Figuring Racism in Medieval Christianity by M. Lindsay Kaplan (review)

Abstract

the slackness of their submission to the will of God” (88). In the Sephardifocused fourth chapter, Brann revisits Ibn Ḥazm’s public debate with Samuel the Nagid to add further nuance to the matter. Such comparative moments culminate in the fifth chapter’s combined evaluation of Sephardic and Andalusi travel narratives, whose reflections on physical and intellectual displacement encapsulate the potency of the trope at hand. In the chapter, “Out of Place with Exceptionalism on the Mind: Sefardi and Andalusi Travelers Abroad (Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries),” Brann parses travelogues with respect to both the ageold trope of the journey as one of metaphorical “literary imagination” (141) and as the intrepid protosociological endeavors of medieval adventurers. The conclusion, a masterful converging of two centuries of scrutinizing alAndalus and Sepharad, is a compendium that shows the breadth (and potential pitfalls) of ideological possibility in these terms alongside their capacity to embrace evolving methodological approaches amid shifting disciplinary boundaries. The key rests naturally in the book’s figuration concerning tropes: as is the case with any particular place, alAndalus and Sepharad take on the valences of whatever the searcher is seeking; objectivity is not anyone’s reality, certainly not the scholar’s, and Brann’s consistent awareness of this is as steadying as it is inspiring. Iberian Moorings is much broader than the sum of its interwoven studies, and by innovating even while acknowledging the dangerous allure contained within the ideas of alAndalus and Sepharad, Brann honors the rigorous and thoughtful approach to the study of these ideas.