"Islamic Spain: 1250 To 1500" by L.P. Harvey

Posted by J

http://www.amazon.com/Islamic-Spain-1250-1500-Harvey/dp/0226319628/sr=8-1/qid=1164162817/ref=sr_1_1/002-0670725-0807254?ie=UTF8&s=books

Wow, wow, and WOW! What a fantastic book. This is basically two books in one. The first is a survey of the "Mudejar" or Islamic communities living in the Christian kingdoms of Spain (primarily Castille, Aragon, and Navar), the other is the history of the last Islamic kingdom of Spain, Granada. Both cover the period 1250-1500, or from the time of the decline of the Almohad empire and the main wave of Christian Reconquista that occurred at the time (resulting in the loss of the fabled cities of Seville and Cordoba from Muslim hands) until shortly after the final fall of Granada in 1492.

I'll quickly point out a few minor complaints: there are only two maps in the book and they're not very complete, so they left me frequently guessing or dealing with geographical ambiguity. Also I do wish there had been greater discussion of the cultural and everyday life of folks in these worlds (particularly in Granada), the cultural richness of the Granadan kingdom is certainly mentioned, but not at all fleshed out. I presume that scope of the book was the main limiting factor.

Those points aside, did I say WOW?! Here is an author who has written a comprehensive survey of the two topics listed above and in an amazingly engaging manner. Here are what I felt were some of the real strong points of the book:

• Heavy use of primary sources. Harvey quotes extensively from the original sources, selecting relevant and engaging sections in very readable translations. Moreover, while Spanish (particularly Castilian) sources are much more readily available, he has brought in a large number of original Arabic sources which (unlike the weakness I felt in Fletcher's "Moorish Spain") left me feeling like I had seen many of these events through Granadan/Moorish eyes and not just European eyes.
• Vivid descriptions of the military campaigns and technology. Those not interested in military history may not be as interested on these points, but I really loved the sense of "being there" Harvey gives (again often through his use of primary sources) of sieges, battles, and frontier raids. I felt I got a true sense of the suffering, chivalry, treason, and honor that people back then felt they were living through. And just as crucially, of what military technology of the era did and did not mean. All of a sudden those battle scenes from the Lord of the Rings movies seemed a little more believable and real :) Though sadder as well.
• The mood of the era. Harvey's ability to convey the mood and air of the era is phenomenonal. Not just of Moorish loss and Castillian triumphalism, but the back and forth of personal loyalty and betrayal, and the consequences these actions of a few had on the lives of so many ordinary people.
• Even-handedness. I felt Harvey did quite a good job of trying within his abilities to balance his sources and judgements (which he keeps reasonably limited) between sides. He can see the pain of the losses of the Moors and the bravery of the Castilians, along with the foolishness of Granada internecine violence and follies of Christian knights.
• Religious insight. No, this is not a religious book nor attempt to pass judgement on religions, but Harvey raises extremely interesting points about how the Mudajer communities weren't even supposed to exist under traditional Islamic law (and indeed, North African and even Spanish Islamic clerics encouraged emmigration out of lands that came under Christian rule) and how this created very interesting dynamics and strains of both religious co-existence and the need for Muslims to define a new set of rules for living. Sometimes Orthodox, sometimes bending the rules a bit. Also, some interesting discussion of how Granda as the surviving rump-state of the past glories of Al-Andalus became instead of the old Andalusian melting pot, a last bastion of Orthodoxy and purist thought. While Granada's survival allowed in many ways the Convivencia experiments of other Mudajer communities to go on (i.e., toleration of Moors in Christian kingdoms was more important when a Muslim community fairly nearby could press for their fair treatment), its final collapse was part of the death knell of co-existence. I felt more and more as I read that there was less of what today we'd call "tolerance" and more mere side-by-side existence. As time went on, even that faded away, with disastrous consequences for Jews and Muslims.
• A sense of the changing times. Great coverage of how military technology and tactics were changing with the introduction of the cannon for example and what that meant for the relative effectiveness of Granadan versus Castilian military strategy. Also at the end how the weakness of North African Islamic states combined with the rising strength of Castille and the discovery of the Americas to preclude any Islamic attempts to recover al-Andalus. And many others.
• Discussions of the weaknesses of the various societies. I felt I gained a good sense of the economic, social, political, and other factors which steadily weakened Granada

I could literally go on and on (and already have to some extent), but I highly, highly recommend this book. He has a follow-up book I hope to read soon on the final era of Islam in Spain covering the 1500s until the final expulsion of all the Moors in the early 1600s.

On a final note: the book felt alive, real, like something happening today. Perhaps this is part of why Arabs have such an attachment to the idea of Granada and Al-Andalus: the destruction of Palestine is before them today and there is a historical precedent. I wish I could say that folks in the Arab world really understood what the loss of Granada was all about and the lessons it gives for Palestine. The truth I think is that many of the same weaknesses are at play, and many Arabs see this in the corruption of their leaders today and merciless foreign conquerors as occurred in the past, but over-zealousness internally is also an ongoing weakness. It seems the answers then were no easier than the answers today, but it does seem clear that Christians, Jews and Muslims all have a thing or two to learn about the importance of valuing the fruits of cooperation over those of conquest.

"Trickster Travels" By Natalie Zemon Davis

Posted by J

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0809094347/ref=pd_rvi_gw_3/002-0670725-0807254

Al-Hassan Al-Wazzan. Giovanne Leone. Leo Africanus. Yuhanna Al-Asad. Many names, one man. This book is an attempt, full of conjencture which enlightens the entire world of the 16th century western Mediterranean, to follow the life of the man known in Christian Europe as Leo Africanus (along with other names). A decade before, the Lebanese author Amin Maalouf had written in historical fiction form another book under the title "Leo Africanus" which sought to do something similar. I have yet to read that book but it comes highly recommended as well (it is in English), so this was really my first introduction to the man and the topic. For a quick summary of the book, see the brief editorial reviews from the Amazon site which I copy at the bottom.

Trickster Travels fails and succeeds. It fails in only a superficial way - the reality is that trying to put together the details of just about any single individual from the 16th century, even a reasonably well documented life, is virtually impossible. We get quite a few factual snippets - one gets the sense all the ones that are available - from Yuhanna's life, but most of the book consists of "could have", "may have", "possibly" and other such guesses.

But that is also the book's success. You can only know so much about Al-Hassan Al-Wazzan Al-Fasi (or is it al-Gharnati?), but we can know a great deal about his world. This is where Davis really shines, because this becomes just as much a book about the 16th century realms of North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa (to a lesser extent given that it is told through the eyes of North Africans often then filtered through Europeans and not Sub-Saharan Africans themselves), and Mediterranean Europe. One gets a real flavor for life in Fes circa 1500, in Rome, in travels in the Atlas mountains and the Sahara, in Timbuktu, on the seas of the Mediterranean, in the Ottoman Court, in Cairo, and other places. Suddenly these seem accessible places you or I could travel to and figure out as much as we could different countries of the world today. Suddenly time seems more like distance than time itself, and crossing it a bit less difficult.

Not to get too romantic about it, the point is actually that Davis brings these very different times and places down to earth. She makes them accessible and imaginable instead of just dusty pages in a long forgotten and incomprehensible book. Sometimes that gets into the downright raunchy (a medieval doctor providing a cure and a scolding for a farmer's penchant for his sheep for example), but most of the time it is just about the normal foibles, functions, and curiosities of life. This was in many ways what Giovanne Leone was trying to do when he wrote his Geography of Africa for European readers: let them know that Africa and the world of Islam were neither exotic or barbaric, but places just as ordinary to their inhabitants as the Europe they knew.

*****

From Publishers WeeklyDavis (The Return of Martin Guerre) performs a sterling service in disentangling the twisted threads of al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Wazzan's fascinating life. Better known in the West as Leo Africanus, he was one of the Renaissance's greatest geographers and the author of a Europe-wide bestseller, The Description of Africa (1550). Born a Muslim in Granada in 1492, al-Hasan al-Wazzan traveled widely as an ambassador and merchant throughout Africa, a continent then a mystery to Europeans, but was captured by Spanish pirates in 1518, presented to Pope Leo X and ostensibly converted to Christianity while explaining Islam to his bewildered audience. Al-Hasan al-Wazzan had the (mis)fortune to live in "interesting times": the Ottomans were on the march, the Habsburgs were on the rise and the Protestants were alarming the pope, yet al-Hasan al-Wazzan managed to flit among a myriad of worlds (including, Davis speculates, taking a formerly Jewish wife). Eventually, he returned to a North Africa riven by turmoil and slaughter, and disappeared from our view. He rose above hard-drawn lines and presented "himself simply as an independent polymath," says Davis, and his life provides a lesson in the "possibility of communication and curiosity in a world divided by violence." 16 pages of b&w illus., 2 maps. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New YorkerIn 1518, al-Hasan al-Wazzan, a diplomat of the Sultan of Fez, was kidnapped in the Mediterranean by pirates, who brought him to Pope Leo X. Al-Wazzan had travelled extensively in Africa, and was able to provide firsthand intelligence on the geography and politics of the infidel region. Leo Africanus, as he became known, remained in Rome for the next nine years, converted from Islam to Christianity (he was baptized by the Pope himself), and compiled his "Description of Africa," a collection of learning, hearsay, and personal anecdote that shaped European ideas about Africa for centuries. Few facts exist to illuminate Leo's actual life in Rome, but Davis fills us in on the scholars with whom he may have conversed and the social mores to which he would have had to adjust, arriving at a portrait of "a man with a double vision," straddling two warring cultures. Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

"Oil Markets And Prices" by Paul Horsnell and Robert Mabro

Posted by J

Oil Markets and Prices: The Brent Market and the Formation of World Oil Prices
1993 - by Paul Horsnell and Robert Mabro

http://www.amazon.com/Oil-Market-Prices-Paul-Horsnell/dp/0197300138/sr=11-1/qid=1163553492/ref=sr_11_1/002-0670725-0807254

Painful. Excruciatingly, agonizingly, boringly painful reading. Yet a masterpiece as well. This is not light reading, it's not a book someone merely curious about oil markets should even bother to pick up. It is, however, a now classic foundational book for anyone who seriously wants to understand how oil markets work.

Paul Horsnell (and doing a smaller amount of the writing, Robert Mabro) went to the core of how oil prices are formed. In 1993 oil market data was not nearly as widely available as it is today (and it's not exactly the most transparent market today either), and crunching numbers was a much more laborious task. But give credit to the authors, they dug into the raw data of the Brent market in particular and come out with a convincing academic review which explains just why the Brent (today the Brent-Forties-Oseberg or "BFO" market which Horsnell at least partially predicted back in 1993 it would evolve into) market is so important. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, the United States, etc may produce far more oil, but the Brent stream, its infrastructure, its taxation structure, its geography, its liquidity, and its transparency are what was needed to produce a viable basis for global oil pricing as the era of OPEC administered prices (and before that the prices of the international oil companies) was shattered in the mid-80s.

A lot has changed in the market since 1993, and Paul has told me he's been asked to do an updated version of the book. His reply was "life is too short". Can't blame him, plenty more he can and does do in the markets. And in any case, for the professional who would (and should) pick up this book, it remains viable on its own and professional experience should then fill in the gap to the present. Of course, one has to stay awake long enough to read the book -- no offense to Paul, but there's a reason British academics aren't the stuff of action movies. That said, no pain, no gain!

"Moorish Spain" by Richard Fletcher

Posted by J

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0520248406/ref=s9_asin_image_1/102-1762748-7350520

Following up on my reading of "The Quest for El Cid" and looking for a good general history of Islamic Spain, I picked this book up. Lonely Planet recommended it and it seemed as good as any. Silly me, didn't realize until I got a few pages in that it was the same author who wrote The Quest for El Cid.

I'd give the book 3 1/2 stars. It is a good general overview of the era, I walk away feeling that I now understand the basic outlines of the history of Al-Andalus. In a nutshell: Islamic/Berber conquest - instability - Umayyad Caliphate - Taifa states - Almoravids - Almohads - steady losses to Christian kingdoms and an era of mixed populations - Granada the last stronghold - the end and final expulsion of the Moors. If I have any disappointments, one would be the general lack of detail beyond anecdotes. I would like to have seen not just more anecdotes, but attempts to present some data and discussion of agriculture, more depth on the economy, how the Islamic, Christian, and Jewish non-upper classes interacted, etc. But Fletcher can't really be blamed for this. He set out to write a summarizing history and in this he succeeded, it is merely the limitation of the genre.

Another more serious disappointment would be the relative weighting of his focus. Yes, you cannot write the history of Islamic Spain without spending a good deal of time discussing the Christian kingdoms with whom they were in constant interaction, but I had a near constant feeling that as a historian Fletcher was far more comfortable discussing the Christian history and the more human motives of the Christians than the Muslims. Not in a discriminatory way, just that the Muslim kingdoms came across subtlely more as "the other" and the Christian kingdoms as the understandable half. Perhaps this is because of a relative paucity of sources from the Islamic side (I might hazard to guess that far more Islamic bureaucratic record keeping was lost to time as they were the ultimate losers than Christian records), or perhaps Fletcher's Arabic was limited or non-existent. I can only guess. It is not a fatal flaw in the book, but certainly a weakness.

Finally, I wish more focus was placed on the cultural interactions and the cultural riches Islamic Spain and mixed-faith Spain produced. Menocal focuses heavily on this in her book Ornament of the World, which made the lack of discussion here feel like something crucial was missing from the history.

But again, having focused on these weak points, I did walk away feeling I understand the basic outlines of the region's history now and would recommend the book as a primer. And not to belittle it as nothing more than a primer, he does have interesting insights and anecdotes throughout. Primary sources are referenced more than is common for a summary history, and I found a few of his tantalizing historical analyses really interesting - for example the notion that when the Spanish conquered and colonized the Americas, they not only had a model of religious discourse with which to engage societies such as the Aztecs (as "conquering equals" I might describe it and which Charles C. Mann gets into in his book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus), but also a model of colonization of the land which they had gained from engaging Muslims religiously and depopulating and re-colonizing their land.

A good read, a cut above the rest, but not the best ever.