This course explores the multicultural environment of the Mediterranean Sea in the Middle Ages (ca. 600-1500) and the conflicts and coexistence that characterized interactions among Christians, Muslims, and Jews around the shores of that sea. Trade, travel, and armed conflict all defined those interactions in addition to religious rivalries and differences. This course explores how such contacts led both to alienation of these cultures from one another but also to periods of uneasy tolerance. Whether at war or in peace, Christians, Muslims, and Jews exchanged ideas and artifacts throughout this period, and the class examines the creative interplay of those exchanges. The geographical scope of this course ranges from Spain and Morocco in the west to Egypt and the Byzantine Empire in the East, as well as adjacent territories.