History as Prelude

This collection of essays by seven scholars is a straightforward narrative of real world—intellectual commercial spiritual philosophical scientific aesthetic—creative engagement among Jews Muslims and some Christians in daily life in Spain and around the Mediterranean. History as Prelude is a major contribution to the Israeli-Arab peace process because it undermines—in fact blows away—the efforts of propagandists who serve governments or political movements to negate the reality of the Arab-Jewish relationship in the medieval Mediterranean. The contributors in unassuming well-researched scholarship have erected a wall protecting historical reality from distortion providing irrefutable—and often delightful—examples of creative coexistence.