Córdoba and the golden age of Al-Andalus

Trouncing the Visigoths, the invaders swept north until they eventually met defeat in the Cantabrian mountains, but by then they had set up their central government in the south, in Córdoba Al-Andalus seemed like paradise on earth, blessed with soaring mountains, fertile plains, a rugged coastline lapped by the Mediterranean, and plentiful rivers. By 750, barely a century after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, the new Islamic empire stretched all the way from today’s Pakistan in the east to Portugal in the west Although the Ummayad dynasty was soon toppled by the Abbasids of Baghdad, this same geographical sweep endured, an astounding feat.