Muhammad Labib al-Batnouni was a frequent traveler and tourer in Europe, but he had never visited Spain before, until fate threw him in 1926 to travel as a tourist among its lands, and to stand in amazement at the landmarks located in worlds where New Spain parallels and intersects with the studied Andalusia. During his journey, al-Batnouni sent a group of observational and descriptive letters to the Egyptian Al-Ahram, which in turn published them in a series under the title “A Tour in Spain.” Al-Batnouni collected these letters between the covers of this book in order to confront the reader with the complete picture, the picture of Andalusia in its past and present, and the picture of the civilization whose rise was great and whose fall was bitter. The author’s style is distinguished by its avoidance of blatant bias towards religious or national sentiment, and he adorned his fascinating presentation with a group of pictures of those great monuments left behind by the Arabs and Muslims in Andalusia.
