For nearly eight centuries, the Iberian peninsula was remarkable for its religious, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity. In Medieval Iberia Olivia Remie Constable brings together original sources that testify to its rich and sometimes volatile mix of Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

Medieval Iberia
Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources

Olivia Remie Constable, Editor

456 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Paper 1997 | ISBN 978-0-8122-1569-4 | $32.50s | £21.50 | Add to shopping cart
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

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.

"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

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.

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