The Religious Polemics Of The Muslims Of Late Medieval Christian Iberia

The Religious Polemics of the Muslims of Late Medieval Christian Iberia examines the corpus of polemical literature against the Christians and the Jews of the protected Muslims (Mudejars) preserved in Arabic and in Aljamiado (Spanish in Arabic characters).

This collection takes a new approach to understanding religious plurality in the Iberian Peninsula and its Mediterranean and northern European contexts. Focusing on polemics—works that attack or refute the beliefs of religious Others—this volume aims to challenge the problematic characterization of Iberian Jews, Muslims, and Christians as homogeneous groups. From the high Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century, Christian efforts to convert groups of Jews and Muslims, Muslim efforts to convert Christians and Jews, and the defensive efforts of these communities to keep their members within the faiths led to the production of numerous polemics. This volume brings together a wide variety of case studies that expose how the current historiographical focus on the three religious communities as allegedly homogeneous groups obscures the diversity within the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities as well as the growing ranks of skeptics and outright unbelievers. Featuring contributions from a range of academic disciplines, this paradigm-shifting book sheds new light on the cultural and intellectual dynamics of the conflicts that marked relations among these religious communities in the Iberian Peninsula and beyond. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Antoni Biosca i Bas, Thomas E. Burman, Mònica Colominas Aparicio, John Dagenais, Óscar de la Cruz, Borja Franco Llopis, Linda G. Jones, Daniel J. Lasker, Davide Scotto, Teresa Soto, Ryan Szpiech, Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, and Carsten Wilke.

This book focuses on polemical religious texts of Iberia’s long fifteenth century, a period characterized by both social violence and cultural exchange. It highlights how polemical texts often reveal the interconnected nature of social and cultural intimacy, promoting dialogue and cultural transfer.

"Kathryn A. Miller radically reconceptualizes what she calls the exclave experience of medieval Muslim minorities. By focusing on the legal scholars (faqihs) of fifteenth-century Aragonese Muslim communities and translating little-known and newly discovered texts, she unearths a sustained effort to connect with Muslim coreligionists and preserve practice and belief in the face of Christian influences. Devoted to securing and disseminating Islamic knowledge, these local authorities intervened in Christian courts on behalf of Muslims, provided Arabic translations, and taught and advised other Muslims. Miller follows the activities of the faqihs, their dialogue with Islamic authorities in nearby Muslim politics, their engagement with islamic texts, and their pursuit of traditional ideals of faith.

The essays in this interdisciplinary volume examine the social and cultural interaction of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Spain during the medieval and early modern periods. Together, the essays provide a unique comparative perspective on compelling problems of ethnoreligious relations. Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain considers how certain social and political conditions fostered fruitful cultural interchange, while others promoted mutual hostility and aversion. The volume examines the factors that enabled one religious minority to maintain its cultural integrity and identity more effectively than another in the same sociopolitical setting. This volume provides an enriched understanding of how Christians, Muslims, and Jews encountered ideological antagonism and negotiated the theological and social boundaries that separated them.

In Muslim-Christian Polemics across the Mediterranean Diego R. Sarrió Cucarella provides an exposition and analysis of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī’s (d. 684/1285) Splendid Replies to Insolent Questions (al-Ajwiba al-fākhira ‘an al-as’ila al-fājira). Written in response to an apology for Christianity by the Melkite Bishop of Sidon, Paul of Antioch, the Splendid Replies is among the most extensive and most important medieval Muslim refutations of Christianity, and the primary significance of this study is to provide detailed access to its argumentation and intellectual context for the first time in a western language. Moreover, the Introduction and Conclusion creatively situate the work within the challenges of modern-day Christian-Muslim dialogue.

The conflict and contact between Muslims and Christians in the Middle Ages is among the most important but least appreciated developments of the period from the seventh to the fourteenth century. Michael Frassetto argues that the relationship between these two faiths during the Middle Ages was essential to the cultural and religious developments of Christianity and Islam—even as Christians and Muslims often found themselves engaged in violent conflict. Frassetto traces the history of those conflicts and argues that these holy wars helped create the identity that defined the essential characteristics of Christians and Muslims. The polemic works that often accompanied these holy wars was important, Frassetto contends, because by defining the essential evil of the enemy, Christian authors were also defining their own beliefs and practices. Holy war was not the only defining element of the relationship between Christians and Muslims during the Middle Ages, and Frassetto explains that everyday contacts between Christian and Muslim leaders and scholars generated more peaceful relations and shaped the literary, intellectual, and religious culture that defined medieval and even modern Christianity and Islam.