Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Handing over the Keys to Paradise

The Moor's Last Stand: How Seven Centuries of Muslim Rule in Spain Came to an End

By

Profile Books 191pp £17.99 order from our bookshop

When the kingdom of Granada fell to Ferdinand and Isabella in January 1492, a humanist in their pay hailed ‘the extinction of Spain’s calamities’. The victory, according to a chronicler in the Basque Country, ‘redeemed Spain, indeed all Europe’. The pope agreed, ordering bonfires and bells. The conquest and its aftermath changed the profile of Europe, where, outside the range of Ottoman conquests, no Muslim-ruled state ever re-emerged. Until the creation of an independent Albania in 1928, there was no state with a Muslim majority. It became possible – though the argument is perhaps not convincing – to claim that the culture of Europe, if such a thing exists, is Christian. Until recently, the habit of identifying Europe with Christendom went almost unchallenged. 

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Gone. All gone. The ease, the pleasure, the effortless eloquence' From May 1995, Margaret Forster's withering rev… ,
    • RT : SO excited to tell you about this event! 😆 The amazing digital colourist, will be joining w… ,
    • 'Peters was unashamed and evidently unshamable, an impostor who wholly inhabited his fabrications and who indignant… ,
    • ‘At every waking moment Barbara Hepworth was aware of herself as a woman paving the way in a man’s world’ From the… ,
    • The entertaining Howard Jacobson is in conversation with Prof John Mullan at the Queen’s Park Book Festival on Sund… ,
    • 'A modest and retiring man, Thompson spent his life describing apple varieties and recommending the best – Ribston… ,
    • 'Macfarlane is a poet with the instincts of a thriller writer, an autodidact in botany, mycology, geology and palae… ,
    Follow Us