Across the Mediterranean Frontiers:: Trade, Politics and Religion, 650-1450

Using insights derived from the works of the great annaliste historian Fernand Braudel and those of David Abulafia, this volume aims at presenting a fully-rounded picture of the Medieval Islamic Mediterranean between the years 650 and 1450. It ranges from discussions on Islamic Spain and Sicily through essays on economic and cultural exchange to an examination of Islamic and western politics and religious thought. It also surveys work and warfare in some of the most fascinating centuries of the medieval period and concludes with a profound assessment of the Islamic sources and their transmission. This is a magisterial volume which no historian of the Mediterranean will wish to be without. Dionisius A. Agius is Senior Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Leeds. He is author and editor of several books. His research interests include Arabic dialectology, the semantics of material culture in medieval Arabic travel and geography literature and the medieval Mediterranean. Ian Richard Netton is Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Leeds. He is author or editor of several books in the field of Middle Eastern Studies. His principal research interests are Islamic philosophy and theology, Sufism and Medieval Islamic travellers. His interest in Mediterranean Studies was aroused by his studies of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa and Ibn Jubayr.