Oops: I Missed the 1300th Anniversary of the Arab Conquest of Spain!

Sorry: sometimes when you're busy with revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and other players to be named later, you can miss anniversaries. I missed, for example, the 1,300th Anniversary of the Arab Conquest of Spain, which occurred earlier this year. I'm abashed, since Islamic Spain has always been one of my particular fascinatons.

For many Westerners (though not so much Spaniards, I suspect) Islamic Spain is a footnote, a sidebar, an evanescent moment that created some cool architecture in Granada. But from the landing of the Arab (likely mostly Berber) armies in AD 711 to the last evacuation from Granada in AD 1492 was a period of 781 years. Longer than the period that has elapsed since.

Anyway, the link above summarizes a conference on the topic.