Elizabeth Drayson plonge dans le riche tissu de la littérature et de l'histoire culturelle espagnoles médiévales et modernes. Son œuvre éclaire les interactions complexes entre les cultures arabe, juive et chrétienne durant des époques charnières de l'Espagne, explorant les profondes connexions entre littérature, art et cinéma. Les travaux de Drayson examinent des légendes durables, telles que celle du dernier roi wisigoth, et scrutent les énigmatiques livres de plomb de Grenade, révélant leur signification culturelle et les paradoxes de l'Espagne moderne. À travers ses écrits, elle retrace avec réflexion le récit complexe de la domination musulmane en Espagne et sa fin.
The book was published in Great Britain in 2017 by Profile Books Ltd, indicating its relevance to contemporary themes and discussions. It likely explores modern issues or narratives that resonate with readers today, reflecting the cultural and social context of its time.
In 1482, Abu Abdallah Muhammad XI became the twenty-third Muslim King of Granada. He would be the last. This is the first history of the ruler, known as Boabdil, whose disastrous reign and bitter defeat brought seven centuries of Moorish Spain to an end. It is an action-packed story of intrigue, treachery, cruelty, cunning, courtliness, bravery and tragedy. Basing her vivid account on original documents and sources, Elizabeth Drayson traces the origins and development of Islamic Spain. She describes the thirteenth-century founding of the Nasrid dynasty, the cultured and stable society it created, and the feuding which threatened it and had all but destroyed it by 1482, when Boabdil seized the throne. The new Sultan faced betrayals by his family, factions in the Alhambra palace, and ever more powerful onslaughts from the forces of Ferdinand and Isabella, monarchs of the newly united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. By stratagem, diplomacy, courage and strength of will Boabdil prolonged his reign for ten years, but he never had much chance of survival. In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella, magnificently attired in Moorish costume, entered Granada and took possession of the city. Boabdil went into exile. The Christian reconquest of Spain, that has reverberated so powerfully down the centuries, was complete.
Hailed as early Christian texts as important as the Dead Sea Scrolls, yet
condemned by the Vatican as Islamic heresies, the Lead books of Granada,
written on discs of lead and unearthed on a Granadan hillside, weave a
mysterious tale of duplicity and daring set in the religious crucible of
sixteenth-century Spain.