King John’s Delegation to the Almohad Court (1212)
Medieval Interreligious Interactions and Modern Historiography
By (author) Ilan Shoval
The first full-scale study of Matthew Paris report, this work proposes a completely new interpretation of the text and portrays a multifaceted and inherently complex picture of the interactions between Christians, Muslims, and Jews around 1200, straddling law, politics, statecraft, history, culture, and religion. This study also prom
Is Matthew Paris’s story of an English diplomatic delegation, sent by King John to the caliph of Morocco in the summer of 1212, nothing more than fiction, or does it report actual historical events? Did King John really offer to subjugate his kingdom to the Muslim caliph and did he consider converting to Islam? Was one of John’s diplomats genuinely a converted Jew with whom the Muslim ruler conversed about theological issues? And how may a new reading of this medieval chronicle in its appropriate historical context contribute to our understanding of the professionalization of diplomatic practice, the emergence of European bureaucratic kingship, Christian-Muslim political interaction, interreligious polemic, and conversion? In this book, these questions are explored as part of the first full-scale study of Matthew Paris’s report. The volume proposes an entirely new interpretation of the text and portrays a multifaceted and inherently complex picture of the interactions between Christians, Muslims, and Jews around 1200 that draws on law, politics, statecraft, history, culture, and religion. This study also prompts a re-evaluation of the delegation story as a ‘test case’ for John’s measures during his reign. Matthew’s text is examined in its historical context of Christian-Muslim encounters on the frontier in order to advance our understanding of a crucial era of political and diplomatic transformation.
- By (author) Ilan Shoval
Other Titles in this Series
Visions of Unity after the Visigoths
Early Iberian Latin Chronicles and the Mediterranean World
Volume 26
Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe
Studies on Cultural Identity and Power
Volume 41
A Renaissance Baron and his Possessions
Paolo Giordano I Orsini, Duke of Bracciano (1541-1585)
Volume 15
Writing History in Medieval Poland
Bishop Vincentius of Cracow and the 'Chronica Polonorum'
Volume 28
From Tyrant to Philosopher-King
A Literary History of Alexander the Great in Medieval and Early Modern England
Volume 19
Victorine Restoration
Essays on Hugh of St Victor, Richard of St Victor, and Thomas Gallus
Volume 39
Order into Action
How Large-Scale Concepts of World-Order determine Practices in the Premodern World
Volume 40
Luigi Pulci in Renaissance Florence and Beyond
New Perspectives on his Poetry and Influence
Volume 29
Dreams, Medicine, and Literary Practice
Exploring the Western Literary Tradition Through Chaucer
Volume 18
Andreas Vesalius and the ‘Fabrica’ in the Age of Printing
Art, Anatomy, and Printing in the Italian Renaissance
Volume 33
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