Al-Andalus

From the crossing of Tariq ibn Ziyad in 711 to the fall of Granada in 1492, the Iberian Peninsula held Muslim polities for nearly eight hundred years. Al-Andalus produced a distinctive civilisation: Arabic-speaking but Iberian in setting, agriculturally transformed by new irrigation, and intellectually dense enough that its libraries and translators became the route by which much Greek and Arabic learning reached Latin Europe.

This collection covers that world from conquest to conclusion. It includes the conquest itself and the commanders who led it, the Umayyad emirate and caliphate of Córdoba, the cities of Córdoba and Granada with the Great Mosque and the Alhambra, the intellectual life that produced Ibn Rushd and Lubna of Córdoba, the much-debated question of convivencia between Muslims, Christians, and Jews, the transmission of Andalusi learning into Europe, and the final loss of Granada.