Yousef Casewit. The Mystics of al-Andalus

The study of medieval Spain and Morocco, known in Arabic as al-Andalus, has seen a revival of interest in the United States in conversation with academic trends in Europe and North Africa. Building on the work of scholars such as Vincent Cornell and Maribel Fierro, Yousef Casewit’s The Mystics of al-Andalus: Ibn Barrajān and Islamic Thought in the Twelfth Century approaches al-Andalus from the perspective of the region’s multifaceted intellectual, spiritual, and sociopolitical life during the late Almoravid period (r. 1040–1147). The book, like other works in the Cambridge Studies of Islamic Civilization series, effectively illustrates the picture of a polycentric Middle East and North Africa, where Cordoba and Marrakesh were deeply intertwined with developments further east in cities like Cairo and Baghdad. Casewit’s contribution is productive at a theoretical level for both medieval and modern historians. Recent monographs on European history have challenged the “center-periphery” model built into broad historiographical categories such as Western civilization and Latin Christendom, and this task remains to be accomplished more completely in the study of the Middle East and North Africa across disciplines.

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