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Historical person
1436–1517
Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros was a Spanish cardinal, reformer and statesman under the Catholic Monarchs. He served as confessor to Isabella I, promoted church reform and scholarship, supported the conquest of Oran and acted as regent of Castile.
Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros also held the offices or ranks of High Inquisitor of Castille, Primacy of the Diocese of Toledo, and archbishop of Toledo. Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros was born in Torrelaguna and died in Roa.
Tariq Ali’s Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree places Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros on the conquering Christian side of post-1492 Granada, where pressure on Muslim communities hardens from negotiated submission into forced conversion and repression. Cisneros represents the uncompromising religious policy that helps destroy the fragile settlement promised after the city’s surrender, turning the Morisco family’s private losses into part of the wider eradication of Islamic Granada.
Series
The Islam Quintet is Tariq Ali’s cycle of five historical novels examining encounters between Islamic societies and the Christian West across more than five centuries. Moving from the fall of Muslim Granada and the Crusades to Norman Sicily, the late Ottoman Empire and the modern transnational world, the…
All books in this series
