Overview

Few readers are aware how much Europe owes to its Islamic heritage; this book aims to restore the central place of Muslim culture in the continent's history, while exploring the endless complexities that this vexed relationship creates. At a time when Islam is so narrowly identified with terrorism and migration in Europe, Crucible of Light is a necessary corrective. The contested but fruitful relationship between Islam and Europe begins in 711AD with the Moorish invasion of Spain and continues to the present. Crucible of Light tells the story of the conquest and reconquest of Spain over an 800 year period; the meteoric rise of Arabo-Norman Sicily; the Ottoman renaissance of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries; and the ebb and flow of Balkan history and the fate of contested islands. This scale of history can only be done by focusing on individual stories and key places and by tracking themes. Winding through this story are epic battles and sieges, but also periods of extraordinary collaboration and sharing. Travel and exchange of people, ideas, and merchandise are an undercurrent throughout, cutting across opposite tides of rivalry, intolerance, and military confrontation.

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Author Information

Elizabeth Drayson is emeritus fellow in Spanish at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, where she is a specialist in medieval literature and cultural history. The author of The Moor's Last Stand, The Lead Books of Granada, and The King and the Whore, she lives in Cambridge, England.

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