# Questions about Medieval muslims and love.



## JoanDrake (Feb 11, 2014)

I need to find some in depth research on what relations were like between the Christians and the muslims  in the area of Southern France and/or Spain in the late tenth century (around 960 to 1010). This is sometime after the invasion that was turned back at Tours and comfortably before the Crusades. OTOH it is well into the Reconquista. So what was the actual situation with trade and politics between Christendom and Islam at the time? I've read some about Fraxinetum, but I need to know where it fits into the larger picture.


Also, had romantic love been invented by the troubadours yet? I've always heard it was sometime later in the 12th century but it's hard for me to entirely credit that such a complex concept wouldn't take centuries to originate and I know it has roots going back to deep Antiquity. Was it just the form of literature that originated at that time? Was falling in love a fashion that caught on or had people been doing it all along, or both?


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## svalbard (Feb 26, 2014)

Eleanor of Aquitaine's father was a great patron of the troubadours. That was about 1130s\40s. I imagine they were active before that, but his patronage probably acted as the catalyst for it's sudden popularity, 

Not too sure about the Muslim world. I know that Roderigo Diaz de Bivar fought for both the Christian kings of Aragon and Muslims before forging his own shortlived  kingdom in Valencia. He is better known to history as El Cid and sometimes goes by the alias of Chuck Heston...


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## Brian G Turner (Feb 26, 2014)

Wiki puts the advent of the Troubadours at the end of the 11th century:
Troubadour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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