Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree is an historical novel by British Pakistani writer Tariq Ali, first published in 1992. The first of Ali’s Islam quintet, a series of historical novels about the confrontations between Islamic and Christian cultures, this novel is set shortly after the reconquista of Kingdom of Granada in Muslim Spain by the army of Ferdinand and Isabella in the late fifteenth century.^[1]

Plot

Beginning with the bonfire of over one hundred thousand books taken from all of the Muslim libraries in Cordoba, a seat of great learning in Moorish Spain, the story focuses on one family, the Banu Hudayl, who have lived in a small village near Cordoba for hundreds of years. As rumours begin to circulate of humiliations and possible banishments of Muslims by the conquering Christians, and even forced conversions to Christianity the Banu Hudayl and their fellow villagers, Muslim, Christian and Jew, can only wait in anguish for the approaching disaster.^[2]

References