MultiSession 711-2011 Commemoration of the 1300th Anniversary of Islam in the Iberian World, Part 1: Encounters and Transmissions between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Iberia

AHA Session 228
Sunday, January 9, 2011: 8:30 AM-10:30 AM
Room 111 (Hynes Convention Center)
Chair:
Teofilo F. Ruiz, University of California at Los Angeles
Papers:
Refugees under the Almoravids
Juan Camilo Gómez-Rivas, American University in Cairo
Conversion in the Crown of Aragon
Jarbel Rodriguez, San Francisco State University
Anti-Jewish Legislative Discourse in Castile
Maya Soifer Irish, Rice University

Session Abstract

The Muslim conquest and settlement of Iberia created an experimental laboratory of relations between Muslims, Christians, and Jews on the Iberian Peninsula.  Historians have long been fascinated by the ways that these individuals and communities interacted with one another, both peacefully and violently.  Islam's presence in medieval Iberia also contributed to a constant shifting and at-times fluid negotiation of political boundaries, identities, and power relations.  Its hold on Iberia additionally meant that this peninsula in western Europe would be connected to North Africa as well as the Islamic world of the eastern Mediterranean.  Papers in this session consider the unusual dynamics created by Islam’s entry and development in Iberia.