Publisher's Synopsis
This collection deals with the socio-economic and cultural history of al-Andalus ? Muslim Spain ? in the period following the collapse of the Caliphate of Cordoba. Yet, far from declining, Lucie Bolens argues that life in the region then achieved a new vitality, the basis of which was effectively an agricultural revolution. The new opening articles show how the techniques inherited from Antiquity (Nabataean, as well as Roman) were developed, both in practice and in numerous scientific treatises. The next studies turn to the questions of diet, and the author expands her analysis to include the rituals and beliefs that permeated daily life, whether in baking bread or in the use of perfume and kohl. In all these areas there emerges a sense of the uniqueness of the cultural world of al-Andalus, one in which East met West and the traditions of Antiquity joined up with those of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
