Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

the Umayyads themselves lived on, and their legacy can be felt powerfully in one particular region of the west today: in the southern halves of Spain and Portugal, which had been conquered so efficiently during al-Walid’s reign in 711–14. Amid the tumult of the Abbasid revolution, one of the old caliph al-Malik’s grandchildren ran away from Damascus, hotly pursued by would-be assassins intent on adding him to the list of slaughtered Umayyads. Having evaded them he wandered in exile for six years, making a long clandestine journey through North Africa until he arrived in southern Spain, where he proclaimed himself as caliph in his own right, and established an independent capital in the sweltering city of Córdoba—in the hottest part of Spain, where temperatures rival the roiling heat of Arabia. Over the following two decades he steadily brought the Muslim territories in Iberia together in what became known as the Emirate of Córdoba.