In this panoramic history of Islamic culture in early Europe, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian reexamines what we once thought we knew.
At the beginning of the eighth century, the Arabs brought a momentous revolution in power, religion, and culture to Dark Ages Europe. David Levering Lewis's masterful history begins with the fall of the Persian and Roman empires, followed by the rise of the prophet Muhammad and the creation of Muslim Spain. Five centuries of engagement between the Muslim imperium and an emerging Europe followed, from the Muslim conquest of Visigoth Hispania in 711 to Latin Christendom's declaration of unconditional warfare on the Caliphate in 1215. Lewis's narrative, filled with accounts of some of the greatest battles in world history, reveals how cosmopolitan, Muslim al-Andalus flourished—a beacon of cooperation and tolerance between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—while proto-Europe, defining itself in opposition to Islam, made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, religious intolerance, perpetual war, and slavery. A cautionary tale, God's Crucible provides a new interpretation of world-altering events whose influence remains as current as today's headlines. 8 pages of color illustrations; 4 maps.
David Levering Lewis, the author of God’s Crucible, is professor emeritus of history at New York University. A recipient of the National Humanities Medal, Lewis received the Pulitzer Prize for each volume of his W.E.B. Du Bois biography. He lives in New York City.
Table of Contents
List Of Illustrations ix
List Of Maps xi
Chronology xiii
Notes On Usage xix
Preface xxi
1 The Superpowers 3
2 "The Arabs Are Coming!" 29
3 "Jíhad!" 57
4 The Co-opted Caliphate and the Stumbling Jíhad 85
5 The Year 711 105
6 Picking Up the Pieces after Rome 137
7 The Myth of Poitiers 160
8 The Fall and Rise of the Umayyads 184
9 Saving the Popes 209
10 An Empire of Force and Faith 224
11 Carolingian Jíhads: Roncesvalles and Saxony 251
12 The Great Mosque 268
13 The First Europe, Briefly 282
14 Equipoise-Delicate and Doomed 304
15 Disequilibrium, Pelayo's Revenge 333
16 Knowledge Transmitted, Rationalism Repudiated: Ibn Rushd and Musa ibn Maymun 367
