Knaepen, it seems that your non touristic brochure prefers not to go in depth and see how so many of the "Arab" names of Islamic Spain are, in fact, those of Hispano-Goths converted to Islam. Such was the powerful Banu Qasi family, lords of the Ebro Depression and descendents of Visgothic comes (count) Qassius; or the powerful al-Qutiyya family in the South, where al-Qutiyya is an Arabic adaptation for "son or descendent of the Goth woman" (this "Goth woman" being Sarah, the daughter of King Witiza). And I could go on for long. Of course your non touristic brochure does not try to explain how the architecture in al-Andalus has no paragon in Northern Africa.

But never mind. I've got acquainted with the ways of the Flemish/Netherlanders over the internet, over this and other issues, and sick with it I've come to the conclusion that the best that one can say is.. who cares? Any outcome will be as good as having to share anything with them... especially a fate.

Here we go again with the theory of "Muslim Spain", "Islamic Iberia", "Arab Portugal" or whatever ...

Osama bin Ladin declared it ... was the “loss” (to Islam) of Andalusia, where after a long period of “reconquest” the Muslim polity was definitively superseded in 1492.

You cant't loose something you have never had.Neither the Iberian Peninsula nor even Andalusia was ever "in the hands" of Islam. Andalusia wasn't an empty place that got suddedly "islamized" and everybody started going to the mosque to pray to Alah. See my previous post.

Andalusia was politically and militarly controlled by Moorish dinasties from Northern Africa. These ruling elites themselves, were of course, muslim. They also brought the culture, the science, the maths, the architecture, etc, that was spread all over the arab world at the time. (Which itself had inherited from other traditioins, India, Greece, etc )

That Islam had a long medieval presence in many parts of Iberia, and not just in Andalusia, is obvious from written history, from architectural evidence, and from the Arabic influence on the formation of the modern Spanish language.

... Islam had a long ...

Again, it's not "Islam", it's moorish culture, or whatever you want to call it. But it is not the religion.

... not just in Andalusia ...

Although true, it's very rare. You see, when someone talks about an "islamic" castle you saw somewhere near Madrid, you're talking about stuff that was built by celtiberians probably on top of roman foudations, destroyed and rebuilt by visigoths, destroyed and rebuild by chrithians, destroyed and rebuilt by Arabs, reconquered by christhian kings, reconquered by the moors ...

When you read, for example, some king in Portugal, "conquered Lisbon to the Moors", it only means, that the moorish armies that had settled there in the years before, were expelled. The population just carried on their business as usual. Just like they had been doing in the centuries before. Pagans, proto-christhians, christians, jews etc...

You see, it doesn't even make any sense, to talk about "the arabs ruled Portugal", because "Portugal" neither as a terrritory existed, nor it made any sense as a cohese (multi)cultural entity.

... the Arabic influence on the formation of the modern Spanish language ...

And so did Hebrew, believe it or not. Specially among the scholars in the "islamic" Andalusia. (See Judeo-Portuguese, Judeo-Spanish). Do you know what the national music instrument in Galicia is ? No, it's not the guitar, that everyone uses to play flamenco and celebrate their "islamic past". It's the celtic pipe. Yes, you got it right, one just like the ones used in Scotland.

You see, just like the celtics, the phoenicians, the visigoths, the romans and so many others, the moors were one more group that left their footprints on Iberia. The Iberian Peninsula, was never an homogeneous entity, but rather a rich and big (in size) diverse entity. It that could ever be ruled by a dominant group. Even the Romans didn't reach everywhere.It is so silly to say the Arabs ruled the Iberian Peninsula (or even most of it)

The very notion of "Spain" as a Nation is confusing for a lot of people. The amalgama of "romance" people that are nowadays, the Portuguese, the Catalans, The Basques, The Gallician, The Andalusiens, the Asturiens, etc
I wonder why this rich diversity is so much ignored outside Portugal and Spain. And I also mean clima and landscape.

Everyone knows that "England" is not "the UK". There is Scotland, Wales, Ireland. There were Celts, Romans, Vikings, Normands, Saxons ...

I guess it must be some kind of latin stereotype created by Hollywood. Everyone sings the Flamenco, bullfighting is the national sport and the sun shines all year long. Portuguese, Catalan, Spanish, what's the difference ? Who cares ! They're all Mexicans to me ...

African warriors brought Islam with them when they conquered much of Iberia in the early Middle Ages, and it retreated to Africa with them when they were thrown out in the late Middle Ages: hence the terms Conquest and Reconquest.

They brought Islam with them, and it "stayed" with them.
It wasn't the Middle Ages, it was around 700 A.C.
Not all of them were "thrown out". There were lots of persons from these arab elites that stayed, converted or got assimilated. Scholars, poets, scientists that gave (like many others) a rich contribute to the Golden Age of Andalusia, and later Portugal and Spain as the first Global Powers.

For a moment let me return to Osama and his lament for a “lost” Andalusia. How does he think Islam became established in Iberia? It was not by missionary work. It was not by persuasion. It was by brute force.

Some historians point to the fact that, these moorish armies, were originally "called in" for help. At that time, Christianism wasn't established in Iberia. Some christhian populations , were even being opppressed by the visigothic kingdoms that ruled the North. So you see, while some insist on saying "Islam" established itself in Spain, others regard the these arab armies has someone who came to the rescue of the jews and christhians in the south.

This would bring us to the "permanent and year long peacefull cohexistence" of Muslims, Jews and Christhians in Andalusia, but that's another myth.

...when they conquered much of Iberia ...
no comment

The consolidation of Iberian national identities—and it is rather anachronistic to think of a unified “Spain” in the earlier periods—

made possible the extraordinary world empires of Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Everywhere in the Iberian cultures of the “Golden Age” is the defining memory of a centuries-long struggle against the “Moors”. Like most historical memories this one was two parts legend to one part fact.

dont' contribute to this legend, by reducing the definition of the portuguese and spanish identities as the result of their struggle against Islam.

History happens. We live with its messy results. We can be enslaved by it, or we can learn from it.

Do that ! Please visit the library, before you post. Don't mix up the Encyclopedias. You may finish up relying on "Encyclopedia Hispanica" for the history of Britain, and "Encyclopedia Britannica" for the history of Spain ...

:-)

Human beings live in geographical and sociological particularity. They reside, that is, in nations, localities, cultures, religions, economic circumstances. They speak different languages, eat different food, and so forth. But all of us also live in history, and history interacts, often silently and invisibly, with our daily lives. While we have no responsibility for our history, we do have ethical obligations to face it honestly and intelligently.

In the famous fatwa in which, in the name of Islam, Osama bin Ladin declared it not merely licit but obligatory to “strike and kill” me wherever he found me, he listed a number of justifications for his hostility. Among the more astonishing grievances, to me, was the “loss” (to Islam) of Andalusia, where after a long period of “reconquest” the Muslim polity was definitively superseded in 1492. That Islam had a long medieval presence in many parts of Iberia, and not just in Andalusia, is obvious from written history, from architectural evidence, and from the Arabic influence on the formation of the modern Spanish language. African warriors brought Islam with them when they conquered much of Iberia in the early Middle Ages, and it retreated to Africa with them when they were thrown out in the late Middle Ages: hence the terms Conquest and Reconquest.

The consolidation of Iberian national identities—and it is rather anachronistic to think of a unified “Spain” in the earlier periods—made possible the extraordinary world empires of Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Everywhere in the Iberian cultures of the “Golden Age” is the defining memory of a centuries-long struggle against the “Moors”. Like most historical memories this one was two parts legend to one part fact. One of the factual parts was that national identity came increasingly to be associated with a militant and intolerant Catholicism, the Catholicism of the Inquisition and the persecution of heretics, Jews, and Muslims. The patron saint of Spain, the Apostle James, at whose legendary tomb at Santiago de Compostella in Galicia there developed one of the greatest of medieval pilgrimage sites, came in time to be known as Santiago Matamoros (James the Moorslayer, I suppose). He has his own ferocious iconography. There are many place names throughout the Spanish-speaking world in which “Matamoros” appears. What we in English call the Milky Way was in traditional Spain called the “Highway of Santiago,” for in legend the armed and bellicose warrior-saint rode through the sky to succor a Christian army hard-pressed by its Muslim adversaries.

Mere honesty requires the recognition that in the Middle Ages the Christian concept of “crusade” and the Muslim concept of “jihad” were so similar as to be functionally indistinguishable. Both claimed that religion justified and perhaps demanded religious warfare and authorized human slaughter supposedly pleasing to God. Both could claim a “defensive” motive for apparent offense aggression. Fortunately for Western societies there have been revolutionary shifts in Christian ethical perspective since the Middle Ages. Unfortunately for all societies there is a renascence (or continuity) of medieval “jihadism” among some sectors of the Islamic world.

Out of such a context such folk customs as the “burning of Mohammed” were born. One may compare the custom with that of the “burning of Judas” in traditional rural Greece or the abuse of a scarecrow on Guy Fawkes Night in Britain. There is an anti-Semitic history behind the one, an anti-Catholic history behind the other. But not one in a hundred of the London urchins who used to ask passersby for “a penny for the guy” had the slightest awareness of it. How many revelers at a New Orleans Mardi Gras party are preparing for an austere and ascetic Lent? And if you don’t even know what I am talking about, it only proves my point. Words change their meanings over history; so do social customs. Most of us now look with an amused scorn at those violent and self-righteous revolutionaries (Puritans, Jacobins, Bolsheviks, you name it) who set out to purify mankind by forbidding them on pain of fine, prison, or even death to dance a jig, or utter the word “monsieur”, or make the sign of the cross. We need to know our histories, not to deny them. Why is elementary human liberty so great a threat to so many who constantly have its phrases on their lips?

For a moment let me return to Osama and his lament for a “lost” Andalusia. How does he think Islam became established in Iberia? It was not by missionary work. It was not by persuasion. It was by brute force. That is also how Islam spread all across north Africa to the very gates of Spain. In the period of the late Roman Empire there was a dynamic and flourishing Christian civilization in north Africa. The greatest of early Catholic theologians, Augustine, was born in what might be called suburban Carthage. The site of his ministry—of which hardly a stone will be found today—was in what is today one of numerous hot spots of Islamic militancy. To appreciate the true madness of the jihadist dream of reestablishing the medieval caliphate, one has to imagine the pope issuing an encyclical demanding the restoration of the monasteries of Hippo Regius.

History happens. We live with its messy results. We can be enslaved by it, or we can learn from it. I despair that so few of us seem to have learned very much from the history of the last century, when a more timely, forceful, and unified resistance to spreading totalitarianism might have saved us a great deal of agony as well as something approaching sixty or seventy million human lives.

Human beings live in geographical and sociological particularity. They reside, that is, in nations, localities, cultures, religions, economic circumstances. They speak different languages, eat different food, and so forth. But all of us also live in history, and history interacts, often silently and invisibly, with our daily lives. While we have no responsibility for our history, we do have ethical obligations to face it honestly and intelligently.

In the famous fatwa in which, in the name of Islam, Osama bin Ladin declared it not merely licit but obligatory to “strike and kill” me wherever he found me, he listed a number of justifications for his hostility. Among the more astonishing grievances, to me, was the “loss” (to Islam) of Andalusia, where after a long period of “reconquest” the Muslim polity was definitively superseded in 1492. That Islam had a long medieval presence in many parts of Iberia, and not just in Andalusia, is obvious from written history, from architectural evidence, and from the Arabic influence on the formation of the modern Spanish language. African warriors brought Islam with them when they conquered much of Iberia in the early Middle Ages, and it retreated to Africa with them when they were thrown out in the late Middle Ages: hence the terms Conquest and Reconquest.

The consolidation of Iberian national identities—and it is rather anachronistic to think of a unified “Spain” in the earlier periods—made possible the extraordinary world empires of Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Everywhere in the Iberian cultures of the “Golden Age” is the defining memory of a centuries-long struggle against the “Moors”. Like most historical memories this one was two parts legend to one part fact. One of the factual parts was that national identity came increasingly to be associated with a militant and intolerant Catholicism, the Catholicism of the Inquisition and the persecution of heretics, Jews, and Muslims. The patron saint of Spain, the Apostle James, at whose legendary tomb at Santiago de Compostella in Galicia there developed one of the greatest of medieval pilgrimage sites, came in time to be known as Santiago Matamoros (James the Moorslayer, I suppose). He has his own ferocious iconography. There are many place names throughout the Spanish-speaking world in which “Matamoros” appears. What we in English call the Milky Way was in traditional Spain called the “Highway of Santiago,” for in legend the armed and bellicose warrior-saint rode through the sky to succor a Christian army hard-pressed by its Muslim adversaries.

Mere honesty requires the recognition that in the Middle Ages the Christian concept of “crusade” and the Muslim concept of “jihad” were so similar as to be functionally indistinguishable. Both claimed that religion justified and perhaps demanded religious warfare and authorized human slaughter supposedly pleasing to God. Both could claim a “defensive” motive for apparent offense aggression. Fortunately for Western societies there have been revolutionary shifts in Christian ethical perspective since the Middle Ages. Unfortunately for all societies there is a renascence (or continuity) of medieval “jihadism” among some sectors of the Islamic world.

Out of such a context such folk customs as the “burning of Mohammed” were born. One may compare the custom with that of the “burning of Judas” in traditional rural Greece or the abuse of a scarecrow on Guy Fawkes Night in Britain. There is an anti-Semitic history behind the one, an anti-Catholic history behind the other. But not one in a hundred of the London urchins who used to ask passersby for “a penny for the guy” had the slightest awareness of it. How many revelers at a New Orleans Mardi Gras party are preparing for an austere and ascetic Lent? And if you don’t even know what I am talking about, it only proves my point. Words change their meanings over history; so do social customs. Most of us now look with an amused scorn at those violent and self-righteous revolutionaries (Puritans, Jacobins, Bolsheviks, you name it) who set out to purify mankind by forbidding them on pain of fine, prison, or even death to dance a jig, or utter the word “monsieur”, or make the sign of the cross. We need to know our histories, not to deny them. Why is elementary human liberty so great a threat to so many who constantly have its phrases on their lips?

For a moment let me return to Osama and his lament for a “lost” Andalusia. How does he think Islam became established in Iberia? It was not by missionary work. It was not by persuasion. It was by brute force. That is also how Islam spread all across north Africa to the very gates of Spain. In the period of the late Roman Empire there was a dynamic and flourishing Christian civilization in north Africa. The greatest of early Catholic theologians, Augustine, was born in what might be called suburban Carthage. The site of his ministry—of which hardly a stone will be found today—was in what is today one of numerous hot spots of Islamic militancy. To appreciate the true madness of the jihadist dream of reestablishing the medieval caliphate, one has to imagine the pope issuing an encyclical demanding the restoration of the monasteries of Hippo Regius.

History happens. We live with its messy results. We can be enslaved by it, or we can learn from it. I despair that so few of us seem to have learned very much from the history of the last century, when a more timely, forceful, and unified resistance to spreading totalitarianism might have saved us a great deal of agony as well as something approaching sixty or seventy million human lives.

The Spanish people, once a strong and powerful bunch, now a group of followers. The train attacks directed their national elections---the Spanish let terrorist dictate who their leaders were/are. Now the Moors are controlling spanish lives again. One day the Spanish people will just follow what ever these people say, how did they become such puppets. What a pitty

Well maybe you should look it up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 17, p. 414-418 (1977 edition). The Ummayyad Amirate had its northern border on the Duero river and a line going roughly from Almazán to Tortosa at the Mediterranean Sea. To the norht of this you had (in 910) the kingdom of Galicia, the kingdom of Asturia, Castile, Navarra and the county of Alava, all of them christian. More to the east you had independant Moorish states (muslim) and the county of Barcelona (the latter also christian). Do you want us to believe this was the result of mere “incursions”?
Portugal was almost entirely part of the Ummayyad Amirate.
The Castillo de Gormaz, not far from Soria dates from 965 and was part of the fortification system of the northern frontier region.
(see Barrucand and Bednorz, Moorish architecture in Andalusia, p. 98; by the way, this is not a touristic brochure).
Sicily was occupied by the Arabs for 200 years (878-1091). From the middle of the tenth century until 1040 Sicily was an emirate
(Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 9, p. 1123). In my humble opinion that's not an incursion.

" In 711 Muslim armies crossed the Strait of Gibraltar. They took Spain by force and remained there until they were thrown out during the reconquista in 1492."

This is not true. This is a myth that is beeing revived lately, specially after September 11.

• The Muslim armies occupied Andalusia, wich was(is) a province of Spain, one of many others, approximately 15 % of the spanish territory.
• The Muslim armies ruled over Andalusia which was populated by Jews, Christians and Muslims. The muslim population was always a small minority, mainy the ruling elites.

Spain was never a "muslim country". This is ignorance. Please go (re)check or review your high school history books, your Encyclopedias, Google or Wikipedia.

This Myth has gained new impetuous with the Osama Bin Laden videotapes.
In the Western Word, it has caught the attention of CNN which has broadcasted Osama's tapes talking about Al-Andaluz, but hasn't done a great job explaining it.

In the Arab World this Myth has always existed in the minds of some arab intelectuals, that with great nostalgia see this as prove of the superiority of arab culture that "back then" "ruled" over Europe and the Western World. It was however never present in the minds of the majority of the arab population.

With the explosion of arab satellite TV networks during the late nineties, this message of Osama bin Laden, has also reached the majority of the arab population, even the illiterate. What was a subject of study by some scholars, has been twisted and popularized by fake tv "histoy documentaries" in several arab tv stations. This period of history is being presented as evidence of time the Western World was a subdit of the great Arab World.