David Levering Lewis

“Most of history is indisputably written by the winners, yet "winning" at Poitiers actually meant that the economic, scientific, and cultural levels that Europeans attained in the thirteenth century could almost certainly have been achieved more than three centuries earlier had they been included in the Muslim world empire.”
― David Levering Lewis, God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215

“Returning to Cordoba immediately after the slaughter, Mughith established a precedent of historic political and religious impact. He assembled all of the Jews in the city and left them, "together with willing Christians and a small detachment of Muslims," in charge of Cordoba's defenses. Mughith's precedent established the conditions for the vaunted Muslim-Judeo-Christian interdependence that was to distinguish Islam in Iberia for several centuries. His collaborative precedent was also, to be sure, an astute response to the numbers on the ground-a Muslim force of infinitesimal size pragmatically manufacturing auxiliaries from the local population. King Egica's insensate proscriptions casting all unconverted Jews into slavery and confiscating their property had driven these people to save themselves by reaching out to the conquering Arabs. After so many years of living under the Damoclean sword of property expropriation, forced conversion, and expulsion, Jews throughout Hispania welcomed the Muslim invaders as deliverers. Leaving this first large conquered city well pacified, Mughith saddled up and drove his cavalry due north to reunite with Tariq's main force, already at the gates of Toledo.”
― David Levering Lewis, God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215