Soon after their arrival in Spain the authors realized that the early Muslim art of Seville was curiously different from that of Cordova. This fascinated them and they undertook eight years of study in Seville, making use of the resources available to them in the city’s libraries to bring their audience this history of the Muslims in Spain, first published in 1912. Concentrating on Seville, they provide a chronological narrative of Spain from the Muslim invasion of 711 until the Reconquista of the fifteenth century.

The scene is set for the invasion by an evaluation of the situation under the Goths. Following this the many influences on the culture and civilisation of Andalucia are discussed, and how the richness of Roman and Gothic art and architecture was augmented by the Yemenite Arabs and Coptic Egyptians. The book is concluded by an examination of the events following the conquering of Islam in Spain, and of the Arabs’ lasting visual impact on Spanish history.

Although neither were Arabic scholars, the authors’ interest and love of art and history drove them on to provide, as they believed, ‘a good many sidelights on a peculiarly unexplored by-path in the history of Spain’. They hoped that ‘[their] essays [would] be accepted as finger-posts pointing to a road full of fascination for students of early Muhammadan history and early medieval art in Spain’.