In order to fully understand Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages, one is required to have some background knowledge, of the present polemic in Spanish historiography. This controversy began in 1948 when philologist and Spanish historian Américo Castro published his book España en su historia. His thesis essentially argues that the Spanish culture we know today did not exist before the interaction between the Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the eighth through thirteenth centuries, and that the resultant culture clearly bore the mark of that long interactive process (Castro 40). This view was later refuted by Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, dean of Spanish medieval historians, in his book España: Un enigma histórico. This reply primarily focused on the fact that Castro had greatly exaggerated the contact between the Muslims and the Christians, in both its extent and nature (Glick 11). Sánchez-Albornoz argues that their...