The Translators of Toledo

Toledo, 1080. Alfonso VI's Christian armies close in on a city that has sheltered Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars for generations. As the walls fall, three men — Abraham Cohen, the Jewish physician; Yusuf al-Qurtubi, the Islamic astronomer; and Diego Medina, the Christian scribe — forge a secret covenant: preserve the manuscripts, protect the knowledge, outlast the conquerors. Toledo falls. The promises of tolerance crumble. But the covenant holds.

Toledo, 1086. Archbishop Bernard has arrived with a mandate to purge infidel learning. But under the unlikely patronage of suspicious churchmen, the city's famous School of Translators is taking shape—and the heirs of the original covenant are walking a razor's edge. Satisfying clerics by day. Smuggling philosophical texts to safety by night. Encoding medical knowledge in women's embroidery patterns. Setting stone-carved clues into the architecture that only the initiated will find. The Second Crusade is mobilizing. The Almoravid invasion is coming from the south.