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Revisiting al-Andalus brings together a range of recent scholarship on the material culture of Islamic Iberia, highlighting especially the new directions that have developed in the Anglo-American branch of this field since the 1992 catalogue of the influential exhibition, Al-Andalus: the Art of Islamic Spain. Together with examples of recent Spanish scholarship on medieval architecture and urbanism, the volume’s contributors (historians of art and architecture, archaeologists, and architects) explore topics such as the relationship between Andalusi literature and art; architecture, urbanism, and court culture; domestic architecture; archaeology as a tool for analyzing economic and architec...
Performing al-Andalus explores three musical cultures that claim a connection to the music of medieval Iberia, the Islamic kingdom of al-Andalus, known for its complex mix of Arab, North African, Christian, and Jewish influences. Jonathan Holt Shannon shows that the idea of a shared Andalusian heritage animates performers and aficionados in modern-day Syria, Morocco, and Spain, but with varying and sometimes contradictory meanings in different social and political contexts. As he traces the movements of musicians, songs, histories, and memories circulating around the Mediterranean, he argues that attention to such flows offers new insights into the complexities of culture and the nuances of selfhood.
"Looking Back at al-Andalus" focuses on Arabic and Hebrew Literature that expresses the loss of al-Andalus from multiple vantage points. In doing so, this book examines the definition of al-Andalusa (TM) literary borders, the reconstruction of which navigates between traditional generic formulations and actual political, military and cultural challenges. By looking at a variety of genres, the book shows that literature aiming to recall and define al-Andalus expresses a series of symbolic literary objects more than a geographic and political entity fixed in a single time and place. "Looking Back at al-Andalus" offers a unique examination into the role of memory, language, and subjectivity in presenting a series of interpretations of what al-Andalus represented to different writers at different historical-cultural moments.
The 12 articles of this volume show the many facets of contact in al-Andalus and Medieval Iberia, reminding us of how contact influenced art and learning in a wide range of fields: politics, science, philosophy, music and religion; offering views of how contact between societies affects both language, stereotype and assimilation; examining how war and conflict (re)define the representation of ideas, places and people; and demonstrating how representations changed over time through contact and conflict. Lessons of the past apply today as al-Andalus captures the modern imagination and cultures continue to come into contact across borders which either allow fluid diffusion of ideas or block passage.
The Literature of Al-Andalus is an exploration of the culture of Iberia, present-day Spain and Portugal, during the period when it was an Islamic, mostly Arabic-speaking territory, from the eighth to the thirteenth century, and in the centuries following the Christian conquest when Arabic continued to be widely used. The volume embraces many other related spheres of Arabic culture including philosophy, art, architecture and music. It also extends the subject to other literatures - especially Hebrew and Romance literatures - that burgeoned alongside Arabic and created the distinctive hybrid culture of medieval Iberia. Edited by an Arabist, an Hebraist and a Romance scholar, with individual chapters compiled by a team of the world's leading experts of Islamic Iberia, Sicily and related cultures, this is a truly interdisciplinary and comparative work which offers a interesting approach to the field.
From 711 when they arrived on the Iberian Peninsula until 1492 when scholars contribute a wide-ranging series of essays and catalogue entries which are fully companion to the 373 illustrations (324 in color) of the spectacular art and architecture of the nearly vanished culture. 91/2x121/2 they were expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella, the Muslims were a powerful force in al-Andalus, as they called the Iberian lands they controlled. This awe-inspiring volume, which accompanies a major exhibition presented at the Alhambra in Granada and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is devoted to the little-known artistic legacy of Islamic Spain, revealing the value of these arts as part of an autonomous culture and also as a presence with deep significance for both Europe and the Islamic world. Twenty-four international Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus is a critical account of the history of Andalusian music in Iberia from the Islamic conquest of 711 to the final expulsion of the Moriscos (Spanish Muslims converted to Christianity) in the early 17th century. This volume presents the documentation that has come down to us, accompanied by critical and detailed analyses of the sources written in Arabic, Old Catalan, Castilian, Hebrew, and Latin. It is also informed by research the author has conducted on modern Andalusian musical traditions in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. While the cultural achievements of medieval Muslim Spain have been the topic of a large number of scholarly and popular publications in recent decades, what may arguably be its most enduring contribution – music – has been almost entirely neglected. The overarching purpose of this work is to elucidate as clearly as possible the many different types of musical interactions that took place in medieval Iberia and the complexity of the various borrowings, adaptations, hybridizations, and appropriations involved.
These two volumes present a conspectus of current research on the history and culture of early medieval Spain and Portugal, from the time of the Arab conquest in 711 up to the fall of the caliphate. They trace the impact of Islamisation on the pre-existing Roman and Visigothic political and social structures, the continuing interaction between Christian and Muslim, and describe the particular development and characteristics of Muslim Spain- al-Andalus. Together, they comprise 38 articles, of which 32 have been translated into English specially for this publication. The first volume focuses on political and social history, and looks in detail at settlement patterns and urbanisation; the second examines questions of language and covers the brilliant cultural and intellectual history of the period.
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This book offers a reading of Andalusi, Jewish, and Arabic texts that represent the 12th and 13th centuries as the end of el-Andalus (Islamic Spain).