THE GOLDEN AGE OF MOORISH SPAIN

…AND WHY THE PRESENTER WAS INSPIRED TO WRITE HER AL-ANDALUS TRILOGY

The legacy of the Moorish occupation is all around, especially in Andalusia.The Moors arrived from north Africa in AD 711. When Jebel Tariq and his Berber army landed at Gibraltar so began a Moorish occupation that lasted more than seven hundred years. But it was more than an occupation. It was an assimilation of the Moors and the local people, which is why today there is still evidence of it in Spanish cities, language and culture.

Over the centuries the Moors’ influence and power spread across the country, culminating in the year AD 929 when the emir Abd al-Rahman III finally defeated the last of the rebels and declared peace. To celebrate this he declared himself Caliph of Córdoba. The Golden Age of Moorish Spain had begun. For eighty years the country was at peace and renowned throughout the western world as a centre of learning, with universities and libraries that attracted scholars from all over the world, but al-Rahman III couldn’t live for ever and by AD 1009 the city had become embroiled in a civil war that lasted for over twenty years. The era of peace, wealth and stability that had been enjoyed under Abd al-Rahman III disappeared along with the demise of the Ommayad dynasty. And with that demise, Córdoba, a city renowned throughout the western world for its wealth, learning and culture was laid waste through civil war, famine and disease.

Joan Fallon, who researched this period to write her al-Andalus trilogy, will concentrate her talk on the time from when al-Rahman III became the first Omayyad caliph of al-Andalus until the death of his grandson al-Hisham II, an epoch of intrigue, murder and civil war, and she will explain why she was inspired to set her historical trilogy in this particular period of history.

 Born in Scotland, Joan Fallon has always wanted to be a writer. Books are her passion and she grew up reading everything she could get her hands on. Although writing was always a major part of her work, both as a teacher and later, as a management consultant and trainer, it wasn’t until ten years ago that she had the opportunity to devote herself full-time to being a novelist. 

It was when she moved to Spain that she decided that the time had come to take her writing seriously. She enrolled in an Open University course in Creative Writing – the same university where she obtained her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Open in the early eighties – and hasn’t stopped writing since. To date she has written four historical novels, five contemporary novels and one book of non-fiction. Joan is a member of the Society of Authors and the Alliance of Independent Authors. She lives on the Costa del Sol with her husband, a retired aeronautical engineer, and their two dogs. There is more about her on her webpage www.joanfallon.co.uk and on Twitter @joan_fallon