A New History of Islamic Spain
About the Book:听滨苍听, 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鈥揳 lesson we would do well to learn in our own time.
When: May 2 at 7 p.m.
What: Event will include a 40-minute presentation on 鈥淚slamic Spain and the History of the West,鈥� followed by a Q&A and book signing.
About the author:听Brian Catlos听(Montr茅al, 1966) earned a PhD in Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and holds appointments as professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado 听Boulder and research associate in humanities at the University of California Santa Cruz.
His work centers on Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations and ethno-religious identity in medieval Europe and the Islamic World, and the history of the pre-Modern Mediterranean.
A board member of various academic journals, he also co-directs听The Mediterranean Seminar,听a major initiative and a forum for international and interdisciplinary collaboration in the emerging field of Mediterranean Studies, and directs the听CU Mediterranean Studies Group听at Boulder. He has published a number of books and articles including the听听(Cambridge, 2004 *Premio del Rey & John E. Fagg Prize),听听(Cambridge, 2014 *Hourani Book Prize), and听(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014 *PROSE Award, hon. mention).
Awards and distinctions include the Governor-General of Canada's Gold Medal for Academic Achievement, two National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowships, and many other university, national and international fellowships and prizes. In July 2015 he co-directed his fourth four-week NEH Summer Institute for College and University Professors in Barcelona, Spain.听
Praise for the book:听"Mediterranean studies have been shaped in an informative and innovative way by Brian Catlos's contributions in the recent decades. His incursion now into the history of a specific region and polity--that of al-Andalus (Medieval Iberia under Muslim rule)--brings to the fore the same qualities that characterize his previous work: an inquisitive and incisive mind that homes in on perceptive questions, combined with the ability to recreate past events in an appealing manner for a wide audience."
鈥擬aribel Fierro, research professor at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean, CSIC (Madrid)
"Kingdoms of Faith听constitutes a fresh and original contribution to the history of al-Andalus, rooted in the author's profound knowledge of medieval Iberian history. Brian Catlos has managed to produce a very well-written and lively narrative that provides an up-to-date synthesis of the most recent developments in this field of history."
鈥擜lejandro Garc铆a Sanju谩n, University of Huelva
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