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Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain. By Joseph F. O'Callaghan. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2003. Pp. xviii, 322. $39.95.)
Joseph O'Callaghan's study of the medieval Spanish reconquest serves a dual purpose. First, it updates the now out-of-print English-language surveys by Julian Bishko (1975) and Derek Lomax (1978). Secondly, O'Callaghan enters into an historiographical debate over the religious character of Iberian warfare.
In surveying the history of the reconquest, O'Callaghan begins by tracing the origin of the term itself from the literature of the Asturian kingdom to that of the mid-eleventh century. Chapters Two through Five provide chronological narratives of the Christian-Muslim wars from the mid-eleventh to the mid-thirteenth century. Chapter Nine completes the story to the fall of Granada in 1492 and the establishment of the first Iberian enclaves in northwest Africa. Chapters Six and Seven are particularly outstanding contributions. The former is a more comprehensive description of the royal army-its composition, structure, weapons, and strategies-than found in J....