ukuelig

God's Crucible combines my fascination with history and religion in a chronicle of the early medieval battle over Spain. The lay person is unaware that Spain was controlled by the Umayyad dynasty, the result of a prince who fled from a dynastic change in the middle east. The result was a pre-Renaissance flowering of culture, intellect, and science in the otherwise devoid medieval Europe. Lewis also details the forging of a united Germanic peoples beyond the Pyranees mountains of the current Spain/France line. Carolingian Franks that soon became backed by the Catholic church successfully ebbed the northward Muslim expansion via the Battle of Poitiers in 732. The Franks launched subsequent efforts, mostly unsuccessful, to penetrate Muslim Iberia. With both sides in a stalemate, the Spanish kings eventually came unto their own. The result being alliances between petty kingdoms and the formation of a more familiar Castillian Spain. This new Spainiard armed themselves with fanatic zeal and slowly began to push out the fracturing Muslim governance closing a half a millenia of Islamic auspice in Spain. Lewis argues that with the replacement of Islamic rule went virtual religious freedom (subjects were now sometimes forced to convert and often violently), cultural and progress slowed as Separdics were persecuted,and the Umayyad's magnificent architectural cities decayed. God's Crucible is a mix of names, many unfamiliar and can be difficult to keep straight at times due to the writer's shifting to and from subjects north of Spain and Muslim Iberia. The range of time covered is also extremely large with a span from the Roman Empire circa the triumvirate and the battle with the Parthians to the rise of Islam and its capture of the Sassanid capital and former Roman territories. I feel that much of this is precursor to the history in scrutiny and was often covered in too much detail. Though, it is of course too important to leave out altogether as it sets up the theme of East versus West that perpetuates throughout the book (and history). To keep the names and times straight, Lewis has multiple addendums, including lineage and succession charts for the relevant kingdoms and a glossary of the Arabic terminology making the book valuable in quick research. Among some of the more interesting tidbits of information provided by the book: Matamoros is literally "kill Moors" (Moor being the general name for the Arabs who dominated Iberia). A spectral St. James was actually believed to have taken up armor for the Christians in some of the religious battles over land. Algebra was brought over to Spain, via the Muslims as al Jabr in the ninth century.

2023-06-22 19:18