Acknowledgements --Abbreviations -- List of authors and rulers -- Introduction -- The conquest of Iberia: outline of events -- 1. Conceptualizing conquest: the late antique historiographical backdrop -- The rise of providential history -- The coming of Islam -- Iberian models and Islam -- Conclusion -- 2. Successors, jurists, and propagandists: reconstructing the transmission history of Spanish conquest narratives -- Seeking origins, or problems in Islamic historiography -- Egypt: legends, law, and loot -- Isnad extrapolation and the question of the tabi'un -- The Cordoban Umayyads and issues of land ownership -- 3. Accommodating outsiders, obeying stereotypes: mawali and muwalladun in narratives of the conquest -- Wala': accommodating outsiders and reinforcing hierarchy -- How wala' operated in early Islamic society -- Non-Arabs in al-Andalus: mawali and muwalladun -- Mawali in the conquest narratives -- Conclusion -- 4. To the ends of the earth: extremes of east and west in Arabic geographical and 'aja'ib writings -- The view from Baghdad: aspects of medieval Muslim geography -- Expressing conceptual boundaries: distinguishing internal from external -- Liminal spaces -- Constructing al-Andalus -- 5. The Table of Solomon: a historiographical motif and its functions -- The Temple of Jerusalem and its artistic and historiographical afterlife -- Royal treasure hoards and the question of Visigothic legitimacy -- Solomon's Table in the Muslim historiographical tradition -- Conclusion -- 6. Excusing and explaining conquest: traitors and collaborators in Muslim and Christian sources -- Literary devices in historical writing -- Traitor type 1: the plot device -- Traitor type 2: the rogue insider -- Traitor type 3: the romantic antihero -- Traitor type 4: the disaffected faction -- Conclusion -- 7. On the other side of the world: comparing narratives of contemporary Islamic conquests in the east -- The basic stories of the eastern narratives -- Texts for the eastern narratives -- The major themes of the eastern narratives -- Conclusion: points of correspondence -- Conclusion: history on the margins -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.