1243–1245: Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada's Polemic Preface to the Historia Arabum

Abstract

The article deals with the polemic preface to the Historia Arabum, a work of historiography written by the Toledan archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. Highlighting the complexity of this work, it demonstrates that the archbishop recognised the Umayyads and their rule over the Iberian Peninsula as part of Hispanic/Spanish collective historical identity, but did not integrate non-Arab Muslims into this proto-national construct. By writing a history of the Arabs, he simultaneously marked this period of Iberian history as self-contained and concluded. In this way, he retrospectively provided an ethnic-historical justification for the Christian-led process of conquest that was later termed the "Reconquista."