
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...
Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature Winner Gives Voice to Marginalized
“No one else will be destined to write a life story as squalid as mine, although it’s all true,” comments the elusive protagonist of Algerian author Ahmed Taibaoui’s noir novel.Nomadic Chieftain’s Biography Unveils Dynamics of Colonial Expansion
Historian Tetsu Akiyama challenges the narrative that the Kyrgyz were a “static and monotonous ‘traditional’ society’” destined to be subsumed.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.