Re-reading the conquest of Iberia

Abstract

This chapter discusses the key events of and textual sources for the Muslim conquest of Iberia in 711, as well as outlining the main trends in scholarly research about them. It surveys and contextualizes the major surviving primary texts in both Arabic and Latin, referring to both critical editions and translations into English and Spanish, in order to bring these works to the attention of a wider audience. It highlights the diversity and creativity of the medieval historical tradition(s)—which presented the same basic story in a huge variety of ways over the subsequent centuries—as an expression of how memory of the conquest evolved along with the changing political, social, and cultural landscape of Iberia in general and the Muslim state of al-Andalus in particular. Recent historiography has shown that there is still plenty to surprise and delight scholars of this period, with archaeological work leading the way in painting a picture of post-conquest society that goes beyond simple divisions of continuity or change, and in the process suggests new ways of reading old texts. At the same time, the re-emergence of the so-called “negationist” controversy shows that the memory of al-Andalus can still provoke furious debate, with implications that reverberate well beyond the academy.