Breve historia de al-Ándalus

It may seem obvious to remember that Muslims were on the peninsula for more than eight centuries and that their stay determined many aspects of our national identity such as flamenco, Christmas sweets, a large part of our language or the seed of our poetry. However, it is still necessary to remember the history of the Muslim stay in Spain and it is also necessary to do it in an informative way and accessible to anyone. This is the task that Ana Martos faces in Brief History of Al-Andalus, presenting the story of a people who knew how to coexist with the ancient inhabitants of the peninsula and who also brought the civilization and culture that Spain had lost. after the departure of the Romans. Islam inherits Greco-Roman knowledge and Eastern knowledge due to its peaceful expansion through Persia and Byzantium, this knowledge had been lost in Europe ruled by barbarians. They came to the Iberian Peninsula invited by a Visigothic king to help him in his internal struggles. The Muslims, taking advantage of the Visigothic weakness and fragmentation, decided to stay and brought with them a cultural splendor that was no longer remembered. Brief History of Al-Andalus presents us in a synthetic and demystifying way the glory of the Caliphate of Córdoba created by the Umayyads but also the divisions and dynastic confrontations that caused the entry of Almoravids and Almohads and the consequent division into independent kingdoms. The Christian resistance, which had coexisted peacefully with Islam, takes advantage of this division to recover territories, the total recovery of the peninsula will not occur until the Catholic Monarchs unite the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon and take advantage of the Nasrid weakness to conquer Granada . After a brief period of coexistence of the Moors in Christian territory, they gradually lost their privileges until they were definitively expelled in the time of Fernando III. Al-Andalus was not only the westernmost province of the medieval Islamic empire, it was also the cultural center of the Middle Ages where the arts, sciences and the most sophisticated civilization of the time were cultivated, the relations between Christianity and Islam provoked unparalleled cultural enrichment on the peninsula.