The Cultural Enviroment

Abstract

It is no easy task to condense in just a few pages the intellectual and cultural life of a State that lasted for more than two and a half centuries, especially since its territory was so complex and so open to external influences: from the cultured and refined Islamic East, the rising Maghreb with its strong Berber component, and the Christian world that wavered between admiration and distrust. In this essay we will concentrate on some specialties that drew the attention of the intellectual elite of the region and other areas of the Islamic world, as the Education; Linguistic Studies, Sufism, and the Biobibliographic Genre; Historical and Geographical Texts and Travel Literature. This study concludes that the Emirate of Granada was a focal point for intellectuals from other parts of the Islamic world.