
Queen of the Sea: A History of Lisbon
Tom Verde
Barry Hatton
2018, Hurst Publishers, 978-18- 49049-979, £14.99 pb.
Lisbon’s Mouraria—a name derived from Mouros, Portuguese for Moors—is the city’s “most ethnic neighbourhood where Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Africans and Chinese live cheek-by-jowl along cobbled streets,” as this engaging history of Portugal’s capital relates. Lisbon’s multiculturalism dates back centuries and is a hallmark of this vital seaport, where fortunes were made, regimes overthrown and the populace rebounded from devastating natural disasters, such as the earthquake of 1755, the largest ever to strike Europe. During the mid-12th century, the Reconquista also did its damage to the Muslim population of what was “the Moors’ mightiest city in western Iberia.” Yet their cultural influence survived in language: “Portuguese words beginning ‘al’”—as well as signature legacies such as the nation’s famed, hand-painted azulejos tiles. This is a richly rendered story of an important and often underappreciated European capital.
You may also be interested in...
Dissolved Monopoly’s Legacy Hinges on How India Honors Its Political Architecture
From the first fortified trading post in northeastern India, historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones tracks the physical changes wrought by the English East India Company.Omani Author Zahran Alqasmi's Story About Life, Land and Honey
In his third novel, about a beekeeper living in Oman’s mountainous interior, local author Zahran Alqasmi grapples with a changing landscape around him.Untold Stories of British Muslim Women as Agents of Change
Sociologist Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor and historian Jamie Gilham present 100 years of Muslim women who have contributed to the dynamism of Islam in Britain.