The last forty years have represented a kind of golden age for historical research on al-Andalus. The scholarship devoted to this western region of the medieval dār al-Islām has been impressive both in terms of quantity and quality. Arab manuscripts on a wide variety of subjects – from historical chronicles to legal works, from poetry to scientific treatises on disciplines like astronomy, botany or medicine – have been edited and, in some cases, translated. Evidence hitherto considered as intractable, like the thousands of profiles of Muslim scholars included in biographical dictionaries, has been systematised and analysed by long-term projects like the Historia de los Autores y Transmisores Andalusíes (HATA), the Biblioteca de al-Andalus or the Prosopografía de los ulemas de al-Andalus, all of them easily accessible online. New research has also entailed the publication of a good amount of new Arab inscriptions, including those carved on stone or plaster, and also those embroidered in textiles, or engraved on metalwork or even rings. Numismatists have produced coin catalogues, as well as accurate descriptions of hoards and stray finds that have fostered detailed studies on minting and coinage circulation. On top of that, archaeology has made significant breakthroughs during these years, as regular campaigns have been undertaken at certain sites, rescue excavations, despite all their downsides, have managed to provide significant data, and analyses of materials have unveiled unexpected patterns of production, distribution and use of pottery, glass and other items.

All this activity has resulted in an exponential growth in our knowledge and understanding of the political, social and cultural processes that unfolded in Islamic Iberia. However, this exciting and novel scholarship has not always had the impact it deserves on the field of Islamic medieval history. This is partly for an objective reason: al-Andalus was a peripheral area, very distant from the main centres where classical Islam took shape. Arab geographers described it as an island (jazīra) detached from the rest of the dār al-Islām by the sea and by the frontier or thagr that demarcated the Christian lands.