Encyclopedia of Islam

amulets and talismans

---

love affair, facilitate conception and childbirth, 

induce trees to bear fruit, combat the 

evil

 

eye

,

cast out evil spirits, or bring harm to an opponent. 

There are even amulets that are believed to offer 

protection from bullets and troublesome govern-

ment officials. Amulets and talismans are usually 

obtained from a 

shaykh

 or some other person 

claiming specialized knowledge for making ones 

that are effective, and they are used by Muslims 

and non-Muslims.

See also 

children

; 

Women

.

Further reading: Eleanor Abdella Doumato, Getting 

God’s Ear: Women, Islam, and Healing in Saudi Arabia and 

the Gulf (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); 

Joyce B. Flueckiger, “ ‘The Vision Was of Written Words: 

Negotiating Authority as a Female Muslim Healer 

in South India.’ ” In Syllables of Sky: Studies of South 

Indian Civilization, edited by David Shulman, 249–282 

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Edward W. 

Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Mod-

ern Egyptians (New York: Dover Publications, 1973).

Andalusia

Andalusia (al-Andalus) is the name given to 

regions of Spain and Portugal under Muslim rule 

between 711 and 1492. It also evokes romantic 

memories of a “golden age” in that land when 

culture, learning, and the 

art

s flourished and 

Muslim, Christian, and Jew lived together in har-

mony. The word Andalusia is thought to originally 

come from the name of a Germanic tribe, the 

Vandals, who had occupied the Iberian Peninsula 

and North Africa in the fifth and sixth centuries, 

before the Muslim conquests. At its greatest 

extent, Andalusia reached from the Mediterra-

nean shores of southern Spain northward almost 

to the Pyrenees Mountains. Its northern borders, 

however, were never secure, as European Chris-

tian armies drove southward in what is called the 

Reconquista, or the “reconquest,” of Spain. This 

started in the 11th century and ended with the 

fall of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold, to 

the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, the 

same year Columbus landed in the New World.

Muslim armies first crossed from North Africa 

into Andalusia by way of the Strait of Gibraltar 

in 711. They soon established themselves in the 

peninsula’s major cities: Malaga, c

ordoba

, Toledo, 

Barcelona, and Zaragosa. The new postconquest 

society that subsequently arose was dominated 

by an a

rab

 Muslim elite and b

erber

 allies from 

North Africa who had only recently converted 

to  i

slam

. The Muslims of Andalusia came to 

be called the Moors by Europeans, but that is 

not what they called themselves. Most remained 

loyal to their tribal, family, and regional identi-

ties, which contributed to the factionalism that 

characterized much of the political history of 

La Giralda, the minaret for the 12th-century Almohad 

mosque of Seville, converted into a bell tower for the 

city’s cathedral in the 16th century 

(Federico R. Campo)