Brought this book with me on a trip to Andalusia; I finished reading it in a halal Middle Eastern restaurant less than five minutes on foot from the Mezquita-Catedral de Cordoba. 

This work functions best as a literary history of al-Andalus - its influences and what it influenced, how its influence spread through translation and the proliferation of manuscripts. As a strict history of the period, the author weirdly glosses over major topics (the bubonic plague as social disrupter gets a casual mention…in the epilogue), and is dissonantly harsh about other topics in a way that felt dictated by their taste, not fact. Using Latin as a language of artistic expression, for example, comes in for a beating I didn’t understand (the language of Ovid and Virgil and Terence can’t be used for artistic purposes? What?) I almost DNFed the book at 90% when they described the Alhambra, the best surviving example of al-Andalus architecture we have, as “overwrought rooms the Nasrids built.” ?! I don’t think it was necessary to put down other languages or cultures to make the point about al-Andalus’ enduring cultural legacy.