A brief history of the seven hundred year reign of the Moors in Spain, from Tariq's conquest of the Visigoths at the Battle of Guadelete in 711 to the expulsion of the Moors from Granada in 1492. The chronology of the Moorish kingdom is in three parts: first, the Umayyad caliphs of Cordova, second, the period of decline following the successful reign of Almanzor, and finally the story of the kingdom of Granada, which was ruled by Christian kings for two hundred years. Show All     Download:     PDF       EPUB

BOABDIL "EL CHICO" SURRENDERS GRENADA TO FERDINAND AND ISABELLA.

Preface To "History Of The Moors In Spain"

We are accustomed to look upon the followers of the Arabian Prophet as little better than barbarians, remarkable chiefly for ignorance, cruelty, and a bloody and persecuting spirit of fanaticism. As it regards the character of the Mohammedans at the present day, and, indeed, their moral and intellectual condition for the last two centuries, there is no great error in this opinion. But they are a degenerated race. There has been a period of great brilliancy in their history, when they were distinguished for their love of knowledge and the successful cultivation of science and arts; nor is it too much to say, that to them Christian Europe is indebted for their deservedly generous impulse in geography, history, philosophy, medicine, physics, and mathematics, which led to the revival of learning in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Of the various nations of the great Moslem family, none were more renowned in arts, as well as arms, than the Moorish conquerors in Spain. Their famous, though little known history, which is contained in the following pages, treats of a people who bore little resemblance to any other; who had their national vices and virtues, as well as their characteristic physiognomy; and, who so long united the bravery, generosity and chivalry of the Europeans, with the excitable temperament and strong passions of the Orientals.

To render the order of time more intelligible, and the more clearly to elucidate facts, this historical sketch will be divided in four principal Epochs.

The first  will extend from the beginning of the Conquests of the Arabs to the Establishment of the Dynasty of the Ommiade Princes at Cordova; the second  will include the reigns of the Caliphs of the West; in the third  will be related all that concerns the various small kingdoms erected from the ruins of the Caliphate of Cordova; and the fourth  will comprehend a narration of the prominent events in the lives of the successive sovereigns of the Kingdom of Grenada, until the period of the final expulsion of the Mussulmans from the country.