Al-Andalus: Muslim Iberia
An Arab and Berber army crosses from North Africa and within a few years most of Iberia is under Muslim rule; Córdoba becomes one of the great cities of Europe.
- Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus — Hugh Kennedy, Longman (1996)
- Moorish Spain — Richard Fletcher, University of California Press (1992)
- The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain — María Rosa Menocal, Little, Brown (2002)
- A Concise History of Spain — William D. Phillips Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips, Cambridge University Press (2010)
In 711 a Berber commander, Tariq ibn Ziyad, crossed the straits (Gibraltar is Jabal Tariq, “Tariq’s mountain”) and defeated the Visigothic king Roderic. Within a few years most of the peninsula was under Muslim rule; only the mountainous north stayed outside it.
- Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus — Hugh Kennedy, Longman (1996)
- Moorish Spain — Richard Fletcher, University of California Press (1992)
In 756 Abd al-Rahman I, a survivor of the Umayyad dynasty, founded an emirate at Córdoba, and in 929 Abd al-Rahman III declared a caliphate. Córdoba, with its Great Mosque, libraries and perhaps a hundred thousand or more people, was one of the largest cities in Europe. Christians and Jews lived as protected but subordinate dhimmi communities, and Arabic culture shaped Jewish and Christian thought alike.
- Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus — Hugh Kennedy, Longman (1996)
- The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain — María Rosa Menocal, Little, Brown (2002)
The caliphate broke apart into rival taifa kingdoms after 1031, opening the door to the Christian kingdoms of the north. Muslim rule in some form lasted until 1492, and Arabic left more than its mark on Spanish: words for water channels, crops, trades and that everyday hope, ojalá, “if God wills”.
- Moorish Spain — Richard Fletcher, University of California Press (1992)
- A Concise History of Spain — William D. Phillips Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips, Cambridge University Press (2010)
A foreign invasion that destroyed the Christian Visigothic kingdom; Spain's history is the long struggle to win the land back.
- Spanish Identity in the Age of Nations — José Álvarez Junco, Manchester University Press (2011)
- La conquista islámica de la península ibérica y la tergiversación del pasado — Alejandro García Sanjuán, Marcial Pons (2013)
Al-Andalus was a fully Iberian society, not a parenthesis: most of its people were local converts, and it shaped Spanish culture deeply. Its famous "convivencia" was real but uneven, and romanticising it is as misleading as erasing it.
- Moorish Spain — Richard Fletcher, University of California Press (1992)
- The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain — María Rosa Menocal, Little, Brown (2002)
- Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus — Hugh Kennedy, Longman (1996)
Why it matters today
Al-Andalus is written into the Spanish landscape and language: the Alhambra, the Mezquita of Córdoba, thousands of words from Arabic (aceite, azúcar, ojalá) and place names like Guadalquivir. How Spaniards talk about it, as a foreign occupation or as part of "us", is a quiet test of how they see the nation.