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Sea of the Caliphs
The Mediterranean in the Medieval Islamic World
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Christophe Picard
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Translated by:
Nicholas Elliott
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2018
About this book
Christophe Picard recounts the adventures of Muslim sailors who competed with Greek and Latin seamen for control of the 7th-century Mediterranean. By the time Christian powers took over trade routes in the 13th century, a Muslim identity that operated within, and in opposition to, Europe had been shaped by encounters across the sea of the caliphs.
Reviews
[Picard is] the leading scholar of Islamic maritime history…This will surely become the standard work on Islam and the sea in the early Middle Ages.
-- David Abulafia Times Literary Supplement
-- David Abulafia Times Literary Supplement
A leading authority on medieval Islamic history, Picard analyzes the involvement in and approach to the Mediterranean Sea by Muslims and their principalities from the dawn of Islam to the twelfth century, when the balance of power tilted in favor of Latin Christendom. Going beyond internal developments, he examines relations both collaborative and conflictive with Byzantium, the Latin world, and Berber nations. As a history of the Mediterranean, this book is unique in placing the Islamic world at the center.
-- Brian A. Catlos, University of Colorado
-- Brian A. Catlos, University of Colorado
By shining a light on this obscure period, Christophe Picard brings a new dimension to Braudel’s Mediterranean, as a place where the voices of Latins, Byzantines, and Muslims are integrated.
-- Livres Hebdo
-- Livres Hebdo
In Sea of the Caliphs, Picard shows that the Mediterranean, long considered marginal to Islam, even reduced to a clichéd playground for pirates, was in reality a major site for the development of Muslim societies between the seventh and twelfth centuries. He recasts the traditional view of Fernand Braudel by making Islam the dominant actor in this space for several centuries, not only as a military power but also as a commercial and intellectual force.
-- Le Monde
-- Le Monde
A masterful revision of the common view of Arabs and Muslims as primarily pirates in medieval Mediterranean history.
-- B. Weinstein Choice
-- B. Weinstein Choice
A comprehensive account of the various ways that medieval Islam’s highest political authorities—its caliphs, whether Sunni or Shi’ite—used naval warfare on the Mediterranean Sea to defend and expand the borders of their territories.
-- Sarah Davis-Secord H-Net Reviews
-- Sarah Davis-Secord H-Net Reviews
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vi -
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Introduction: The End of the Moorish and Saracen Pirate?
1 - I. The Arab Mediterranean Between Representation and Appropriation
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1. The Arab Discovery of the Mediterranean
17 -
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2. Arab Writing on the Conquest of the Mediterranean
37 -
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3. The Silences of the Sea: The Abbasid Jihad
65 -
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4. The Geographers’ Mediterranean
85 -
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5. Muslim Centers of the Western Mediterranean: Islam without the Abbasids
98 -
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6. The Mediterranean of the Western Caliphs
112 -
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7. The Western Mediterranean: Last Bastion of Islam’s Maritime Ambitions
152 - II. Mediterranean Strategies of the Caliphs
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8. The Mediterranean of the Two Empires
185 -
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9. Controlling the Mediterranean: The Abbasid Model
204 -
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10. The Maritime Awakening of the Muslim West
237 -
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11. The Maritime Imperialism of the Caliphs in the Tenth Century: The End of Jihad?
256 -
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12. Islam’s Maritime Sovereignty in the Face of Latin Expansion
274 -
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Conclusion: The Medieval Mediterranean and Islamic Memory
287 -
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Notes
295 -
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Glossary
319 -
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Chronologies
323 -
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Selected Bibliography
325 -
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Index
377
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
November 5, 2018
eBook ISBN:
9780674982666
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
314
Other:
2 halftones, 8 maps
