The first European history of Muslim Spain, drawn from Arab sources

Marlès, Jules Lacroix de. Histoire de la domination des Arabes et des Maures en Espagne et en Portugal.

€ 3.500,00

First French edition: the first publication in a European language to cover as its sole subject the entire span of the history of Muslim Spain, and one which "set up a basic framework which has been accepted by scholars ever since", particularly in the division of Andalusian history into several ages still used by historians today (Monroe). Its translation from Arabic to Spanish (from whence this French edition was translated in turn) was the most important work by Joseph Antonio Conde (1766-1820). Conde, drawing on Arabic sources, covers the period from the Arab invasion in 711 CE to the expulsion and "Reconquista" under Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in 1492 CE, when Granada, the last outpost of over 700 years of Muslim Europe, finally fell. The book was posthumously published in Madrid in 1820-21 and is here translated into French by Jules de Marlès. The French edition was "less a translation than a new redaction" of the original, per Brunet: "Ce livre est moins une traduction qu'une nouvelle rédaction de l'ouvrage espagnol" (Brunet). The original was itself drawn from a collection of Arabic sources, including "sections translated from the Qitras, the Hulal al-Mawshiyya and other chronicles" (Monroe). It was this text which reintroduced the long history of Muslim Europe to Europeans themselves.