ABSTRACT
Al-Andalus must be rightly characterized as an Arab and Islamic country at the Westernmost end of the classical Islamic world between the eighth and fifteenth centuries. Together with this extreme geographical position, its most basic defining feature was probably its peninsular shape, a territory surrounded by the sea and the Northern Christian powers which ultimately wiped out al-Andalus in 1492. Both elements define what has become to be known as “feeling of precariousness”, a sort of inferiority complex that affected the Iberian Muslim population from early times. In this chapter, the role played by al-Andalus as part of Western Islam, both with regard to its Northern Christian neighbours and to the Maghreb and the Middle East is taken up.
