HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE REDISCOVERY OF MADlNAT AL-ZAHRA'1 D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES Although Islam existed on the Iberian Peninsula for 780 years, Spain's perception of its Islamic history is unlike any other country's perception of Islamic history, because for Spaniards, their Islamic past is foreign. As a result, the historiography of Spain's Islamic period is unique. It does not resemble North African or the Middle Eastern historiography where medieval history is understood as continuous with modern history; nor does it resemble Sicily where the Islamic remains that were made for Norman- Christian patrons have been incorporated into the Christian heritage. Since the 16th century, a deep split has existed among Spanish intel- lectuals as to whether Islam was a significant, penetrating force in Spanish culture, or whether all traces of Islamic art and Arabic literature were expel- led with the Moors in 1492. 2 In the 19th century, the issue was closely allied to the political and philosophical split between liberals and conservatives, the liberals being more readily willing to accept the Islamic heritage as a permeating influence in Spanish national character.3 The conservatives, in contrast, cast the issue in racial terms, seeing the Arabs as a corrupting influence that was largely erased by the Christian Reconquest. Preoccupation with the idea of purity of blood — limpieza de sangre — is a theme that runs through Spanish history; and perhaps it is understandable when we remember that throughout history, the Iberian Peninsula has attracted Af- rican invasions from the south, and French invasions from the north. Regrett- ably, the obsessive need to define Spain as an entity free from French and African influence has also pervaded much of Spanish scholarship; and this is the first of the three obstacles hindering the development of scientific Islamic archaeology in Spain. The second obstacle was linguistic. For Spaniards, the date 1492 has traditionally been like a thick wall separating Islamic history from the rest. The extent to which the general reader and historian was able to understand the Islamic side of the wall — indeed a foreign terrain — depended on whether or not there was a capable guide to take them there. Persons of ordinary learning could not scale the wall to investigate medieval Spanish