This volume is part of Blackwell’s ambitious and impressive history of Spain in 13 volumes. Under the general editorship of John Lynch, this collection promises to become the standard reference work in English on the history of Spain from its prehistory to the present. The list of future contributors includes such distinguished medievalists and early modern historians as Roger Collins, Peter Linehan, Angus MacKay, and John Edwards, as well as Lynch and Reilly.
This particular volume, grounded in a mastery of Christian sources and in the latest scholarly research, examines the contest between the rising Christian kingdoms of the north and the waning Muslim taifas for control of the peninsula. The story begins with the demise of the Caliphate of Córdoba and concludes with the death of Alfonso VII of Castile-León. As Reilly shows, this was a period of rapid political transformation: while in the first half of the eleventh century the issue of which side would emerge victorious remained open to question, by 1157 the balance of power had begun to tilt toward the Christian kingdoms.
On the one hand, the fragmentation of Andalucían political and military power into the weakened kingdoms or taifas and the subsequent invasions of Iberia by North African fundamentalists—the Murābit (Almoravids) in the late eleventh century and the Muwāhhid (Almohads) in the mid-twelfth century—marked the low and high points of Islamic influence in the peninsula during the central Middle Ages. On the other hand, the emergence or reshaping of the new Christian kingdoms in the north (Castile, Portugal, and Aragon-Catalonia) set the stage for the final political division of Iberia into the so-called Spain of the five kingdoms, a political arrangement that survived, with some exceptions, until the eve of the early modern period.
Although the book begins and ends with comparative examinations of Christian and Muslim societies, and although brief discussions of culture are interspersed throughout the text, Reilly’s main thrust is neither social, cultural, nor economic. Instead he has written a rich and detailed narrative of the political history of the period. This is a story dominated by the discourse of warfare and reconquest, by problems of dynastic succession, and by the internecine struggles of the Christian kingdoms. Probably because of the paucity of Muslim sources (a few extant chronicles), the account of political developments in the Christian north receives far more attention than that of Muslim Spain. Reilly has already published two meticulously researched monographs on the reigns of Alfonso VI and of Urraca, so in dealing with Castile-León he covers a territory over which he has an undisputed and unsurpassed mastery. Yet his descriptions of the emergence of Catalonia and of Muwāhhti power, though brief, are insightful and lucid.
This is a most careful examination of a complex and misunderstood period, one of Iberia’s most significant and formative. Reilly has written a formidable and thorough narrative of its political history. The Iberia of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period is unintelligible without an understanding of how the components of modern Spain were constructed in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries.
