The Conflict of Narratives:

Building upon previous explorations of Gharb al-Andalus, which traced the legacies of the Andalusian West cities like Mértola, Coimbra, and Santarém, this article shifts focus from a linear timeline to a deeper narrative analysis. By tracing back the layers of modern-day Spain and Portugal, we find that the history of this era is rarely a neutral record; rather, it is a mirror reflecting the perspectives, biases, and intentions of those who chose to write it.

According to Michel de Certeau (1982), history is created at the crossroads of institutions, methods, and storytelling. It reflects the social context of its authors and, at the same time, reshapes it. With that in mind, I intentionally highlight different narratives that have been overlooked in education systems as well as museums in Spain and Portugal. As Certeau explains, historical writing produces an effect of reality through the way stories are told. This can be seen, for instance, in the way many institutions in Spain and Portugal present al‑Andalus primarily through architectural remains while downplaying its scientific, literary, and intellectual contributions. This is an example of how institutional storytelling actively shapes what is accepted as “historical reality”.

Writing history is never neutral; it performs what Certeau (1982) calls a “symbolic burial,” allowing the present to redefine itself. Reframing narratives brings back what was excluded and opens the door to a more inclusive understanding of Spanish and Portuguese memory. Therefore, I revisit both Arabic and Western sources to correct the widely accepted, but imbalanced, narrative of Andalusian history.

Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths took control of the Iberian Peninsula in the 5th century, establishing Toledo as their capital. They implemented legal and administrative systems influenced by Roman traditions and adopted Christianity, following the precedent of other post-Roman territories. For nearly two centuries, the Visigoths ruled the peninsula; nevertheless, they did not form a unified nation with the native Iberian population. Instead, they maintained dominance over land, wealth, and resources, leaving the local population in a state of poverty and social marginalization. Jewish communities also faced severe pressure, including forced attempts at conversion to Christianity. Furthermore, the Visigoth army was composed largely of soldiers from diverse ethnic backgrounds rather than Visigoths themselves, creating a disconnect between the military leadership and their forces (Dozy, 1932, cited in Anan, 1969).

This summary reflects the situation in the Iberian Peninsula prior to the Islamic conquest, as described by Abdallah Anan in his 1969 book The Islamic State in al-Andalus. Understanding this pre-Islamic context is essential because it frames competing interpretations of the Islamic conquest.

The reasons behind the entry of Islamic forces into the Iberian Peninsula have been interpreted through two contrasting historiographical lenses: Arabic and Western. Arabic sources like Al-Bayan al-Mughrib fi Akhbar Muluk al-Andalus wa-al-Maghrib (The Amazing Story of the History of the Kings of al-Andalus and Maghreb) by Ibn 'Idhari al-Marrakushi (c. 1312/2013) typically frame the conquest as a divinely sanctioned expansion of Islam, emphasizing the mission to spread the faith. Leaders such as Tariq ibn Ziyad and Musa ibn Nusayr are portrayed as acting under the authority of the Umayyad Caliphate, ensuring unity and legitimacy. These accounts often highlight the justice and tolerance of Muslim governance compared to the corruption and oppression under Visigoth rule. Military victories are attributed to both tactical brilliance and divine support, presenting the conquest as inevitable and righteous (Anan, 1969, Vol. 1, pp. 38–76).

In addition to Anan’s modern synthesis, classical Arabic historians offer valuable perspectives on the conquest of al‑Andalus. For example, 9th century historian Ibn ʿAbd al‑Ḥakam’s Futūḥ Miṣr wa’l‑Maghrib wa’l‑Andalus (The Conquest of Egypt, North Africa and al‑Andalus) is one of the earliest Islamic historical narratives and a foundational source for the conquest of al-Andalus; the text frames the event within a moral and religious worldview, emphasizing divine support of the Muslim cause (Ibn ʿAbd alḤakam, 1922, cited in Chi, 2021).

However, the Andalusi author Ibn al‑Qūṭiyya (whose surname al‑Qūṭiyya means ‘son of a Gothic woman’) provides more localized narratives that stress internal Visigoth divisions and instances of collaboration between Muslims and various Iberian groups, including Christians and Jews. His 10th century book Taʾrīkh Iftitāḥ al‑Andalus (History of the Conquest of al‑Andalus) provides a unique narrative perspective on the conquest and early Umayyad rule (Ibn alQūṭiyya, 1989).

Later writers in the 17th century, such as al‑Maqqarī in his book Nafh al-Tib, reshape the story of conquest into a heroic literary narrative, preserving legends like Ṭāriq’s famous speech and the burning of the ships – which, whether historically verifiable or not, are presented as demonstrative moral scenes that articulate values of bravery and faith (AlMaqqarī, 1862). 

Arab authors continually revisited and reinterpreted the story of the conquest, each generation reshaping it considering its own political climates and intellectual concerns. This ongoing re‑reading reveals how Arabic historiography on al‑Andalus was never static; rather, it evolved across centuries, responding to shifting power structures. Through these layers reinterpreting the same timeline, the narrative of al‑Andalus reveals as much about the historians who shaped it as it does about the events they describe.

On the other hand, Western narratives traditionally interpret the conquest as the result of factors such as the internal weaknesses within the Visigothic kingdom, including civil wars and the alleged betrayal by Count Julian, the ruler of Ceuta. For example, Roger Collins, in Visigothic Spain 409–711, argues that the Visigothic state was already structurally fragile and politically fragmented long before the Muslim forces arrived, stressing that the conquest merely accelerated an ongoing collapse rather than creating it anew (Collins, 2004). 

The scholar Thomas F. Glick, for his part, interpreted the Muslim conquest through a socio‑economic framework, highlighting the degree to which the Visigothic state had failed to integrate its diverse populations. He argues that many communities particularly in the southeast may have viewed Muslim rule as preferable to oppressive Visigothic fiscal and legal structures (Glick, 1995). 

However, this conquest has a different narrative through the lens of Christian medieval texts, wherein the scholar Kenneth Baxter Wolf emphasizes that the earliest Christian source presents the event in stark, moralizing terms as divine punishment for Visigothic corruption and civil war. He argues that this chronicle’s representation of the Umayyads as God’s instrument shaped the early medieval Western understanding of the conquest. Rather than focusing on military superiority, Wolf highlights how Latin writers framed this conquest as a judgment on a sinful kingdom - a narrative that later medieval Christian historians would expand. This perspective illuminates the ideological construction of the conquest in early Iberian memory (Wolf, 1990). 
Similarly, Norman Roth challenges the long‑standing claim popular among 19th century historians that Iberian Jews collaborated with Muslim armies during the conquest. Roth demonstrates that such narratives were often rooted in Christian polemics, not reliable early sources. He highlights how medieval and early‑modern writers exaggerated or invented accounts of Jewish “plots” to explain the sudden collapse of Visigothic authority (Roth, 1976).

In The Routledge Handbook of Muslim Iberia, by Martin Viso, the fall of the Visigoths is depicted as a sudden catastrophe, marking the loss of Christian Iberia and the beginning of long centuries of “occupation” (Martín-Viso, 2020).

It is noted that Western accounts often downplay the spiritual dimension, portraying the campaign as driven by ambition and material gain rather than a coherent civilizational project.

These perspectives of Western narratives illustrate how historical writing is deeply influenced by ideological and cultural positions. This framing reflects what Edward Said identifies in his book Orientalism as a discursive strategy that constructs the Islamic world as the ‘Other’, emphasizing material motives and denying intellectual or cultural legitimacy (Said, 1979). Such representations reinforce a Eurocentric narrative that positions Islamic Spain and Portugal as an external intrusion rather than an integral part of Iberian history.

Both narratives, however, have limits. Arabic sources often romanticize the conquest, portraying it as a righteous and divinely guided victory, while Western accounts tend to paint it as an act of opportunism and aggression - a view that has shaped national histories in Spain and Portugal for centuries. These opposing versions echo other moments in history where two civilizations meet, and each side tells the story differently. For example, what the Ottomans call “the conquest of Constantinople” is remembered in many Christian sources as “the fall of Constantinople”. Similarly, the raid of 711 AD is presented as either an “invasion” or a “conquest”. The same event carries two completely different meanings depending on who is telling it. In the end, it reminds us that history is often written by the victors, shaped by memory and identity.

Adding to these polarized views, Emilio González Ferrín offers a radically different interpretation in his 2018 book Cuando fuimos árabes (When We Were Arabs). Ferrín argues that the Islamic presence in Iberia should not be understood as an external invasion but as part of a broader Mediterranean cultural landscape. He reframes al-Andalus as an indigenous Islamic civilization, deeply intertwined with local Iberian traditions and classical heritage, rather than a foreign imposition. According to Ferrín, the term "conquest" oversimplifies a complex process of cultural synthesis, where Islam functioned as a civilizational framework that absorbed and transformed existing structures. This perspective challenges both the triumphalist tone of Arabic sources and the catastrophic narrative of Western historiography, proposing instead that al-Andalus represents a shared intellectual and cultural project that shaped European identity (Ferrín, 2018).

While Ferrín’s reinterpretation reframes al‑Andalus as a space of cultural synthesis, the centuries that followed reveal how dramatically this unique harmony was later stripped away. During the 15th and 16th centuries, Inquisition courts applied methods to compel the inhabitants of the former al-Andalus, by then officially classified as “Moriscos”, to convert to Catholicism. Court records and scholarly sources indicate that Muslims were frequently prosecuted because their adherence to Islam, or even “insufficient” Christian practice, raised doubts about their loyalty (Green-Mercado, 2020). 

These trials formed part of a broader campaign to eliminate Islamic identity through forced assimilation. The Inquisition did more than suppress religious freedom; it dismantled the cultural and scientific traditions that had flourished under centuries of Muslim influence. According to Green-Mercado (2020), this persecution led to a profound fracturing of the pluralistic fabric of Iberian society.

This campaign of forced assimilation and cultural suppression during the Inquisition not only erased religious practices but also severed the intellectual and artistic continuity that had defined Iberian society for centuries.
In the introduction to his work, Abdallah Anan observes that, despite the passage of time, a group of Spanish historians and thinkers even in the modern era still considers the history of al-Andalus to be an “abhorrent page” of national history. They argue that the eradication of the Andalusian nation and its civilization was a “brilliant national victory,” and that the horrific persecutions by the Inquisition against the remnants of the conquered population were an act of “salvation and peace” (Anan, 1969, Vol. I, p. 10).

We even find modern scholars, such as the Orientalist Francisco Javier Simonet, justifying and even glorifying the actions committed by Cardinal Ximénez, the Archbishop of Toledo. Shortly after the fall of Granada, Ximénez gathered Arabic manuscripts numbering nearly one hundred thousand or more and celebrated their burning in the public squares of Granada, an act intended to deprive the conquered people of their spiritual and intellectual nourishment (Anan, 1969, Vol. I, p. 10). Precise numbers vary, however; while al-Maqqarī counted the number of burned books at eighty thousand (al-Maqqarī, 1840), more recent historical research offers a more cautious estimate. Daniel Eisenberg’s detailed study of the event concludes that approximately five thousand Arabic manuscripts were burned in Granada’s Bib‑Rambla square, with only medical works spared and transferred to El Escorial (Eisenberg, 1992).

This destruction, whether measured in tens of thousands or several thousand volumes, marked one of the most devastating cultural losses in Iberian history and symbolized the broader suppression of Andalusi knowledge under the new early post‑conquest rule.

Yet, despite these systemic efforts at erasure, traces of Islamic influence endured across Spain and Portugal, embedded in the languages, place names, and cultural expressions that shape these modern nations today. 
De Gayangos (1840, p. viii) observes that many Spanish historians until the late 18th century continued to write the nation’s history from a singular perspective, relying solely on Christian sources while avoiding any investigation into Arabic records as the Arabic language was considered “the rude language of an heretical and proscribed race that is unworthy to be learned by Christians, unless for theological purposes” (De Gayangos, 1840). For example, scholars like Florián de Ocampo, author of the Crónica General de España, relied heavily on biblical and medieval Christian chronicles and made no use of Arabic records when narrating the centuries of Muslim presence in Iberia. Likewise, Juan de Mariana, whose Historia General de España became a foundational text for Spanish national identity, framed al‑Andalus primarily through Christian moral and theological lenses and similarly avoided Arabic sources (De Gayangos, 1840).

Pascual de Gayangos states in the introduction to his translation of Nafh al-Tib, known as The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain:

Mariana and the great Spanish historians, driven by a sentiment of deep-seated hatred or religious fanaticism, always displayed the utmost contempt for Arabic works ... They rejected the means of research offered by the numerous Arabic historical documents and neglected the benefits that could arise from comparing Christian and Islamic narratives. They preferred to write their histories from a single perspective, and the narrow-minded spirit that characterizes their writings is clear. Consequently, the history of Medieval Spain, despite everything modern critics have contributed remains a battlefield of myths and contradictions. (De Gayangos, 1840, cited in Anan, Vol 1, p.10, 1969). 

However, the scientific revolution in Andalusian studies in the West marks the transition from a period of biased, one-sided narratives to a more balanced, academic approach where Arabic primary sources were finally integrated into European history, revealing to the West many facts concerning the history of Al-Andalus and the conditions of Islamic society in Spain. Most notably, they reveal the prominent contributions of Islamic civilization in Al-Andalus to the construction of modern Spanish civilization and the European Renaissance (Anan, Vol 1, p.11 1969).

Al‑Andalus is a continuous living story that reminds us that history is never a single, fixed narrative. It is shaped by the voices that tell it and the perspectives they carry. By comparing Arabic, Western, and modern reinterpretations, we see how political, cultural, and ideological forces influence the way the past is written and remembered. Revisiting these narratives does not change what happened, but it helps us understand it more fairly and more completely. Al‑Andalus, therefore, it is a shared heritage that continues to shape identities, memories, and debates in Spain, Portugal, across the Islamic world, and beyond.

References and Further Readings

Al-Maqqarī, A. (1862). Nafḥ al-ṭīb min ghuṣn al-Andalus al-raṭīb. Būlāq Press.

Anān, M. ʿA. A. (1969). Dawlat al-Islām fī al-Andalus: Al-ʻaṣr al-awwal [The Islamic state in al-Andalus: The early period] (2 vols.). Muʾassasat al-Khanjī.

Certeau, M. de. (1982). A escrita da história (M. de L. Menezes, Trans.; A. Vogel, Tech. Rev.). Forense Universitária.

Chi, H. (2021, June 28). The conquest of al-Andalus. HIST365 Final Projects. https://hist365finalproject.opened.ca/the-conquest-of-al-andalus/.

Collins, R. (2004). Visigothic Spain, 409–711. Blackwell Publishing.

Dozy, R. (1932). Histoire des Musulmans d’Espagne. E.J. Brill.

Eisenberg, D. (1992). Cisneros y la quema de los manuscritos granadinos. Journal of Hispanic Philology, XVI, 2, 1992-1993, p. 107-124.

Gayangos, P. de. (1840). Introduction. In A. I. M. al-Maqqarī, The history of the Mohammedan dynasties in Spain. Trans.; Vol. 1. Oriental Translation Fund. https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10218800?page=9.

Glick, T. F. (1995). From Muslim fortress to Christian castle: Social and cultural change in medieval Spain. Manchester University Press.

González-Ferrín, E. (2018). Cuando fuimos árabes. Almuzara.

Green-Mercado, M. (2020). The forced conversions and the Moriscos. In The Routledge handbook of Muslim Iberia (pp. 20–35). Routledge.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, ʿA. (1922). The history of the conquest of Egypt, North Africa and Spain: Known as the Futūḥ Miṣr of Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam (C. C. Torrey, Ed.). Yale University Press.

Ibn al-Qūṭiyya. (1989). Taʾrīkh Iftitāḥ al-Andalus (I. al-Abbās, Ed.). Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya.

Ibn 'Idhari al-Marrakushi. (2013). Al-Bayan al-mughrib fi akhbar al-Andalus wa-al-Maghrib [The amazing story of the history of the kings of al-Andalus and the Maghreb] (B. A. Maruf & M. B. 'Awwad, Eds.). Dar al-Gharb al-Islami. (Original work published c. 1312)

Martín Viso, I. (2020). The Iberian Peninsula before the Muslim conquest. In The Routledge handbook of Muslim Iberia. Routledge.

Roth, N. (1976). The Jews and the Muslim conquest of Spain. Jewish Social Studies, 38(2), 145–158. 

Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. Vintage Books. 

Wolf, K. B. (1990). Conquerors and chroniclers of early medieval Spain. Liverpool University Press.