. When considered at all, it has been largely written from Christian sources and seen in terms of the Christian Reconquest. Hugh Kennedy raises the profile of this important area, bringing the subject alive with vivid translations from Arab sources. This will be fascinating reading for historians of medieval Europe and for historians of the middle east drawing out the similarities and contrasts with other areas of the Muslim world.

Taifa is a story of African intellectual agency, but it is also an account of how nation and race emerged out of the legal, social, and economic histories in one major city, Dar es Salaam. Nation and race—both translatable as taifa in Swahili—were not simply universal ideas brought to Africa by European colonizers, as previous studies assume. They were instead categories crafted by local African thinkers to make sense of deep inequalities, particularly those between local Africans and Indian immigrants. Taifa shows how nation and race became the key political categories to guide colonial and postcolonial life in this African city. Using deeply researched archival and oral evidence, Taifa transforms our understanding of urban history and shows how concerns about access to credit and housing became intertwined with changing conceptions of nation and nationhood. Taifa gives equal attention to both Indians and Africans; in doing so, it demonstrates the significance of political and economic connections between coastal East Africa and India during the era of British colonialism, and illustrates how the project of racial nationalism largely severed these connections by the 1970s.