Description
Book SynopsisWilliam Granara is Gordon Gray Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, where he is also the Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He has published widely on medieval Arabic literature and translated several novels from Arabic to English.
Trade ReviewWoven together from historical, geographical, literary, and legal sources,
Narrating Muslim Sicily is an intricate and fascinating account of a medieval civilization lying on the frontier between Islam and Christendom. William Granara brilliantly teases out the different ways that Arabs and Muslims viewed the island – from eyewitnesses of the golden years of Sicily’s Islamic period, to later poets and scholars who reimagined its history. At the heart of Granara’s groundbreaking book
is a subtle argument: that while all of these sources collectively constituted a “zone of contradiction”, they nevertheless consistently appealed to the concept of
jihad as a tool to extract meaning from Muslim Sicily’s unique experiences. * Robert Wisnovsky, James McGill Professor of Islamic Philosophy, McGill University, Canada *
an invaluable resource for specialists in medieval Sicily, and invites more general readers into this rich literary world * Joshua C. Birk, Associate Professor of History, Smith College USA. *
