Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on nomenclature
- List of the kings of Majorca, 1229–1343
- Note on the coinage of the kingdom of Majorca
- Map 1 The kingdom of Majorca
- Map 2 The western Mediterranean
- PART I UNITY AND DIVERSITY
- 1 The Balearic setting
- 2 The kingdom and its historians
- 3 The constitutional problem
- 4 One kingdom, three religions: the Muslims
- 5 One kingdom, three religions: the Jews
- PART II THE CROSSROADS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The Balearic setting
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on nomenclature
- List of the kings of Majorca, 1229–1343
- Note on the coinage of the kingdom of Majorca
- Map 1 The kingdom of Majorca
- Map 2 The western Mediterranean
- PART I UNITY AND DIVERSITY
- 1 The Balearic setting
- 2 The kingdom and its historians
- 3 The constitutional problem
- 4 One kingdom, three religions: the Muslims
- 5 One kingdom, three religions: the Jews
- PART II THE CROSSROADS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
- Conclusion
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza (or Eivissa) are now quite prosperous islands whose income is largely derived from the vast number of summer visitors who flock to the Mediterranean in search of the sun and the sea. Yet the islands have attracted visitors and settlers dating back millennia; visible reminders of the links between the Balearic islands and the world beyond include the talayot and other prehistoric remains of Menorca, the fine Gothic churches of Palma de Mallorca, and the stately city of Maó or Mahón in Menorca, situated alongside what is said to be the world's largest natural harbour after Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In fact, the Balearic islands have long functioned as a crossroads on the trade routes linking Africa to continental Europe, and, in the later Middle Ages, linking the Mediterranean to the Atlantic: for Mallorca lies 175 kilometres off the coast of Spain, and the distance between the Balearics and Algeria is not much greater. Between 1276 and 1343 the most important of the islands gave its name to a small but wealthy kingdom, that of Majorca, which remains perhaps the most neglected of all the medieval Spanish kingdoms.
The battle for control of the Balearic islands epitomises the struggle between Islam and Christianity for domination in the western Mediterranean; possession of the islands meant control of an advance position from which it was possible to patrol the seas between what are now southern France, eastern Spain and Algeria.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Mediterranean EmporiumThe Catalan Kingdom of Majorca, pp. 3 - 19Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994