In a world troubled by religious strife and division, Lowney's book takes us back to a medieval Iberia that prefigured the Renaissance, offering a hopeful historical reminder: Muslims, Christians, and Jews once lived together in Spain, creating a centuries-long flowering of commerce, culture, art, and architecture. In 711, a ragtag army of Muslim North Africans conquered Spain and launched Western Europe's first (and to date only) Islamic state. In...

"A magisterial, myth-dispelling history of Islamic Spain spanning the millennium between the founding of Islam in the seventh century and the final expulsion of Spain's Muslims in the seventeenth. In Kingdoms of Faith, award-winning historian Brian A. Catlos rewrites the history of Islamic Spain from the ground up, evoking the cultural splendor of al-Andalus, while offering an authoritative new interpretation of the forces that shaped it. Prior accounts...