The Islamic Warriors Destruction

of a Nascent Civilization:
The Catholic Kingdom of the
Visigoths in Spain (A.D. 589711)
Dario Fernandez-Morera
The Spanish [Muslim] city of Cordova, in the tenth century, was very
much like a modern city. Its streets
were well paved and there were raised
sidewalks for pedestrians. At night
one could walk for ten miles by the
light of lamps, flanked by an uninterrupted extent of buildings. This was
hundreds of years before there was a
paved street in Paris, France, or a street
lamp in London, England. . . . The
marvelous cities of Toledo, Seville,
and Granada were rivals of Cordova
in respect to grandeur and magnificence. . . . Education was universal
in Moorish Spain, being given to
the most humble, while in Christian
Europe ninety-nine percent of the
people were illiterate, and even kings
could neither read nor write.You had
Moorish women who were doctors
and lawyers and professors.
John G. Jackson, The Empire of
the Moors, in Ivan van Sertima, ed.,
DARIO F ERNANDEZ-MORERA is associate
professor of Spanish and Portuguese and of comparative literature at Northwestern University.
He is a former member of the National Council
on the Humanities.
6

Golden Age of the Moor (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1991), 86

We should think of the Muslims, in
some way, as a migratory wave, just
like the Visigoths, except two hundred [sic] years later.
David Nirenberg, Johns Hopkins
University, in the PBS documentary
Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of
Islamic Spain, 2007

he Muslim conquest of the Spanish

Visigoth kingdom during the early
years of the eighth century interrupted
the process of cultural and ethnic fusion
of Hispano Romans and Visigoths, and
therefore the emergence of a new Catholic
Hispano-Visigoth civilization.1 But Islams
destruction of Hispano-Visigoth Spain and
of its lingering heritage (the Mozarabs)
is often glossed over by todays historians,
in contrast to the abundant condemnations
they bestow on the Christian Wests treatment of Third World peoples. Catholic
Hispano-Visigoth civilization is caught
between the double neglect of those
who see the Muslim invasion as bringing
enlightenment to a cultural wasteland
the European Dark Agesand those

T H E ISL A M IC WA R R IOR S DE ST RUC T ION OF A NA SCEN T CI V ILI Z ATON

who counter this false belief by insisting

on how much more civilized were the
indigenous Hispano-Romans compared
to the barbaric Visigoths.
Never mind that the so-called European
Dark Ages were less dark than is usually
proclaimed,2 and certainly quite enlightened when compared to Muslim culture
prior to the Arabs conquest of the Middle
East and North African provinces of the
Greek Orthodox Roman Empire (Byzantine) in the seventh and eighth centuries; or that the Germanic, or perhaps
Baltic, Visigoths were the most Romanized of the nations that took over the Latin
Roman Empire;3 or that Visigoth leaders
knew Latin, after generations of service to
Rome; or that Visigoth law was no more
brutal than medieval Islamic sharia; or
that Visigoth women enjoyed a political
and social freedom impossible under Islam
and that, in fact, the Visigoths had several
women monarchs.4
Contrary to what some historians teach
today, the Muslim invasion of Spain in the
eighth century differed qualitatively from
that of the Visigoths in the fi fth century. By
the time the Visigoths began to take over
Spain from the Latin (or Western) Roman
Empire in 415, they had been serving the
empire for generations as soldiers, generals,
and even political leaders, were culturally
Romanized, and considered themselves
the continuators of the empire, not its
destroyers; this was not the case with the
Muslim invaders, whose culture was very
different from that of Hispano-Romans
and Visigoths. The Visigoths did not make
their faith the dominant religion of the
land, but instead converted to the existing and prevalent religion, Catholicism;
Islam did the opposite. Unlike Muslims,
the Visigoths had not been motivated by
their religious faith to make the land submit to their religion and make those who
did not convert pay a particular tax specifi-

cally designated, as Maliki texts from the

Middle Ages remind us (the Maliki school
of Islamic law, second only to the Hanbali in its rigorous understanding of Islam,
was the school of law prevalent in Islamic
Spain), to humiliate them and remind them
of their submission. The Visigoths initially
professed a form of Christianity (Arianism) that, though considered a heresy by
orthodox Christians, had been founded
by a Christian bishop and was therefore
closer to orthodox Christianity (Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy) than Islam.
The Visigoths were linguistically close to
the Hispano-Romans, since they spoke an
Indo-European language, and their leaders
and eventually the people at large adopted
Latin; the Islamic invaders spoke a Semitic
language and instead imposed it on the
land. As Indo-Europeans, the Visigoths
were ethnically close to the HispanoRomans; the Arab and Berber invaders
were not. All these factors made it easier
for the Visigoths to undertake the cultural
and ethnic unification of Spain once they
abandoned Arianism in 589 and converted
to the religion of the majority of the population, Catholicism.

Filled with Treasures

Despite the bubonic plague, locust plagues,
drought, social problems, and civil wars
that ravaged Spain and debilitated it economically and socially in the years prior
to the Muslim conquest,5 at the beginning
of the eighth century the Catholic kingdom of the Visigoths still presented itself
as a wonderland to the rude Berber invaders. Medieval Muslim chronicles tell of the
astonishment experienced by the Islamic
warriors at the splendor of such Visigoth
cities as Toledo, Seville, Crdoba, and
Mrida.
In a chronicle attributed to Abu Jaafar
7

MODER N AGE

al-Kortobi, it is said that the Visigoth traitor, Count Ylian ( Julian), enticed Musa
to conquer Spain by describing it as a land
fi lled with treasures of all kinds, whose
inhabitants would make very handsome
slaves, a country abounding in springs,
gardens, rivers, and a land yielding every
description of fruits and plants.6 Count
Julians words were proven true when
the Muslim leader Tariq found near the
Visigoth capital of Toledo one and twenty
copies of the Torah, the Gospels, and the
Psalms, as well as a copy of the book of
Abraham, and another of that of Moses
[probably Deuteronomy]. . . . He found
likewise five-and-twenty royal diadems,
beautifully ornamented with jewels, one
for each of the kings who had ruled over
the country. . . . He found also . . . books
treating of the manner of using plants,
minerals, and animals, advantageous for
man, besides many wonderful talismans,
the work of ancient philosophers, and
another work on the great art [which
teaches the construction of talismans],
and its roots and elixirs; all these precious
objects, together with an immense quantity of rubies and other coloured gems,
stored in golden and silver urns of beautiful workmanship, and ornamented with
large pearls, were the fruits of Tariks conquest. 7
Al-Kortobi confi rms that when Musa
went to Damascus to pay homage to the
Caliph, he brought with him all the spoil
. . . consisting of thirty skins full of gold
and silver coin, necklaces of inestimable
value, pearls, rubies, topazes, and emeralds, besides costly robes of all sorts; he
was followed by eleven hundred prisoners,
men, women and children, of whom four
hundred were princes of the royal blood.8
The craftsmanship of the bejeweled sandals of Visigoth king Rodrigo was such
that when found after the Battle of Guadalete they were valued at one hundred
8

Winter/Spring 2011

thousand dinars.9 The earliest Muslim

chronicler of Islamic Spain, Rasi, recounts
the fate of a wonderful bridge over the
Tagus river: It was so well built that there
was nothing like it in the whole of Spain,
and during the Islamic conquest of Toledo
a Muslim leader ordered it destroyed.10
Rasi tells of the looting of Toledo: There
were no cities nor castles in Spain where
Tariq found and took more jewels and a
greater treasure than in Toledo. Chronicler Al-Makkari gives further examples of
the magnificence of the Hispano-Roman
and Visigoth Spain pillaged by the Muslim
conquerors: as late as 1145, a Muslim ruler
pulled down and melted a great bronze
statue that stood on top of the no longer
extant tower of the city of Cdiz, thinking
that the statue, deprecated by Muslims as
an idol, was made of gold.11
Muslim chronicler Ibnu Bashkuwal
described the former Visigoth royal palace
in Crdoba as full of wonderful remains
of the Greeks, Romans, and Goths; the
interior apartments were so magnificently
decorated as to dazzle with the beauty of
their ornaments the eyes of beholders.12
The Muslim beholders were mostly Berbers, who formed the bulk of the invading
armies, and who had never before contemplated such a degree of civilization. This
palace, the chronicler continues, the
Khalifs of the house of Merwan chose for
their residence.
The sacking of Visigoth Spain was
stupendous, to judge from the Arabic
accounts, the corroborating Christian
accounts (such as the Crnica mozrabe of
754 and the Crnica bizantina of 741), and
the material evidence provided by the
treasures that some Visigoths managed to
hide from Muslim hands. A work attributed to Ibn Koteybah Ad-dinawari tells of
the immense booty taken from Spain by
the conqueror Musa: besides the children
of the Gothic kings and thousands of male

T H E ISL A M IC WA R R IOR S DE ST RUC T ION OF A NA SCEN T CI V ILI Z ATON

and female slaves, Musa took gold diadems,

vases of gold and silver, jewels beyond
computation and all sorts of novelties,
and a stupendous jeweled table, the
craftsmanship of which Muslims had never
seen before, made of pure gold and silver mixed, ornamented with three rows
of inestimable jewels, one of large pearls,
another of rubies, and a third of emeralds.13 Nothing, the Muslim author
concluded, could be conceived more
rich or beautiful. What was this table,
as the Islamic conquerors called it, which
they carried away to the Umma after their
colossal sacking of Visigoth Toledo? It was
in fact part of the altar furnishings of the
great cathedral of Toledo, and on it rested
the Gospels while they were not being
read at Mass.14 The fate of the most impressive Catholic monuments at the hands of
the Islamic invaders is further revealed by
chronicler Ibnu-l-faradhi: I was told by
Abu Mohammed Ath-thegri, that Karkashunah (Carcassone) is a city distant
five-and-twenty miles from Barcelona,
and that when the Muslims conquered it,
they found a magnificent church, called by
the Christians Santa Maria, wherein were
seven pillars of massive silver; so beautifully wrought, that no human eye ever saw
the like of them; so huge were their dimensions, that a man could hardly encompass
one within his arms extended.15 After the
Muslim conquest, all this disappeared.
In Zaragoza, Musa found and took
incalculable wealth.16 When Musa left
Spain to go back to the Umma, he amazed
the inhabitants of the countries through
which he passed with the immense treasures he carried, treasures the like of which
no hearer ever heard of before, and no
beholder ever saw before his eyes. When
questioned by his lord, Suleyman, on the
nature of the people of Ishban (that is,
Spain: Muslims had not yet rebaptized it
as al-Andalus), Musa answered: They

are luxurious and dissolute lords, but

knights who do not turn their faces from
the enemy. . . . Among the nations just
described there are men of honour and
probity, there are also traitors and knaves.
Historian Manuel Rincn lvarez has
observed:
The North-African mass [that conquered Spain] was by and large Berber, war-like, hungry for booty, but
with no or little capacity for absorbing culture and even less of interacting with the indigenous population.
Within that mass, there was an Eastern, Arab minority, with greater cultural formation, but equally impelled
by the explosion of the Jihad, or Holy
War; all paths were correct to reach
God, so it was convenient to tolerate
the defeated because this facilitated
the prosecution of the conquest of
new territories. But whereas among
these bedouins from the desert one
could rarely find people who knew
how to read and write, in the indigenous population rested the sediment of Roman civilization and
the Isidorian flowering and, even if
we recognize that this was the culture of an elite, it had already produced encyclopedias like the Liber
Glossarum, and there remained still
the fruits of the scientific schools of
Seville and Toledo, among so many
other cultural examples from that
time. To underestimate the cultural
level of pre-Islamic Spain in 711 is, at
the same time, to ignore what came
before it, namely the fusion of the
Hispano-Roman element with the
Visigoth component. It should be
unnecessary to remember that indigenous Iberia had reached a high level
of Romanization.17

MODER N AGE

Even after their conquest of Spain, the

invading Berbers continued to lead a primitive, nomadic life, taking along wherever they went their wives and children:
according to chronicler Ibnu-l-abbar, it
was Abd-al-Rahman I (Emir of Crdoba
in A.D. 755) who fi rst managed to make
them build villages and live a sedentary
life.18

The Cultural Inf luence of the Greeks

The years of Muslim semibarbarism in
Spain are usually forgotten by those who
focus on the brilliance of the Caliphate
of Crdoba (A.D. 9291031)the result,
on the one hand, of the increasing Islamization of the more cultured HispanoRomans and Visigoths who remained
under Muslim rule and, on the other hand,
of Spanish Islams assimilation of Hispano-Roman, Visigoth, and Greek architecture, science, and medicine. A good
example is medicine: the medical works
of Dioscorides were translated from the
Greek into Arabic by the Greek Orthodox monk Stephan; during the Umayyad
Caliphate of Crdoba, the emperor of
the Greeks, Armanius, gave the original
Greek works to Abd-al-Rahman III as
a present; since the Muslims in Crdoba
did not have anyone who knew Greek,
the emperor sent a Greek monk, who at
the request of Abd al-Rahman instructed
the Muslim rulers slaves in Greek.19 Before
the works on logic of Arabs and Persians,
eighth-century Christians in the Middle
East had written commentaries on Aristotelian logic and introduced logic to the
Arabs; those commentaries disappeared
during the Muslim conquest. According to
Ibn Khaldun, as late as the conquest of the
Roman Greek Orthodox Empire province of Egypt in A.D. 641, Caliph Umar
still forbade Muslims to navigate the sea
10

Winter/Spring 2011

because the sea was a great pool, which

some inconsiderate people furrow, looking
like worms on logs of wood.20
In fact, when Islam was born in Arabia
among desert Bedouins, tents, sheep, and
camels (horses entered the culture only
when Arabs stole them during their raids
on the Persian empire, and as late as the
early twentieth century, T. E. Lawrences
Arab forces still rode on camels, far superior to horses for desert warfare), there
existed already in Spain a brilliant Hispano-Roman-Visigoth culture: there was a
wealth of sacred music; there were learned
men, such as Saint Leander (who lived in
the Greek Roman Empire for a number
of years and presided over the Third Toledan Council and the religious union of
Hispano-Romans and Visigoths), Bishop
Eugene of Toledo (expert in mathematics and astronomy), Conantius of Palencia
(expert in music), and a poet-king, Sisebut (who wrote an astronomical poem in
Latin); and in the city of Seville a Catholic
archbishop, Saint Isidore (A.D. 560636),
wrote arithmetical works (De arithmetica),
a musical treatise (De musica), linguistic
studies (Differentiarum libri), natural science
and cosmology studies (De natura rerum and
De ordine creaturarum), and historical works
and compendia of Greco-Roman civilization (Historia gothorum and Etymologiae).21
The originality of Visigothic culture was
reflected in the role of grammar and rhetoric, writes Dag Norberg. The ancient
educational program had survived there;
the learned bishops studied ancient poetry,
for instance, without the repugnance felt
by many other Christians studying a literature fi lled with pagan elements.22
Only later, with Islam benefiting from the
superior civilizations of the Greek Orthodox Roman Empire and Persia, did Arabs
begin to raise their cultural level, while
their destruction of the Visigoth kingdom and their domination of the Medi-

T H E ISL A M IC WA R R IOR S DE ST RUC T ION OF A NA SCEN T CI V ILI Z ATON

terranean Sea cut off Christian Spain, and

indeed Christian Europe, from the previous direct contact with the science, medicine, art, and literature of the Greeks.23
The cultural influence of the Greeks on
Visigoth Spain has been observed often.
The latest topographic studies confirm
even an imitation of Constantinople in the
design of Visigoth Toledo. Archaeologist
Pedro Marfils work on the church of Saint
Vincent, destroyed to build the mosque
of Crdoba, reveals the presence of Greek
(byzantine, oriental) techniques and
even materials in a renovation of the church
that took place in the late seventh century.
I believe that the Mozarabic Catholic
ritual, which was nothing but the surviving Hispanic rite used in Visigoth Spain,
echoed the ritual of the Greek Orthodox
Church, which was its contemporary before
the Gregorian reform of the rite made the
Latin ritual noticeably different from the
Greek. The sounds of the Mozarabic rite
that some people associate with Arabic
music are simply analogous to those of the
Greek Orthodox Church.
In Visigoth Spain, as was the case in
the rest of Christian Europe, the classics
had been part of education since the early
Middle Ages (the so-called Dark Ages) in
the Trivium and the Quadrivium of liberal arts instruction. Islam, by contrast,
remained inimical to classical art, drama,
lyric poetry, narrative, and music, concentrating instead on the most practical
or on the most abstract areas of the rich
Greek civilization they had found in the
Middle East and North Africa (Greek science, medicine, and technology, and the
philosophy of Aristotle, all acquired by
Islam thanks to their preservation in the
Greek Orthodox Roman Empire).24 In
Spain, as in the rest of Christian Europe,
monks and clerics were grounded in classical literature as part of their preparation
for using biblical Latin, for chanting bibli-

cal and liturgical Latin, and for employing

a half-living oral Latin that fused biblical
and classical components with many others, in addition to studying the classics
in order to reconcile them with Christian
doctrine.25
Medieval scholars had direct Latin
translations of Aristotle available to them
since as far back as Boethius and Marius
Victorinus. As Sylvain Gouguenheim has
shown, they did not need to translate Aristotle from Arabic into Latin, as is so often
repeated. Saint Thomas Aquinas of course
read Aristotle translated directly from the
Greek (by William of Moerbeke, bishop of
Corinth). This was not the case in Islamic
lands, where even exceptionally learned
men like the Persian Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
and the Andalusian Ibn Rushd (Averroes)
were not interested in classical art, drama,
or narrative, and read Aristotle only in
twice-removed Christian-made translations into Arabic from Syriac.
The great churches, the stupendous
bridges, the colossal aqueductsall the
features of Hispano-Visigoth civilization
astonished the rude Berbers, if not their
Arab masters, some of whom might have
been exposed already to a superior culture
during their conquest of the Greek Orthodox Roman Middle East and North Africa
in the seventh and eighth centuries. They
marveled at the roads that still traversed
Spain in all its length.26 They considered
Visigoth Seville, where Saint Isidore had
lived, the abode of the sciences.27 They
marveled at engineering works they had
never seen before, such as the Roman
aqueduct of Cadiz, which conveyed fresh
water from a spring in the district of the
idols to the island of Cadiz, crossing an
arm of the Ocean, or the Roman aqueduct of Tarragona, which conveyed the
water from the sea to the city by a gentle
level, and in the most admirable order, and
served to put in motion all the mill-stones
11

MODER N AGE

in the town, the whole being one of the

most solid, magnificent, and best contrived
buildings that ever were erected.28 They
also marveled at the abundance of olive
trees in the land.29

Erasing the Vestiges of a

Nascent Civilization
Romanic art, which entered Spain during
the early decades of the eleventh century,
and eventually developed into a major
medieval art form in the Catholic kingdoms, was influenced by the remains of
the Hispano-Roman and Visigoth heritage.30 But the impact of this heritage on
the Romanic was limited by the disappearance of monuments, which must have
been massive over the years of Muslim rule
and the fleeing, conversion, and expulsion
of the Catholic population.
Over time, this process of pillaging,
destruction, and abandonment erased
almost completely the cultural vestiges of a
nascent civilization. We have very few literary records of Visigoth Spain: the debacle caused by the Arabic invasion carried
away all official documents.31 We have
mentions of beautiful churches that have
disappeared. Today, the remains of even
small Mozarabic churches can be found
only outside the former al-Andalus,
and none of them in major urban centers.
Moreover, freestanding public Roman and
Hispano-Roman decorative sculpture and
painting disappeared, as was to be expected
of art under a religion that forbade physical
representation and considered sculpture a
manifestation of idolatry.32
This architectural, literary, and iconographic disaster cannot be attributed to the
Visigoths. Already highly Romanized by the
time they entered Spain, they were interested in preserving the symbols of Roman
power, because they considered themselves
12

Winter/Spring 2011

its inheritors. Thus we have records of the

Visigoths practice of sculpture and a great
artistic center in Mrida, of which little
remains because of the centuries of iconoclastic Islamic domination. The Visigoths
assimilation and adaptation of the preexisting Roman and Hispano-Roman Christian
art, and especially of the immensely rich
Greek Roman Empires art, were ruptured
by the Muslim conquest, as was the Visigoth
kingdoms assimilation and adaptation of
Greek science.33
On the other hand, Muslim chroniclers attest to the iconoclastic zeal of early
Muslim rulers, such as the celebrated Abdal-Rhaman I, founder of the Umayyad
Emirate of Crdoba. He would take all
the bodies which Christians honor and call
saints [probably a reference to relics], and
he would burn them; and he would burn
their beautiful churches; and in Spain there
were many and very magnificent churches,
some built by the Greeks and some by the
Romans. Seeing this, the Christians, when
they could, would take their sacred things,
and would flee to the mountains.34 This
familiar Islamic animosity toward images
is still evident today in the Muslim Talibans destruction of Afghanistans Buddha
statues.
The changing of prominent Christian
churches into mosques was a standard feature of Muslim conquests. Many of the
Greek Orthodox churches in the Middle
East and North Africa were transformed
into mosques in the seventh and eighth
centuries, or torn down so that their superior construction materials, marble columns,
gold, and silver could be cannibalized to
build mosques (traditional Arabic architecture used poor construction materials, such
as plaster, wood, and brick).35 The procedure
was repeated in Spain. The episcopal basilica of Saint Vincent in Crdoba was torn
down to build the famous mosque of Crdoba, after Catholics were made an offer

T H E ISL A M IC WA R R IOR S DE ST RUC T ION OF A NA SCEN T CI V ILI Z ATON

they could not refuse by the gracious Abdal-Rahman I, ruler of this reputedly tolerant Muslim city.36 They were given money
and sent to build another church, but outside the city. Archaeologists consider a prior
sharing of the church itself unlikely, since
Muslims would not pray in front of icons,
statues of saints, and the cross, which they
considered idols. (An exception would be
a church that had once been a mosque: just
as Muslims consider a land that was once
part of Islam still part of Islam, so they would
consider a church that was once a mosque
still a mosque.) Rather, Muslims probably
took over a building that was part of the
Saint Vincent complex, a sacristy perhaps,
rather than the church itself, before demolishing the church. The other churches of
Crdoba, such as Santa Catalina, were also
turned into mosques.37
The takeover of Christian churches
could be very swift if the infidels resisted
instead of submitting. The Greek Orthodox basilica of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the most extraordinary building of
the early Middle Ages (the Dark Ages),
was turned into a mosque, along with
all the other Greek churches of the city,
right after the three-day sack and rape of
Constantinople in 1453. Hagia Sophia was
desecrated theologically and aesthetically:
exquisite icons and mosaics inside the
church were destroyed, erased, and painted
over, and four flanking minarets were
installed outside the church; they stand to
this day, looking like rocket ships about to
be launched. In Spain, the first mosque was
built upon a Catholic church shortly after
Muslim troops disembarked.38 Muslim
chronicles frequently make reference to
Catholic churches in order to exalt Islams
victory by pointing out their destruction,
sacking, abandonment, and the construction of mosques upon their ruins.39 As late
as 1195, Muslims on the offensive were still
turning Catholic churches into mosques,

as a sign, Muslim chroniclers gleefully

remind us, of the defeat and submission of
the polytheists.40
Significantly, no remains of churches
built prior to the Catholic Reconquest
can be found today in southern Spain. As
Jacques Fontaine observed, the destruction
of the Catholic heritage was the result not
merely of the religious teachings of Islam
but also of a conscious policy of systematically erasing all Christian power signs
from al-Andalusas the Muslim writers
of chronicles had conveniently renamed
Spain.41 According to ninth-century Muslim chronicler Al-Tabari, the Arabs fi rst
referred to Spain as al-Andalus when
plotting the conquest of Constantinople:
the city would have to be conquered via
al-Andalus. I believe that this referred to
the strategic need to secure control of the
Mediterranean before attacking the Greek
city directly.
Joaqun Vallv believes the word alAndalus is an Arabic corruption of the
Greek Atlantida. But chroniclers continued to vacillate between Spania and
al-Andalus, and in 716 a Muslim coin
was stamped on one side with the word
Spania and on the other with alAndalus. Afterward, Muslim intellectuals increasingly used al-Andalus over
Spania, in an obvious effort to erase a
name associated with a pre-Islamic past, a
political power maneuver echoed in many
other areas, such as the change of the name
of cities and geographical sites, and the
turning of churches into mosques. The few
examples that we have of Visigoth craftsmanship have survived largely in treasures
kept hidden from Muslim pillaging. These
buried treasures give only a faint idea of
the exquisiteness of this art, and they make
the Arabic accounts of the Visigoth king
Rodrigos riding into battle in a bejeweled
armor more plausible.42

13

MODER N AGE

A Feeble Echo
Eventually, Muslims took advantage of the
nonrepresentational aspects of HispanoRoman-Visigoth art. Notoriously, they
adopted the Visigoth horseshoe arch, as
they had earlier in the Middle East and
North Africa imitated the architecture of
the Greek Orthodox Roman Empire.43
Celebrated Muslim crafts, for example
that of leather, existed before the invasion, with pre-Islamic Crdoba being an
exporter to Europe.44 Popular lyric poetry
(evident in the famous jarchas) was so common among the Hispano-Visigoths living
as dhimmi under Muslim rule (Mozarabs)
as to be incorporated into the classic Arabic poetry of the muwassahah (muwashshah),
a poetic form invented by a Mozarab,
Muccadam de Cabra, in the ninth century.45 Even what was noticeable in Spain
of Muslim music (an oxymoron, given
the medieval Maliki school of Islamic laws
prohibition of music) owed its existence to
the conquered civilization.46 The famous
mosque of Crdoba, a Catholic church
since 1236, is a particularly good example
of all this: the main facade is built out of
the main facade of the torn-down church
of Saint Vincent; columns and other building materials are cannibalized from Hispano-Roman and Visigoth churches; the
alternation of red brick and white stone in
the arches is a Roman technique (the opus
vittatum mixtum); the horseshoe arches imitate Roman arches and the Visigoth horseshoe arch; and the mosaics are of Greek
manufacture.47 This recurring Islamic
assimilation of the nonrepresentational
features of the art of conquered civilizations supports art historian Basilio Pavn
Maldonados studies showing that Spanish-Muslim art . . . derives in large part
from Roman, paleo-Christian, Byzantine,
and Visigoth art.48 Likewise, art historian
14

Winter/Spring 2011

Isidro Bango Torviso has pointed out that

the art of Islamic Spain was the result of
the inertia of a late antiquity art carried
out under an Islamic hegemony.49
Unlike the colder climates of northern
Spain and central Europe, southern Spain
had a Mediterranean climate that allowed
for the Greek-Roman culture of water
and baths to exist. This culture was part
of the Hispano-Roman life of southern
Spain, inherited by the Visigoths. It was
this culture that the Muslims from the
arid North Africa encountered and happily took over. Thus the bath culture of
southern Spain was not a Muslim invention, as is often repeated, but a feature of
Hispano-Roman-Visigoth life adopted by
the invaders.50
Under the Visigoths, Toledo was an artistic center, as indicated by the remnants of
exquisite marble fragments.51 But under
Islam, the art of the Visigoth capital decayed,
as the conquerors wiped out the traces of
Catholic grandeur, while focusing their
interests on their new capital, Crdoba.
Toledo, however, continued to be a focus of
resistance. In 761 it sided with the Fhiries
against the Umayyads; in 797 a Spanish convert to Islam, the poet Garbid, led a revolt;
in 829 another convert, Haxim, led another
revolt; and in 852 there was a Mozarab
revolt, eventually crushed, provoked by the
oppression of the Catholics under Umayyad
emir Muhammad.52
The splendor of the Visigoth royal court
in Toledo, which tried to imitate that of
the Greek Roman Empire in Constantinople, has reached us only as a feeble echo
in the Muslim chronicles and the material
evidence of buried treasures and archaeological sites.53 Since the Reformation, and
especially since the Enlightenment, anachronistic condemnations of the Catholic
Hispano-Roman-Visigoth kingdom as
socially unjust and plagued with ignorance have accompanied the dismissal of

T H E ISL A M IC WA R R IOR S DE ST RUC T ION OF A NA SCEN T CI V ILI Z ATON

its culture and art, as the culture and art of

Islamic Spain have been correspondingly
exalted.54
With the fleeing of large numbers of
Hispano-Romans and Visigoths from alAndalus, their fusion with many of the
inhabitants of the rest of Spain continued

variously over the centuries, and produced

the great flowering of the Spanish Middle
Ages. So the at times precarious union of
the Spanish population under the banner of Catholicism was interrupted and
delayed, but ultimately not stopped, by the
Muslim conquest.

1 The ethnic union began with the laws of King Leovigildus (569586), known as Codex Revisus, allowing the
intermarriage of Visigoths and Hispano-Romans. The religious union started with the Third Council of Toledo
(589) and the conversion of King Recared and his people from Arianism (589), the heresy practiced by the Visigoths,
to Catholicism, which was the religion of most of the Hispano-Romans. Saint Isidore embodies this union: he
eulogized Visigoth Spain, but his father was Hispano-Roman (and some medieval biographies suggest that his
mother was Visigoth). Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger praised the Third Council of Toledo as a milestone in the union
of Europe through the strength of the Christian Spirit; it represented the union of the citizens of the former Roman
Empire with the Northern nations that had taken it over: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Perspectivas y tareas del
catolicismo en la actualidad y de cara al futuro, A.A. and V.V. eds. El Concilio III the Toledo. XIV Centenario 589
1989 (Toledo: Arzobispado de Toledo, 1991), 107. On the importance of the Visigothic tradition for the idea of the
Reconquest, see J. I. Ruiz de la Pea La monarqua asturiana (718918), El reino de Len en le Alta Edad Media. III:
La monarqua astur-leonesa. De Pelayo a Alfonso VI (7181109) (Len: Centro de Estudios e Investigacin San
Isidoro, 1995), 120127. Spain was under Roman control and cultural influence longer than any Western land
outside of Italy and produced more Latin writers and emperors than any other province. The Latin word for Spain,
Hispania, evolves into Spania and then Espaa. For the concept Spain originating in Visigoth Spain see among
many Jos Antonio Maravall, El concepto de Espaa en la Edad Media (1954; rpt. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Constitucionales, 1997), 299337; Adeline Rucquoi, Les Wisigoths fondement de la nation Espagne, LEurope Hritire
de lEspagne Wisogothique, ed. Jacques Fontaine and Christine Pellistrandi (Madrid: Rencontres de la Casa de Velzquez, 1992), 341352. 2 Peter S. Wells, Barbarians to Angels (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008). The technical innovations of the dark ages are no less impressive than its preservation of a great deal of the classical heritage by the
monks in their monasteries. 3 Traditionally, the Visigoths have been considered a Germanic people; see, among
many works on the subject, Peter Heather, The Goths (London: Blackwell, 1998). For the Baltic rather than Germanic origin of the Visigoths, see Jurate Rosales, Los Godos (Barcelona: Ariel, 2004), trans. Goths and Balts (Chicago: Vydino Fondas, 2004); El idioma que hablaron los godos, La Torre del Virrey, n. 3, Serie 6 (February 2010),
112 at http://www.estudiosculturales.es/libros/serie3.php; Las cuatro mentiras sobre los godos, Pre-print of Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Letras y Educacin (2 July 2009), 128 at http://www.saber.ula.ve/handle/123456789/16399; Cultura goda, La Torre del Virrey, n. 5 (Summer 2008), 6166 at www.latorredelvierrey.
es/pdf/05/jurate.rosales.pdf; and Javier Albert, http://geografi a.freeservers.com/genetica3.htm. 4 The Visigoths
love of freedom was also their weakness: their monarchy was elective, not hereditary. Like the Barons who imposed
the Magna Carta on King John in England centuries later, Visigoth nobles were suspicious of royal power and con-

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Winter/Spring 2011

tributed to the instability of the monarchy. But they went beyond English barons, to the point of supporting not just
usurpers but even foreign invaders (in which unruliness some ecclesiastics participated, such as Oppas and Elipando). Among the best English language studies on Visigoth Spain, Roger Collinss Visigothic Spain, 409711
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) exemplifies the tendency of English scholarship to downplay Visigoth culture and overlook making a favorable comparison with contemporary Arabs. The best books on Visigoth Spain are Jos Orlandis,
La vida en Espaa en tiempo de los godos (Madrid: Rialp. 1991), and his Historia del reino visigodo espaol (Madrid: Rialp,
2003). For the Visigoths effort to present themselves as inheritors and defenders of the empire, see Federico-Mario
Beltrn Torreira, El concepto de barbarie en la hispania visigoda, Antigedad y cristianismo, III (1986), 5657; Salvador Caramunt, Historia de la Edad Media (Barcelona: Ariel, 1995), 19; and Mara R. Valverde Castro, Ideologa,
simbolismo y ejercicio del poder real en la monarqua visigoda (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 2000), 155156.
Visigoth monarchs even adopted the purple vestments and the crown of the Roman emperors, and as late as 578,
coins issued by King Leovigildo had on one side the kings name and on the other the name of the emperor of the
Greek Roman Empire in Constantinople (the only surviving Roman empire): Jess Vico and Mara Cruz Cors, La
moneda visigoda, Gaceta numismtica n. 169 ( June 2008), 2526. 5 Orlandis, Historia, 19495. 6 Al-Makkari in The
History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain by Ahmed Ibn Mohammed al-Makkari, trans. Pascual de Gayangos (1840;
rpt. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1964), vol. 1, Appendix D, xlv. 7 Ibid., xviiixlix. 8 Ibid., l. 9 Ibid.,
xlviii. 10 Crnica del moro Rasis, ed. Diego Cataln and Mara Soledad de Andrs (Madrid: Gredos, 1975), 64; for
what follows, see 35457. 11 Al-Makkari, 1, 79. 12 Ibid., 207. 13 Ibid., Appendix E, lxxviiilxxix. 14 Jaime Cobreros, Gua del preromnico en Espaa. Visigodo. Asturiano. Mozrabe (Madrid: Anaya, 2005), 39. 15 Al-Makkari, 2, 6. 16
Ibn Idhari in Al-Bayanol-Mogrib, trans. and annotated by Edmond Fagnan (Algiers: Imprimrie Orientale Pierre
Fonatana, 1904), 25. 17 Manuel Rincn lvarez, Mozrabes y mozarabas (Salamanca: Ediciones universidad de
Salamanca, 2006), 192. For the ethnic impact of the Visigoths, played down by many scholars, see historian Javier
Alberts plausible calculations, which increase their number to a million in the midst of a Hispano-Roman population of four to five million: http://geografi a.freeservers.com/genetica3.htm. 18 Ibn Idhari in Al-Bayanol-Mogrib, 25.
19 For this and the following, see Al-Makkari, 1, Appendix A, xxivxxv. For the general phenomenon of scientific
knowledge passing from the Christian Greeks to the Muslims, see Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The
Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society (2nd4th/8th10th centuries) (London:
Routledge, 1998); De Lacy OLeary, How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd.,
1949); F. Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1975); and History of
Logic, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, September 25, 2009, at http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/
topic/346217/history-of-logic. 20 Al-Makkari, 1, Appendix B, xxxiv. 21 Jacques Fontaine, Isidore de Seville et la
culture classique dans lEspagne wisigothique (Paris: tudes augustiniennes, 1959); Manuel C. Daz y Daz, Les arts
libraux daprs les crivains espagnols et insulaires au VIIe et VIIIe sicles, Arts Libraux et Philosophie au Moyen
ges. Actes du Quatrime Congrs International de Philosophie Mdievale (Montreal: Institut Dtudes Mdievales, 1969),
3746; Noticias histricas en dos himnos litrgicos visigticos, Antigedad y cristianismo, n. III (1986), 44356.
Scholars who insist on calling Isidore naive, ignorant, and even stupid show a lack of historical perspective.
22 Dag Norberg, Manuel pratique de latin mdival (Paris: Picard, 1968), trans. online by R. H. Johnson, at http://
homepages.wmich.edu/~johnsorh/MedievalLatin/Norberg/spain.html. 23 For this and the following, see Jess
Carrobles Santos, Rafael Barroso Cabrera, Jorge Morn de Pablos, and Fernando Valds Fernndez, Regia Sedes
Toledana: La topografa de la ciudad de Toledo en la antigedad tarda y alta edad media (Toledo: Real Fundacin de Toledo,
2007), 217; Pedro Marfi l, La sede episcopal de San Vicente en la Santa Iglesia Catedral de Crdoba, Al-Mulk:
anuario de estudios arabistas (2006), n. 6, 3558. 24 The great writings of the classical era, particularly those of
Greece, were never completely lost to the Western world. They were always available to the Byzantines, and to those
Western peoples in cultural and diplomatic contact with the Eastern Empire. . . . Of the Greek classics known today,
at least seventy-five percent are known through Byzantine copies: Michael H. Harris, History of Libraries in the
Western World (Metuchen, NJ, and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1995), 75, 7677. Much of what we know about

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T H E ISL A M IC WA R R IOR S DE ST RUC T ION OF A NA SCEN T CI V ILI Z ATON

antiquityespecially Hellenic and Roman literature and Roman lawwould have been lost forever if it werent for
the scholars and scribes of Constantinople: John Julius Norwich, A Short History of Byzantium (New York: Vintage,
1999), xli. C. Barber and D. Jenkins, Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformation of Greek Identity and the Reception of
the Classical Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Anthony Caldellis, The Christian Parthenon:
Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Demetrios Constantelos, Christian Hellenism: Essays and Studies in Continuity and Change (New Rochelle, NY, and Athens. Aristide D.
Caratzas summarized in his The Formation of the Hellenic Christian Mind (1999), at http://myriobiblos.gr/
texts/english/1821_problems_of_greek.html. 25 Jan Ziolkowski, Nota Bene: Reading Classics and Writing Melodies in
the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 199; Columbia History of Western Philosophy, ed. Richard Henry
Popkin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 23044. For the continuing reception of Greek texts in
Europe, independently of their mediation through Spains Arabic writings, see the important Sylvain Gouguenheim, Aristote au mont Saint-Michel: Les racines grecques de lEurope chrtienne (Paris: Seuil, 2008). This book so rattled
the academic establishment that Gouguenheim was attacked by one hundred experts in an open letter in the Communist journal Libration. 26 Al-Makkari, 1, 77. The cultural superiority of Spain over a North Africa sacked by the
Islamic conquests and the pull it exerted over the miserable lives of the Berbers would actually help the otherwise
absurd theory of University of Seville professor Emilio Gonzlez Ferrn, who claims that there was no Muslim
conquest, but some sort of peaceful immigration from North Africa: Historia general de Al-Andalus (Crdoba: Almuzara, 2006). He follows the teachings of Ignacio Olague, Les arabes nont jamais envahi lEspagne (Paris: Flammarion,
1960). Olague had earlier been refuted by Charles-Emanuel Dufourcq, La vie quotidienne dans leurope mdivale sous
la domination arabe (Biarritz: Cino del Luca, 1981). 27 Al-Makkari, 1, 26; Ibn Idhari, Al-Bayanol-Mogrib, 21. 28 AlMakkari, 1, 77. The aqueduct of Tarragona, built by the Romans probably in the fi rst century A.D., is said to have
been repaired by Abd-al-Rahman III, and this is usually taken to mean that it had been in ruins before the Muslim conquest. But between 711 and Abd-al-Rhaman III (891961) a long time had passed, and the aqueduct could
have deteriorated after the Muslim conquest. There is no indication that it was not working under the Visigoths.
29 Al-Makkari, 1, 81. 30 Isidro Bango Torviso, Alta Edad Media. De la tradicin hispanogoda al romnico (Madrid:
Silex, 1989); Mara de los Angeles Utrero Agudo, Iglesias tardoantiguas y altomedievales en la pennsula ibrica. Anlisis
arqueolgico y sistemas de abovedamiento (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientficas, 2007); Javier Sainz Saiz, Arte
prerromnico en Castilla y Len (Len: Lancia, 1997). 31 Antonio Domnguez Ortiz, Espaa: Tres Milenios de Historia
(Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2007), 40. There are some inscriptions left, and documents which included the church
and were of sufficient importance to have copies abroad, such as the Councils. 32 For what remains of pre-Islamic
sculpture, found in crumbling walls in bridges and towers, see Luis Caballero Zoreda and Pedro Mateos Cruz, eds.,
Escultura decorativa tardorromana y altomedieval en la Pennsula Ibrica (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Cientficas, 2007); Luis Caballero Zoreda, ed., El siglo vii frente al siglo vii. Arquitectura (Madrid: Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones Cientficas, 2009); Orlandis, Historia del reino visigodo espaol, p. 243; Maria Cruz Villaln, La
escultura visigoda: Mrida, centro creador, Visigoti e lombardi eds. Javier Arce and Paolo Delugo (Florence: Edizioni
allinsegna del Giglio, 2001), 16184. 33 Orlandis, Historia del reino visigodo espaol, 243, 244, 24950; on Europe
in general, see Henri Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne (1935; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1956). For refi nements of his thesis, see R. S. Lopez, Mohammed and Charlemagne: A Revision, Speculum, 18 (1943), 1438;
even a scholar who questioned Pirennes assertion that Islam slowed down economic development in Europe accepted
the role of Islam as an interrupter of the direct cultural flow from the Greek Roman Empire to the West: see Anne
Riising, The Fate of Henri Pirennes Theses on the Consequence of the Islamic invasion, in Problems in European
Civilization: The Pirenne Thesis: Analysis, Criticism, and Revision, ed. Alfred F. Havighurst (Boston: D. C. Heath and
Company, 1958), 105. The least affected was probably Venice, which was in closest contact with the empire of the
Greeks. I thank the Liberty Funds colloquium on Medieval Cities, Tucson, Arizona, January 1013, 2010, for
making me aware of the importance of Pirennes thesis. 34 Crnica del moro Rasis, ed. Diego Cataln and Mara Soledad de Andrs (Madrid: Gredos, 1975), 28182. 35 Notable was the Great Mosque of the Umayyads in Damascus,

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built upon and with materials cannibalized from the Greek basilica of Saint John the Baptist: Philip Khuri Hitti,
History of Syria: Including Lebanon and Palestine (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 511; Ali Wigdan, The Arab Contribution to Islamic Art: From the Seventh to the Fifteenth Centuries (Cairo: Cairo American University in Cairo Press,
1999), 21; Atlas of World Art, ed. John Onians (London: Laurence King, 2004), 128; E. J. Brills First Encyclopedia of
Islam, ed. M. Th. Houtsma et al. (19131936; rpt. Leiden: Brill, 1987), 333, 338, 381. Upon the Muslim defeat of
the Crusader kingdom in Palestine, the procedure was repeated: Daniella Talman-Heller, Islamic Piety in Medieval
Syria: Mosques, Cemeteries, and Sermons under the Zangids and Ayyubids (11461260) (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 36. 36 For
this and the following, see Al-Makkari, vol. 1, 21718; Manuel Ocaa Jimnez, Precisiones sobre la historia de la
mezquita de Crdoba, Cuadernos de estudios medievales IVV (197677), 27582; Pedro Marfi l Ruiz, Crdoba de
Teodosio a Abd al-Rhamn III (Anejos de AespA, 2000), 11741, and e-mail communication with me. The mosque
of Crdoba was turned back into a Catholic cathedral during the Reconquista by King Ferdinand III in 1236, but
tourist guides, and many Spaniards, still call it the mosque of Crdoba. The city authorities give it the oxymoronic
name of mosque-cathedral. Mentioning that the mosque of Crdoba was built upon a church demolished by
Muslim authorities is avoided very interestingly by the University of Crdoba site: Abd al-Rahman I (756788)
began construction of the Mosque on the site of the former Visigothic Basilica of San Vicente dating c. 584. And
that is all the university has to say about it. See http://www.uco.es/internacionalcoopera/ori/english/walkcordoba.
html. 37 Antonio Arjona Castro, Axyt: hacia una nueva visin histrica de la Crdoba Islmica, Arbor CLXVI,
654 (2000), 177. 38 Joaqun Vallv, Sobre algunos problemas de la invasin musulmana, Anuario de estudios medievales, 4 (1967), 367. 39 Susana Calvo Capilla, Las primeras mezquitas de al-Andalus a travs de las fuentes rabes
(92/711170/785), Al-Qantara XXVIII 1 ( JanuaryJuly 2007), 15960. 40 Thus the church of Calatrava in 1195:
Kitab al-muyib fi talljis ajbar al-magrib by Abu Muhammad Abd Al-Wahid Al-Marrakusi, trans. Ambrosio Huici Miranda
(Tetun: Instituto General Franco de Estudios e Investigacin Hispano-rabe, 1955), 236. 41 Jacques Fontaine, El
mozrabe (Madrid: Encuentro, 1978), 6180; Joaqun Vallv, Sobre algunos problemas de la invasin musulmana,
361. 42 Alicia Parea, El tesoro visigodo de Guarrazar (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientficas, 2001)
and El tesoro visigodo de Torredonjimeno (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientficas, 2009). 43 That
Muslim conquerors adopted the Visigoth arch is common knowledge among Spanish art historians: Antonio E.
Momplet Miguez, El arte hispanomusulmn (Madrid: Ediciones encuentro, 2008), 22. For the remaining examples
of the Visigoth horseshoe arch, see, among others, the church of San Juan de Baos at http://www.turismo-prerromanico.es/arterural/base/monumen.htm, and for a discussion of the arch, see http://www.almendron.com/arte/
arquitectura/islam/anexos/anexos.htm. No one has pointed out that Visigoths may have taken the arch from the
Greek Roman Empire, and no one seems to have noticed the horseshoe arches on the second floor of Hagia Sophia
(see Hagia Sophia Virtual Tour, http://www.360tr.com/34_istanbul/ayasofya/english/). 44 Claudio SnchezAlbornoz, Espagne pr-islamique et Espagne musulmane, Revue Historique CCXXXVII (1967), 316. 45 Richard
Eugene Chandler and Kessel Schwartz, A New History of Spanish Literature (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), 200. 46 Malik b. Anas, founder of Malikism, forbade music. A Persian, Ziryab (d. 857) brought
music to the Umayyad court, to be played by slaves. Even earlier in Arabia, music comes into being upon the onset
of Islam because of the Arabs conquests; all extant sources point to foreign influence, from the Greek Orthodox
Roman Empire (Byzantine) to Persia: Irfan Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century (Washington,
DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1995), vol. 2, part 2, 184. Music being a science almost
unknown to the Arabs before their conquests, they necessarily borrowed from the subdued nations their knowledge
of it, as well as the names of almost all their instruments: Pascual de Gayangos, in his translation of al-Makkari, History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain, I, 365 n. 17 (see 5859). 47 Manuel Gmez Moreno, Iglesias mozrabes: Arte
espaol de los siglos IX a XI (Madrid: Junta para ampliacin de estudios, Centro de estudios histricos, 1919), 6; Pedro
Marfi l, La baslica de San Vicente: En la Catedral de Crdoba, Arte, arqueologa e historia (2007), n. 14, 18596;
Crdoba de Teodosio a Abd al-Rahman III, Anejos de AespA xxiiii, 2000, 12729. Almanzor further expanded the
mosque of Crdoba using Catholic slaves and materials captured in his raids on Christian territory. 48 Basilio Pavn

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Maldonado, Influjos occidentales en el califato de Crdoba, Al-Andalus 33:1 (1968), 206. 49 Bango Torviso, Alta
Edad Media, 12. As early as 687, the famous Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem replicated Greek and Roman techniques.
50 Just as the fi rst Muslim conquerors, emerging from the desert, in the Middle East had adopted the bath culture
of the Greek Roman Empire. In Spain, the legend of the Cava, the young woman who caused the loss of Spain,
depicts her taking a bath in the river and infl aming the passion of Visigoth king Rodrigo as voyeur. 51 Manuel Garca Moreno, Iglesias mozrabes, 1, 9. 52 Ibid., 1011. 53 Jos Orlandis, La vida en Espaa en tiempo de los godos, 9397;
for the size of Toledo and its imitation of Constantinople, see Jess Carrobles Santos, Rafael Barroso Cabrera, Jorge
Morn de Pablos, and Fernando Valds Fernndez, Regia Sedes Toletana: La topografa de la ciudad de Toledo en la antigedad tarda y alta edad media (Toledo: Real Fundacin de Toledo, 2007), 217. 54 Thus Montesquieu wrote in De
lesprit des lois that Visigoth laws were puerile and idiotic. See Jos Orlandis, Historia del reino visigodo espaol, 152.

19