Literary uses of architecture and the explanation of defeat. Interpretations of the Islamic conquest in the context of the construction of national identity in early modern Spain

Abstract

Explaining Islamic architecture was a challenge for early modern Spanish historians. Although many of the buildings were highly valued, they nonetheless represented a defeat and 700 years of Muslim presence in the Peninsula. Consequently, the Islamic legacy was sometimes viewed with a wide range of aesthetic, moral and religious prejudices. This paper aims to analyse the role of these unfavourable narratives of Islamic architecture in the negotiation of the memory of the so-called ‘loss of the Iberian Peninsula’.