The fact that 2017 marks the VIIIth centenary of the conquest of Alcácer do Sal and the 870th anniversary of the conquest of Lisbon by the Portuguese and Crusader forces, gave the organizers the motto to propose the realization of an International Colloquium in which a diverse set of researchers could reassess and discuss how the seventy years between one conquest and the other shaped and conditioned the development of a territory always considered “frontier”, The territory that stretches between Lisbon and Alcácer do Sal, but whose effective structuring and characterization exceeds in many aspects that of a territory “just on the frontier”, and about which we know much more than we did until relatively recently. Although it has already been approached in some monographic studies, it has not yet been studied as a whole.

In a fruitful partnership between three universities and three municipalities, this itinerant colloquium aims to rethink the reality of this western “Brand” that would prove to be fundamental to the nascent Portuguese kingdom and to the Islamic world. The confluence in the same colloquium of specialists of the Islamic medieval and Peninsular Christian medieval periods, in the various disciplines in which they work (archaeology, art, architecture and history, in its multiple aspects) allows us to expect that these days can be very fruitful. The expectations are that it will enhance a re-evaluation of what we know about the occupation of the region, about its characteristics and about the interests and strategies that in this fertile space we can observe in act, during the “short” space of time of almost a century, during which the powers in confrontation were congruent, hostilizing and positioning themselves in a very organic way.

 

Promoting entities: IEM-FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa, GEsOS-Município de Palmela
Organization: CH-FL-Universidade de Lisboa, CIDEHUS-Universidade de Évora, IEM-FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Município de Alcácer do Sal, Município de Palmela, Município de Sesimbra
Organizing Commitee: Maria Teresa Rosendo (Município de Palmela), Isabel Cristina F. Fernandes (GEsOS-Município de Palmela), João Ventura (Município de Sesimbra), Marisol Ferreira (Município de Alcácer do Sal), Maria João Violante Branco (IEM-Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Hermínia Vasconcelos Vilar (CIDEHUS-Universidade de Évora), Hermenegildo Fernandes (CH-Universidade de Lisboa)