Gibraltar to Granada: What can we learn from 800 years of Islam in Europe?
“If you travel in Southern Spain, from Gibraltar to Granada, you cover about 200 miles of Andalusia. But you also cover
nearly 800 years of Islamic history in the Iberian Peninsula. Those eight centuries were arguably the most dazzling and
beautiful period in the entire history of Europe. Not only did the Muslims of Al-Andalus create the most beautiful
architecture that seemed to defy gravity, and preserve for future generations the knowledge of the ancient Greeks and
Romans, but they also fostered a climate of diversity, of intellectual discourse and debate, of social harmony and
religious tolerance that even today, a millennium later, would be the envy of the world…”