"In 929 C.E. the eighth Umayyad ruler of al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) assumed caliphal titles and prerogatives and reasserted Umayyad dynastic claims to the leadership of the Muslims against contemporary rivals, the Abbasids and Fatimids. He and his successor actively promoted their legitimacy through a variety of means and forms of generated an ideology that infused and defined the political culture of al-Andalus.

The Second Umayyad Caliphate recovers the Andalusi argument for caliphal legitimacy through a contextualized analysis of caliphal rhetoric based on proclamations, correspondence, and panegyric poetry, and extends to a fuller reconstruction of caliphal ideology through an examination of monuments, ceremony, and historiography.".

"This study of how the Umayyad caliphs of al-Andalus articulated and secured recognition of their legitimacy provides insights into the politics and political culture of the Iberian peninsula at the height of centalized Islamic rule, enlarges our understanding of the ideological contests of the Islamic world in the tenth century, and develops a distinctive view of the vitality and malleability of the Islamic concept of the caliphate."--BOOK JACKET.