Books
Twelve books to start with.
Readable histories of al-Andalus, the lives of Africans in Europe, and the Moorish Science Temple, with a note where a book's view is debated.
Books
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Moorish Spain
A short, readable history of Islamic Spain from 711 onward, and of the culture and science it brought that had a lasting impact on Spain.
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The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
A portrait of medieval Spain as a place where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together and literature, science, and the arts flourished.
Worth knowing: Its tolerance framing is debated. The publisher’s page for Brian Catlos’s Kingdoms of Faith (below) says earlier accounts have painted Islamic Spain either as “a paradise of enlightened tolerance” or as a clash of civilizations, and that the real picture was more complex.
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Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus
A political history of al-Andalus from 711 to the fall of Granada in 1492, built on Arabic sources rather than only Christian ones.
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Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain
A history of Islamic Spain from the rise of Islam to the final expulsion of Spain’s Muslims, showing Muslims, Christians, and Jews building a civilization together while also fighting one another.
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God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215
A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner’s portrait of Islamic Spain and the birth of modern Europe.
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Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614
The story of the Moriscos, forced converts who kept living as Muslims in secret, from a century of uneasy tolerance to the final expulsion in 1614.
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Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain
The book from a major exhibition shown at the Alhambra and The Met on the art and architecture of al-Andalus; The Met offers it to read online or download as a PDF.
Worth knowing: Out of print, but available at no cost from MetPublications.
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Black Tudors: The Untold Story
True stories, pulled from long-forgotten records, of Africans in Tudor England who were baptized, married, and paid wages like any other Tudors.
Worth knowing: Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2018, per the publisher.
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African Europeans: An Untold History
Traces a long history of African Europeans, from the Roman era to today’s migrants, through the lives of both ordinary and extraordinary people.
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The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de’ Medici
The first full-length modern biography of Alessandro de’ Medici, Florence’s first duke, including the long debate over whether he had African ancestry.
Worth knowing: The H-Net reviewer says Fletcher takes a middle road that keeps the ancestry debate open.
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The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali
How Noble Drew Ali’s teaching that “citizenship is salvation” shaped the Moorish Science Temple of America and the many movements it inspired.
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Golden Age of the Moor
An essay collection arguing that Europe owes a large debt to the Moors and that Africans played a major role in Muslim Spain.
Worth knowing: Listed as an AALBC.com bestseller. We couldn’t find a scholarly review of this specific book. Its emphasis on African Moors differs from reference works like Britannica, which describe the Moors of Spain as of mixed Arab, Spanish, and Amazigh (Berber) origins. Van Sertima’s separate theory of African influence on the Olmecs was judged “devoid of any foundation” in Current Anthropology (Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997; doi.org/10.1086/204626).