The Routledge Handbook of Muslim Iberia pdf download

The Routledge Handbook of Muslim Iberia Edited by Maribel Fierro

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MUSLIM IBERIA

Languages, academic traditions, and disciplinary backgrounds in the study of al-Andalus

Maribel Fierro

Among the monuments built by the Muslims during the time they ruled in the Iberian Peninsula, the tower of the former mosque of Seville was kept by the Christian conquerors of the town and transformed into that of the cathedral that replaced the Islamic building.

 Known as the Giralda, it has inspired – like other iconic buildings such as the mosque of Cordoba and the Alhambra in Granada – architects all over the world, such as those responsible for the Wrigley Building in Chicago.

 The Giralda and the Wrigley tower have been selected for the cover of this book devoted not only to the history of al-Andalus¹ (or Muslim Iberia) but also to that of its aftermath.

This collective volume aims, first, at offering to readers not necessarily specialists on the topic an overview of the different dynasties that ruled in al-Andalus and how they succeeded or failed in maintaining their power through their armies and the legitimacy they claimed and that was reflected, among other means, in their coins.

 Then, it moves to deal with the most important components of the societies over which those rulers exercised their power, and of the cultural and intellectual developments that took place in them.

Parts I–III are thus devoted to Rulers, Society and Culture,² respectively, while Part IV addresses the aftermath of al- Andalus, from the Mudejars and Moriscos to the memory of al-Andalus in the Islamic world, in Spain, the Americas and ‘the West’, as well as its mythification and use for political and ideological contemporary purposes.

This structure aims at facilitating the non-specialized readers to grasp the most relevant data and interpretations, while the specialist or those who want to become specialists will find updated materials and discussions by scholars all of whom are involved in research on the topic they deal with.

 Fifty boxes are devoted to certain figures, towns, texts, objects or topics that highlight different aspects of the history and cultural production of al-Andalus and its impact.

Maps, dynastic tables and illustrations, as well as a glossary of technical terms, have been also included while the general bibliography documents the vitality of the modern study of al-Andalus. Scholars are now able to approach such study with instruments that our predecessors did not have.

One is the collective enterprise that led to the publication of the Biblioteca de al-Andalus by the Fundación Ibn Tufayl thanks to the vision of Jorge Lirola and José Miguel Puerta Vílchez, a reference work of great value that hopefully one day will be available in digitized form to become even more useful.

Two similar resources that can be consulted online and with free access are the Prosopography of the ʽUlamāʼ of al-Andalus (PUA), directed by María Luisa Ávila (Escuela de Estudios Árabes, CSIC-Granada), and the History of the Authors and Transmitters of al-Andalus (HATA) that I direct, that allow easy access to the wealth of information found in the biographical and bio-bibliographical dictionaries as well as in other sources.

In the next few decades, the significant number of printed Arabic books related to the history of al-Andalus that have been digitized and are increasingly fully searchable will allow new approaches not only in terms of saving time in our research (this is already happening)

 but in the questions asked from the sources and in the possible answers obtained from machine-readable corpora in areas such as inter-textuality that will allow us to refine our grasp of the sources.

I am grateful to Routledge for having approached me to carry out this collective enterprise that inevitably reflects in some ways my own perspective on how to study and understand al-Andalus, but in which I have also tried to have represented the most important scholarly debates and points of view.

 Nevertheless, the study of al- Andalus includes more than is found in this volume, both at the scholarly and non- scholarly levels, the latter having been especially active in the last two decades as we live in an age in which the past – and specifically the medieval past – is again being heavily mobilized to talk about present concerns.

Such mobilization is an interesting object of study in itself, and apparently especially attractive to those who approach it from a geographical or academic distance. But it loses any possible appeal for those who have to suffer its implications in terms of domestic policies or the scholarly training of new generations.

This book hopes to move the reader to look for more on the topic and, hopefully, if in her or his search that reader encounters approaches that aim to consciously manipulate, distort or falsify what is historically well established – according to the rules of scholarly research – she or he will be able to draw his or her own conclusions.

A collective volume like this represents – with limitations as we shall see – the outlooks, styles, and aims of different traditions and disciplines in the Western academic world, while also reflecting some of the problems posed by the pluri­ lingual scholarship dealing with al-Andalus.

Of the thirty scholars who have contributed to this Handbook, there is a gender balance (sixteen men, fourteen women) that came out not because of quotas but because  it  is  as  easy  to  find  good  specialists  who  are  men  as  those  who  are women:

this is the reality of the field. In terms of geographical distribution, the lion’s share goes to Spain with a total of seventeen scholars.

This share reflects the amount of research on al-Andalus that is being produced inside the Iberian Peninsula, including Portugal, here represented by one scholar. As for the