The Caliphate of Córdoba

A surviving Umayyad who fled the Abbasids to Spain founded an emirate there, and a century and a half later his descendant Abd al-Rahman III proclaimed himself caliph. Córdoba becomes one of the largest and most learned cities of Europe: a library of hundreds of thousands of volumes, running water, paved and lighted streets, craft and science. At court serves the Jewish statesman and physician Hasdai ibn Shaprut, patron of poets and grammarians; from him the golden age of Spanish Jewry is conventionally counted. At the start of the eleventh century the caliphate will break apart into warring petty emirates.