During the second half of the 10th/4th century, the Umayyad caliphate of al-Andalus became a powerful political formation in Western Europe. Described by the contemporary German nun Hrotsvitha as the 'ornament of the world', Cordoba was the destiny of embassies and traders coming from places as far away as Constantinople, the Ottoman empire and Italy. The zenith of this political supremacy coincided with the rule of al-akam II (961-976 CE), whose name is associated with the enlargement of the mosque of Cordoba, the magnificent palatine city of Madnat al-Zahr and the rich caliphal library which housed Arab, Latin and Hebrew manuscripts. This book is based on an extraordinary source that had never been the subject of a comprehensive study: the annals written by an official and chronicler of the caliph's court, 's b. Amad al-Rz, who carefully annotated the big and small events of the court. Used by Ibn ayyn to compose one of the volumes of his celebrated Muqtabis, these 'annals' have
