The last twenty-five years have seen a renaissance of research and writing on Spanish history. Caliphs and Kings offers a formidable synthesis of existing knowledge as well as an investigation into new historical thinking, perspectives, and methods.

The nearly three-hundred-year rule of the Umayyad dynasty in Spain (756-1031) has been hailed by many as an era of unprecedented harmony and mutual tolerance between the three great religious faiths in the Iberian Peninsula - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam - the like of which has never been seen since. And yet, as this book demonstrates, historical reality defies the myth. Though the middle of the tenth century saw a flowering of artistic culture and sophistication in the Umayyad court and in the city of C