Crucible of Light - Elizabeth Drayson - diskuze

The epic history of Europe's rich Islamic heritage, exploring the endless complexities of this centuries-long relationship.
Few readers are aware how much Europe owes to its Islamic heritage; this book aims to restore the central place of Muslim culture in the continent's history, while exploring the endless complexities that this vexed relationship creates. At a time when Islam is so narrowly identified with terrorism and migration in Europe, The Crucible of Lightis a welcome and necessary corrective.
The contested but fruitful relationship between Islam and Europe begins in 711AD with the Moorish invasion of Spain and continues to the present. The Crucible of Light tells the story of the conquest and reconquest of Spain over an epic 800 year period; the meteoric rise of Arabo-Norman Sicily; the Ottoman renaissance of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries; and the ebb and flow of Balkan history and the fate of contested islands like Cyprus and Malta, with their very different outcomes.
This scale of history can only be done by focusing on individual stories and key places and, above all, by tracking themes. Winding through this story are, of course, epic battles and sieges, with Jihad and Crusade mirroring each other; but also periods of extraordinary collaboration and sharing: Europe owing its initial rediscovery of classical learning and science via the vast libraries in Spain, scoured for enlightenment by Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars alike.
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