From the two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning author, God’s Crucible brings to life “a furiously complex age” (New York Times Book Review). Resonating as profoundly today as when it was first published to widespread critical acclaim a decade ago, God’s Crucible is a bold portrait of Islamic Spain and the birth of modern Europe from one of our greatest historians. David Levering Lewis’s narrative, filled with accounts of some of the most epic battles in world history, reveals how cosmopolitan, Muslim al-Andalus flourished—a beacon of cooperation and tolerance—while proto-Europe floundered in opposition to Islam, making virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, religious intolerance, perpetual war, and slavery. This masterful history begins with the fall of the Persian and Roman empires, followed by the rise of the prophet Muhammad and five centuries of engagement between the Muslim imperium and an emerging Europe. Essential and urgent, God’s Crucible underscores the importance of these early, world-altering events whose influence remains as current as today’s headlines.
David Levering Lewis, the author of God’s Crucible, is professor emeritus of history at New York University. A recipient of the National Humanities Medal, Lewis received the Pulitzer Prize for each volume of his W.E.B. Du Bois biography. He lives in New York City.
Table of Contents
List Of Illustrations ix
List Of Maps xi
Chronology xiii
Notes On Usage xix
Preface xxi
1 The Superpowers 3
2 "The Arabs Are Coming!" 29
3 "Jíhad!" 57
4 The Co-opted Caliphate and the Stumbling Jíhad 85
5 The Year 711 105
6 Picking Up the Pieces after Rome 137
7 The Myth of Poitiers 160
8 The Fall and Rise of the Umayyads 184
9 Saving the Popes 209
10 An Empire of Force and Faith 224
11 Carolingian Jíhads: Roncesvalles and Saxony 251
12 The Great Mosque 268
13 The First Europe, Briefly 282
14 Equipoise-Delicate and Doomed 304
15 Disequilibrium, Pelayo's Revenge 333
16 Knowledge Transmitted, Rationalism Repudiated: Ibn Rushd and Musa ibn Maymun 367