ABSTRACT
The author shows how Sunni Islam is mostly a religion of Scripture and community that allows some room for gnosis and less for reason, but hardly any for charisma. Here once again one have the representation of al-Andalus as a land of tolerance and peaceful cohabitation of the three monotheistic religions, one that has been mixed in a confused and confusing manner with another powerful image related to the Iberian Peninsula, that of the Inquisition. The author deals with issues of orthodoxy and heresy in al-Andalus and with how the needs of political legitimacy were often reflected in them, involving both rulers and religious scholars, with sometimes the people at large making their presence felt. It stretches from the eighth to the thirteenth century, ending with a mention to the close links between the Almohads' and Alfonso X's programmes of political and intellectual reform.
