Hussein Fancy. . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016, xviii, 310 pp.

The Archive of the Crown of Aragon has provided the foundation for some of the most compelling medieval research of the last half century. Classics by Robert I. Burns, John Boswell, David Nirenberg, and Brian Catlos, among others, advanced our understanding of inter-religious interaction in the medieval Mediterranean. Indeed, Hussein Fancy’s acknowledgements section reads like a “who’s who” of medieval Iberian scholarship, and so it is no wonder given such support that he has presented this master-work. Professor Fancy interweaves disparate individual historical strands into a cohesive account of the connection between cross-religious military relationships and political ideology in the medieval Crown of Aragon. The individual chapters provide an overlapping aspect of the general narrative. Each one begins with a brief micro-history focusing on Muslim, Christian, and Jewish actors in the story, which he then uses to introduce broader political, social, and religious developments occurring in the western Mediterranean. This approach, combined with the preference for endnotes, makes this book readable for the non-expert, and his thorough bibliography and index allows for quick reference for those looking to utilize this intriguing research.