Prior accounts have portrayed Islamic Spain either as a paradise of enlightened tolerance, or as the site where civilisations clashed. Award-winning historian Brian A. Catlos taps a wide array of original sources to paint a more complex picture, showing how Muslims, Christians, and Jews together built a sophisticated civilisation that transformed the Western world, even as they waged relentless war against each other and amongst themselves. Religion was often the language of conflict, but seldom its cause—a lesson we would do well to learn in our own time.
Kingdoms of Faith rewrites Spain’s Islamic past from the ground up, evoking the cultural splendour of al-Andalus and the many forces that shaped it.