The new people of God in Hispania

After an Arab-Berber army crossed the Strait of Gibraltar from North Africa and entered the Iberian Peninsula in 711, Roderic, king of the Visigoths, headed for the invaders. Both armies met in the Battle of the river Guadalete, where the Visigoths lost the fight and Roderic died. The invaders headed Northwards and, after just a few years, brought almost the entire Iberian Peninsula under their rule. The Visigothic kingdom no longer existed, and Abd ar-Rahman I founded the Emirate of Crdoba in 756. Therefore, many Christians in the Iberian Peninsula now lived under different circumstances: Their former realm was no more and Others now ruled over their territories. The new rulers had a different culture and religion. Medieval authors asked, how was the demise of a Christian kingdom, which had existed over several centuries in the Iberian Peninsula, even possible? Medieval chroniclers tried to answer this question in their historical works. Depicting the history from the time shortly before the Arab-Berber invasion up until their own day, they often chose biblical elements to depict their own history and, hence, found explanations for the course of history in the Holy Book. In their imagination, the Bible foretold what happened to their kingdom and, thus, the foreign rulers appear as Gods punishment for the Christians sins just as God punished the people of Israel for their failure in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. The foundation of new Christian realms in the North of the Iberian Peninsula first and foremost the Kingdom of Asturias did not change these depictions of history. The chroniclers at the courts of these new Christian kings still connected their own history to the Bible to orientate themselves in the complex transcultural situation in Hispania. This book will investigate the biblical elements in Christian-Iberian chronicles after the fall of the Visigothic kingdom. The author brings particular attention to those passages in the chronicles that deal with the cultural and religious Other, which are the Arab and later North African foreign rulers, in Hispania. In doing so, three elements medieval historical writing, Bible exegesis, and transculturality are combined in order to offer a new approach to this field of medieval research. With regard to international research on medieval and transcultural Hispania, this book offers investigations on chronicles from the eighth to twelfth centuries. This research into the biblical interpretation of history against the backdrop of the Arab foreign rule offers new insights about medieval historical writing, the medieval comprehension of the Bible, and the perception and depiction of the Other in the Middle Ages.