Roger Collins 
Caliphs and Kings 
Spain, 796-1031

CALIPHS AND KINGS: SPAIN, 796-1031

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 Córdoba, this period was all too shortlived and localized. Eventually, twenty years of civil war caused the implosion of the Umayyad regime. It is through the forces that divided – not united – the disparate elements in Spanish society that we may best glean its nature and its lessons. Caliphs and Kings is devoted to better understanding those circumstances, as historian Roger Collins takes a fresh look at certainties, both old and new, to strip ninth- and tenth-century Spain of its mythic narrative, revealing the more complex truth beneath.

Table of Content

Genealogies viii

Maps xi

Introduction 1

1 Al-Andalus:War and Society, 796-888 14

2 The Asturian Kingdom: Chroniclers and Kings, 791-910
50

3 The Christians of al-Andalus 83

4 Monks, Books, and Saints in the Christian North 104

5 Al-Andalus: Local Government versus the Capital, 888-928
121

6 The Kingdomof Le´ on, 910-1037 138

7 Al-Andalus: Umayyad Triumph and Disaster, 912-1031
166

8 The Kingdom of Navarre and the Pyrenean Counties,
799-1035 205

9 The County of Castile, c.860-1037 238

Bibliography 257

Glossary 300

Acknowledgments 302

Index 304

About the author

Formerly a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the
Humanities in the University of Edinburgh, Roger Collins is
now a Fellow in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology of
the University of Edinburgh. He has published widely in medieval
Spanish and European history, and his books include: The
Basques (Blackwell, 1986), The Arab Conquest of Spain,
710-797 (Blackwell, 1989), Oxford
Archaeological Guide to Spain (1998), Charlemagne
(1998), Visigothic Spain, 409-711
(Blackwell, 2004), and, most recently, Keepers of the Keys of
Heaven: A History of the Papacy (2009).