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Against the view that antecedents to modern racism can be found in medieval Europe's depictions of Moors, Saracens and the prophet Muhammad, this article demonstrates that representations of Muslims from the seventh to the fifteenth centuries were both respectful and resentful, lacking the kind of coherence necessary to show a pattern of racialisation. Rather than reflecting a structural continuity with the Orientalism that emerged in the nineteenth century, the representations that prevailed were the product of the power interests at play in specific historical and geographical contexts. Certainly, there was prejudice, xenophobia and ethnocentrism, sometimes taking forms that superficially resemble modern racisms. But only with the rise of various European powers as empires in the modern era did it become possible to ideologically and structurally racialise Muslims. Thus, 'race' should be seen as a modern development that accompanied the rise of capitalism and European colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the intertextual relationship that exists between the cycle of popular Spanish ballads that narrate the fall of the Iberian Peninsula's last Visigothic King, Rodrigo, in the year 711 CE and Lope de Vega's play El último godo (The Last Goth) (1618), which is partially based on this ballad cycle, and which stages this crucial moment of Spanish history for an early modern audience at the height of its own imperial power. Through an examination of various residual echoes that connect Lope's play to a number of romances fronterizos (the "frontier ballads" of the medieval borderlands between Christian and Islamic Spain), this essay argues that The Last Goth obliquely sings the praises of a very successful (and already completed) Christian "Reconquest" of the Iberian Peninsula at the very same moment that it overtly stages what was considered by Lope and his contemporaries to be the greatest tragedy in Spain's national history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades more and more musical ensembles have begun performing “historicised” versions of medieval Arabo-Andalusian music. The impulse to produce such re-creations of medieval musical practices has come almost entirely from Western musicians and scholars influenced by the aesthetics of the European Early Music movement, rather than from Arab musicians. The historical resources available as the basis of such performances, however, are very different from those used in the re-creation of European Early Music. This article surveys the extant historical resources, offers a brief history of this new “medieval” style of performance of Arabo-Andalusian music, and provides descriptions and critiques of selected recordings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the visit by two Fātimid dā'īs (missionaries or propagandists) to 'Umar ibn Hafsūn, a controversial figure in the history of Muslim Spain. Emphasising the significance of the gifts they brought to Bobastro, Ibn Hafsūn's headquarters, this article analyses the diplomatic relations between North Africa and Islamic Spain in the 10th century and the earliest introduction of Shī'ism in Western Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]