La conquista islámica de la península ibérica y la tergiversación del pasado: del catastrofismo al negacionismo (by Denise Filios)

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´ Alejandro Garc´ıa Sanjuan, de la Pen´ınsula Ib´erica y la tergiver´ La conquista islamica ´ del pasado: Del catastrofismo al negacionismo. (Estudios.) Madrid: Marcial Pons, sacion 2013. Paper. Pp. 496. €28. ISBN: 978-84-92820-93-1. doi:10.1017/S0038713414002747

What is a responsible historian to do when faced by a historiographical fraud that is becoming ever more accepted in mainstream media and even academic circles? Alejandro Garc´ıa Sanjuan ´ exposes the fraud that is conquest denialism: the theory that Muslims did not invade the Iberian Peninsula in 711, first formulated by Ignacio Olague ¨ Videla in his 1969 Les arabes n’ont jamais envahi l’Espagne and given new life and respectability by Emilio Gonzalez Ferr´ın, a professor of Arabic at the University of Seville, in his 2006 His´ ´ toria general de Al Andalus. Conquest denialism asserts a number of overt falsehoods, the most egregious being that Islam developed from Arianism or anti-Trinitarian Christianity; that Islamic identity did not emerge until the ‘Abbasid period, so those who arrived in ¯ Iberia in 711 could not have been Muslims; that Visigoth Hispania was not invaded and conquered by an organized army; that there is no surviving contemporary evidence of the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula; and that Muh.ammad’s name was unknown in al-Andalus until the mid-ninth century. That it should be necessary to systematically demonstrate the falsehood of such claims outrages Garc´ıa Sanjuan; ´ nonetheless, his doing so makes the most recent developments in Andalusian studies, especially archaeology, available to a broad Spanish-reading public. However, he addresses much of his text to fellow scholars, insisting that conquest denialism be universally and unequivocally rejected by academia and devoting a section (112–28) to the academic legitimization of conquest denialism, in which he names some fifteen intellectuals and scholars who either have endorsed conquest denialism or not unambiguously rejected it, thereby fomenting its success in the popular media. A tone of authoritarianism pervades his book as Garc´ıa Sanjuan ´ defends history as a scientific discipline against this historiographical fraud perpetrated by amateurs and nonspecialists. His righteous indignation is particularly evident when he implies that Gonzalez Ferr´ın should be fired for misconstruing the Arabic text on ‘Abd ´ al-Malik’s reformed coinage (251–53). This volume consists of four chapters which each address a central tenet of conquest denialism. The first chapter analyzes how and why the process initiated in 711 has been distorted in historiography. Garc´ıa Sanjuan ´ debunks Christian catastrophic interpretations, including the Loss of Spain and Reconquest myth so basic to National Catholic ideology and idealizing interpretations that downplay the violence of the conquest, before turning to denialism, which he treats much more extensively. He demonstrates that fascist values inform Olague’s ¨ argument and documents its adoption by Andalusian nationalists from the post-Franco period to the present, including Gonzalez Ferr´ın in his 2006 volume. Garc´ıa ´ Sanjuan ´ concludes this chapter with a discussion of why he prefers the term “conquest” over that of “invasion,” illustrating the challenges presented to objective history by pervasive ideological discourses. The objective tone in this section contrasts with the righteous indignation and even personal invective evident in other parts of this book. The remaining three chapters systematically debunk fraudulent claims of denialism and mostly draw on the work of other scholars, especially recent archaeological studies. Chapter 2 discusses reliable historical evidence for the conquest, highlighting surviving contemporary material evidence, including coinage and lead seals, images of which are included in the end materials, a fact curiously not mentioned in the chapter. Garc´ıa Sanjuan’s discus´ sion of the Arabic literary sources is less successful due to his insistence that they contain reliable information despite the challenge recently posed by Nicola Clarke, the validity of which he acknowledges. Chapter 3 demonstrates the emergence of Islamic identity and an Speculum 90/1 (January 2015)

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Islamic state within the first century of the Islamic era, illustrating the complete baselessness of deniers’ claims about the development of Islam, the identity of those who invaded Iberia in 711, and the Arabization and Islamization of al-Andalus. Chapter 4 examines why the conquerors triumphed, discussing the condition of the Visigothic state in 711 and the conquerors’ actions, especially the question of whether Hispania was conquered by force of arms or capitulated, as claimed by Pedro Chalmeta. Garc´ıa Sanjuan ´ concludes this chapter with a critique of Eduardo Manzano Moreno’s argument that divergent accounts of the conquest of specific territories reflects the competing interests of the Umayyad regime and those of the descendants of the original conquerors; here he does not discuss Clarke’s work, despite its relevance. The concluding overview of his argument is one of the strongest sections of the book, as Garc´ıa Sanjuan ´ dispassionately and concisely lays out both the claims of conquest deniers and the evidence that exposes their motivated distortions of the historical record. In the introduction, Garc´ıa Sanjuan ´ expresses little hope that his debunking of conquest denialism will meet a favorable reception or succeed in changing historical discourse in the Spanish popular arena. Nonetheless, he insists that historians have an obligation to communicate their findings to the public and especially to denounce the historiographical fraud that is conquest denialism. Garc´ıa Sanjuan ´ is at his best in illustrating the social context and ideological interests that shaped Olague’s theory, in documenting the favorable ¨ reception of conquest denialism from 1969 to the present, and in presenting the incontrovertible material evidence that refutes denialist claims. However, his interest in defending his own methodology, including his reliance on literary sources whose accuracy is subject to scholarly debate, causes him to introduce topics that detract from his focus on denialism, and his exhaustiveness may lose him the audience he desires. Denise Filios, University of Iowa

Otto´ Gecser, The Feast and the Pulpit: Sermons and the Cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1235–ca. 1500. (Collana della Societa` Internazionale di Studi Francescani 15.) Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioeva, 2012. Pp. xvi, 462. €58. ISBN: 978-88-7988-589-8. doi:10.1017/S0038713414002681

In this book, which originated as the author’s doctoral dissertation, Otto´ Gecser aims to understand the contribution of sermons to the cult of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, from her canonization in 1235 to the end of the fifteenth century. His source base is a body of 103 Latin sermons composed for Saint Elizabeth’s feast day, of which he provides a detailed register in the first of three substantive appendices. (The appendices constitute almost half of this book.) While his main focus is the sermons themselves, Gecser emphasizes throughout his study the relationship between the sermons and other elements in the diffusion of the saint’s cult as well as the circumstances in which or for which the sermons were composed. Gecser’s first chapter provides necessary context by surveying the medieval Elizabeth hagiography, the popularity of pilgrimage to her shrine in Marburg, ecclesiastical institutions founded to commemorate her, and the elements of her liturgical cult. For her hagiographers, Elizabeth served sometimes as an exemplary sponsa Christi and other times as a model of pious widowhood. Gecser also shows how the points of emphasis in accounts of her life tracked with changes in fashion for female saints: for instance, while early vitae stressed her active or evangelical life, by the fourteenth century she had acquired a reputation as a visionary. While in the later Middle Ages Elizabeth was claimed by the Franciscans as a saintly member of the Third Order, Gecser shows that this identity was not an established Speculum 90/1 (January 2015)