In the early thirteenth century, the Iberian Peninsula stood at a decisive historical turning point. Muslim political power was declining, Christian kingdoms were expanding, and the city of Toledo remained a meeting place of Christian, Jewish and Islamic cultures. At the center of these transformations stood Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada: archbishop of Toledo, royal adviser, crusader and one of medieval Spain’s most ambitious historians.
Rodrigo sought to explain Spain’s past through the histories of the Romans, Goths, Vandals, Huns and Arabs.
His History of the Arabs, in particular, offers a remarkable, and frequently contradictory, medieval Christian account of Arab history and Islam.
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is a British-Iraqi historian based in Syria and Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the translator of Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada's Minor Histories.
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