Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas

Francesca Forte

doi:10.1080/09503110.2015.1049429

Forte, Francesca

2015-05-04 00:00:00

Book Reviews 179 exchanges. The latter was mainly supported by the foreign merchants, and contribu- ted to the transformation of the city into a centre of consumption that imported luxury goods and a commercial centre for exporting, chartering and insuring ships. Accord- ing to Bresc, the main effects of these dual developments were the decline of artisanal production, the impoverishment of technical knowledge and the reinforcement of feudal aristocracy. In his essay on religious Palermo in the section on “Transversal Approaches” Bresc reconstructs the ecclesiastical landscape and examines the evol- ution of piety and devotion between the sixth/twelfth and the ninth/fifteenth centuries, processes which “brought Palermo closer to the other Italian cities” (p. 379). In “Transversal Approaches”, there are five essays, each of which analyses the longer term development of a particular theme from the fifth/eleventh to the ninth/fifteenth century. Laura Sciascia gives a vivid and evocative image of political changes in Sicily from the Norman conquest in 465/1072 to the visit of Charles V of Spain in 942/ 1535. Palermo was used as a theatre where the rituals of coronation, cavalcades, fun- erals and royal weddings became stages and mirrors that underlined moments of crucial importance for the

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Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean Taylor & Francis

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