Audiobook14 hours
Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain
Written by Brian A. Catlos
Narrated by Bob Souer
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
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.
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.
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Reviews for Kingdoms of Faith
Rating: 3.769230769230769 out of 5 stars
4/5
13 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In this sprawling popular account of the rise and fall of Al-Andalus, the Muslim lands of the Iberian peninsula, the author is trying to get down to basics. This means that Catlos has little use for the vision of Muslim Iberia as a paradise of tolerance; tolerance was the practice of putting up with that one could not put under one's control. Nor does Catlos buy into a vision of a clash of cultures, as the most important conflicts were often those within the relevant religious cultures. The salient point being that ethnicity and family usually triumphed over theology. What one does get is a swirling kaleidoscope of social change that, whatever else one wants to say, Catlos argues is as much part of the history of "The West" as any other region or period you might want to point to. I would recommend this book, even if this gallop through history will probably seem superficial to the specialist while still being exhausting to the novice.