Customer Reviews

The Medieval Spains (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A clear and informative overview of both sides of the religious and territorial divide in medieval Spain. Not is the focus solely on military and political details, although these things are paid due attention; Reilly also takes in culture, society and technology to paint a broad picture of Muslim, Christian and Jewish life in Iberia. A great place to start.

Bernard Reilly would have a difficult time convincing anyone that he is an exciting writer. Fortunately for us, he is a good writer. Reilly manages to give a solid omniscient introduction to an obscure topic in just over two hundred pages. If the book were any longer it would be difficult to get through; if it were any shorter it would not be as informative.

What is unique about Reilly's book is that it takes an omniscient view of medieval Spain. Most books tend either to concentrate on Al-Andalus or on the Christian states in the north. Here, each is represented (althought the Christian states do seem to get more attention) well. Reilly spends plenty of time on the "fun stuff" of history, but also on the economic, legal, and religious issues.

As I alluded to above, this book is dry. It is, however, necessary. So pick it up, get through it, and then you will be able to move on to some of the more exciting books on the subject (Hugh Kennedy's, for example).

Reilly's The Medieval Spains is chock full of details and dates that might daze a reader unfamiliar with the history of Muslim Spain. However, it is a very useful and thorough history, and I do recommend it for its strong scholarship and for the way it's set up: the chapters are divided into sections like general history(dates, rulers, etc.) and culture.

Before reading this I had little notion of Spanish history. Afterwards I'd become fascinated with not just Spain but much related history in the whole region and as far afield as Iran. Great general reading yet specialised enough for atext book. Bravo.

The title of this book is not a proper choice for a book which covers the history of what is now Spain long before the medieval period. Reilly starts with the Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula during the late Imperial period and ends with the expulsion of the Muslims and Jews in the 15th century.
The book does a wonderful job of explaining how these Roman provinces were governed, and how the Goth and Visigoth invasions which ended Roman control was a short period relative to the invasion by the Muslims and their control of parts of modern Spain. The current borders of Portugal, France and Spain, not to mention Gibraltar and the enclaves of Northern Africa still controlled by Spain is covered in detail.
This is not an exciting book, but a well written one. There is enough detailed information to inform the reader of the many forces involved, but it is not boring like many books that cover so much detail can be.
If you want to understand this peninsular crossroads, and how it has been misrepresented as an example of how "enlightened" the Islamic invaders were, you could do far worse than read this short but worthwhile book.

I found the book very interesting but at many places it is very confusing. The author will be talking about so and so and his cousin then on the next sentence he will refer to the "later" or "he", and i was left wondering which latest which he. It was very annoying because it was hard to connect the dots in his descriptions of events and personalities. Otherwise, i found the book very interesting, and it filled lost of information on the peninsula. He did not spend too much time on Portugal which i also found odd.

The title is somewhat misleading: the author presents the history of the Iberian peninsula from the late days as Roman provinces up to the last part of the XV century. "The Medieval Iberias" could be a better title, but then it would not have had the same 'mystical' allure that "Spain" provides.
The book is ambitious and well written, but I found it dry and wanting. Some times you feel that the writer is a teaser: you always want to know more that the author is telling ...
In all, an excellent book but not for everybody.

Academic writing gets a bad rap in general but this book is truly dreadful. It moves back and forth between the past tense, the present tense and the future tense in a singularly confusing fashion (sometimes within a single sentence), it delights in using unnecessary obscure words (just from words starting with p: prescind, perdurance), and assumes too much knowledge for a textbook ("the revolt of the Visigoths in the Danube provinces" around 400 is, we are told, "too familiar to need much telling here"). It consistently refers to geographic units it hasn't bothered to mark on any of the four maps, makes statements which can't be factually reconciled (John of Biclarum is said to be the only Spaniard in the sixth or seventh century to have known Greek on p. 28, but Isidore of Seville is said to have used the Greek classics on p. 32), builds false binaries (just because kingship is not elective does mean it must be hereditary, for example), and essentialness is odd ways for a book published in the 1990s (we are told North Africa was "congenial" to "the Arab", and that no Islamic government anywhere "to the present day" has had "any generally accepted religious or political legitimacy"). Religion is treated in a strangely perfunctory way (we are told much about the political implications of Visigoth Arianism, but what Arianism was is never much discussed). Many sentences seem to exist for the sole purpose of showing that no proof reading or copy editing was done: "Its highpoint came with the Balearics were finally overrun in 902."