8vo. xxxviii, 504 pp / 470 pp / 412 pp., contemporary quarter calf with marbled boards, rubbed mainly at spine with slight damage to spine of volume 2, title gilt on spine, marbled endpapers and edges, occasional foxing mainly at beginning and end leaves, otherwise set in good condition, traduit de l'Arabe en Espagnol de M. Joseph Conde par M. de Marles, Alexis Eymery Libraire, Paris, first French edition, 1825.

Synopsis

This book presents the history of the great empires of the Muslim in Spain and Portugal from the period they first conquered Andalus until their forced exodus. Conde’s most important work, published posthumously. ” The work had the pioneering merit of presenting for the first time a complete version of the history of Islamic Spain and it fired the imagination of its contemporaries…Conde’s history, extending from the Arab invasion of Spain in 711 to the expulsion of the latter in 1492 set up a basic framework which has been accepted by scholars ever since, for the author subdivided the period into historical ages that have remained essentially unchanged down to the present, while at the same time, his ambitious work is the only one which covers the complete period of Arab rule in Spain…
The Warmth sympathy Conde expresses towards the Arab culture of al-Andalus cannot fail to captivate his evaders that it was compiled from original Arabic documents, and that they had been translated almost in their own style, so that the work should produce the effect of having been written by an Arab historian. From this it may easily be discerned that the author was attempting to dress his erudition with a certain literary charm by imparting to it the flavour of an archaic style. It was a book directed not only to the scholar, but also the general reader. Actually, the Historia brings together sections translated from the Qitras, the Hulal al-Mawshiyya and other chronicles, generously interlarded with poems.” ( Monroe, Islam and Arabs in Spanish Scholarship, pp. 50-52.
Bibliographic reference: Palau 59020.