Romance and Reality

The history of human relations is not black and white. In spite of evident antagonistic poles, and imperialist political interests, people base their affairs on personal relations, knowledge, economics, social bonds and honour codes — not so much on religious differences. The Visigoth kingdom that ruled Iberia before the arrival of Islam was itself a hybrid of Roman institutions, Germanic warrior culture, and a Christianity that had absorbed both. The reality of what followed — eight centuries of Muslim presence — is more nuanced, more human, and more instructive than either the romance or the polemic suggests.