Medieval Iberian Crusade Fiction and the Mediterranean World - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Medieval Iberian Crusade Fiction and the Mediterranean World write by David A. Wacks. This book was released on 2019-09-06. Medieval Iberian Crusade Fiction and the Mediterranean World available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Reading crusader fiction against the backdrop of Mediterranean history, this book explains how Iberian authors reimagined the idea of crusade through the lens of Iberian geopolitics and social history. The crusades transformed Mediterranean history and inaugurated complex engagements between Western Europe, the Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East in ways that endure to this day. Narratives of crusades powerfully shaped European thinking about the East and continue to influence the representation of interactions between Christian and Muslim states in the region. The crusade, a French idea that gave rise to Iberian, North African, and Levantine campaigns, was very much a Mediterranean phenomenon. French and English authors wrote itineraries in the Holy Land, chronicles of the crusades, and fanciful accounts of Christian knights who championed the Latin Church in the East. This study aims to explore the ways in which Iberian authors imagined their role in the culture of crusade, both as participants and interpreters of narrative traditions of the crusading world from north of the Pyrenees.
The Mercenary Mediterranean
The Mercenary Mediterranean - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Mercenary Mediterranean write by Hussein Fancy. This book was released on 2016-03-22. The Mercenary Mediterranean available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Christian kings of Aragon recruited thousands of foreign Muslim soldiers to serve in their armies and as members of their royal courts. Based on extensive research in Arabic, Latin and Romance sources, 'The Mercenary Mediterranean' explores this little-known and misunderstood history.
The Book of the Knight Zifar
The Book of the Knight Zifar - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Book of the Knight Zifar write by Charles L. Nelson. This book was released on 2014-07-15. The Book of the Knight Zifar available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The Book of the Knight Zifar (or Cifar), Spain's first novel of chivalry, is the tale of a virtuous but unfortunate knight who has fallen from grace and must seek redemption through suffering and good deeds. Because of a curse that repeatedly deprives him of that most important of knightly accoutrements—his horse—Zifar and his family must flee their native India and wander through distant lands seeking to regain their rank and fortune. A series of mishaps divides the family, and the novel follows their separate adventures—alternatively heroic, comic, and miraculous—until at length they are reunited and their honor restored. The anonymous author of Zifar based his early fourteenth-century novel on the medieval story of the life of St. Eustacius, but onto this trunk he grafted a surprising variety of narrative types: Oriental tales of romance and magic, biblical stories, moralizing fables popular since the Middle Ages, including several from Aesop, and instructions in the rules of proper knightly conduct. Humor in the form of puns, jokes, and old proverbs also runs through the novel. In particular, the foolish/wise Knave offers a comic contrast to the heroic Knight, whom he must continually rescue through the application of common sense. Zifar was to have an important influence on later Spanish literature, and perhaps on Cervantes' great tale of a knight and his squire, Don Quixote. All those with an interest in Spanish literature and medieval life will be grateful for Mr. Nelson's excellent translation, which brings to life this extraordinary early novel.
The Ornament of the World
The Ornament of the World - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Ornament of the World write by Maria Rosa Menocal. This book was released on 2009-11-29. The Ornament of the World available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This classic bestseller — the inspiration for the PBS series — is an "illuminating and even inspiring" portrait of medieval Spain that explores the golden age when Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance (Los Angeles Times). This enthralling history, widely hailed as a revelation of a "lost" golden age, brings to vivid life the rich and thriving culture of medieval Spain, where for more than seven centuries Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance, and where literature, science, and the arts flourished. "It is no exaggeration to say that what we presumptuously call 'Western' culture is owed in large measure to the Andalusian enlightenment...This book partly restores a world we have lost." —Christopher Hitchens, The Nation
The Cutting Edge of the Poet’s Sword: Muslim Poetic Responses to the Crusades
The Cutting Edge of the Poet’s Sword: Muslim Poetic Responses to the Crusades - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Cutting Edge of the Poet’s Sword: Muslim Poetic Responses to the Crusades write by Osman Latiff. This book was released on 2017-09-25. The Cutting Edge of the Poet’s Sword: Muslim Poetic Responses to the Crusades available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In this comprehensive analysis of Arabic poetry during the period of the crusades (sixth/twelfth-seventh/thirteenth centuries), Osman Latiff provides an insightful examination of the poets who inspired Muslims to unite in the jihād against the Franks. The Cutting Edge of the Poet’s Sword not only contributes to our understanding of literary history, it also illuminates a broad spectrum of religiosity and the role of political propaganda in the anti-Frankish Muslim struggle. Latiff shows how poets, often used by the ruling elite to promote their rule, emphasised the centrality of Islam’s holy sites to inspire the Muslim response to the occupation and later reconquest of Jerusalem, and expressed some surprising views of Frankish Christians.
