Hispania at Home and Abroad

Barrett, Graham

Abstract

How do I get to early medieval Hispania, and can you meet me there? If we go looking, we can find it, but not where we might expect. More than a few contemporaries gave this some thought, and all who did so pointed to the same spot – at least at first. Where, then, was Hispania in the early Middle Ages, and why? Our canvas for reconstructing this geography is spread from the eighth century to the eleventh, what we used to think of as stage one of the Reconquista. Through the prism of Hispania, both Christians and Muslims, in all their ways of looking back at what used to be and ahead at what God had foreordained to be, perceived and processed continuity and change, triumph and disaster, and by what can seem divergent paths arrived in the end at the same destination, each to stake out a special claim.

Citation

Barrett, G. (2020). Hispania at Home and Abroad. In S. Barton, & R. Portass (Eds.), Beyond the Reconquista: New Directions in the History of Medieval Iberia (711-1085). In Honour of Simon Barton (52-119). Brill Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004423879_004

• Online Publication Date: Apr 14, 2020
• Publication Date: Apr 14, 2020
• Deposit Date: Sep 2, 2024
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 52-119
• Series Title: The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World
• Series Number: 76
• Book Title: Beyond the Reconquista: New Directions in the History of Medieval Iberia (711-1085). In Honour of Simon Barton
• Chapter Number: 2
• ISBN: 9789004315136
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004423879_004
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2783064