This article analyses the little-studied thirteenth-century Arabic inscriptions of the monastery of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos, Spain. Despite their creation during an intensifying Christian–Muslim conflict, they were part of a decorative programme that relied on shared religious ideas and iconography. Their incorporation reinforced daily, funerary and commemorative monastic liturgies. While the article explores the Islamic provenance of these inscriptions, it also reveals the overlooked Arabic New Testament as a source. The inscriptions’ provenance, however, was deliberately obscured first and foremost by the nature of their visual display. Examining the relationship of the Latin to the Arabic inscriptions illustrates an unusual symbiosis between the meaning of the inscriptions, the iconography and the monastery's ritual. This symbiosis was formulated through a highly selective editorial process on the part of the Christian patrons, and predicated on their knowledge of the finer points of Islamic doctrine and cultural practices.

Soils buried under terrace fills have been widely used to date the construction of ancient agrarian terraces. The reliability of the obtained radiocarbon dates entirely depends on the degree of preservation and isolation of the Ab horizons and on the amount of embedded older carbon. To assess these caveats, we analyzed 14 14C dates (11 on charred material and 3 on the bulk organic fraction) obtained from buried soils under Andalusi terrace fills in Ricote, Spain (AD 711–1492). The preservation of Ab horizons was assessed through bulk analyses [particle size distribution (PSD), carbon analyses, magnetic susceptibility (Mag Sus)] and statistics [Welch’s ANOVA, MANOVA (Wilk’s lambda) and effect size tests]. The effects of older carbon were quantified through the systematic dating of Ab horizons within the earliest terrace cluster of Ricote. Our results show that (1) Ab horizons were not disturbed nor mixed with the terrace fills above; (2) the dates determined from the bulk organic fraction were statistically significantly older than those provided by the charred material, probably due to the higher stability of the microcharcoal fraction; and (3) the earliest dates measured on charcoal clustered reliably around cal AD 989–1210, suggesting that the first Andalusi irrigated terraces of Ricote were built between the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 13th centuries AD.

Al-Andalus society (711–1492) based its idea of health on the wisdom of Classical Greece, the Hippocratic–Galenic theories, as well as the Persian and Hindu cultures. The twelfth century in al-Andalus is considered to be the most prolific period for works of a scientific and technical nature. At the time, the main treatises on dietetics were written and this science reached its widest expression with such leading figures as Ibn Wāfīd, Avenzoar, Averroes and Maimonides, whose works revealed the first scientific knowledge on the nutritional processes of the human body. Diet was regarded as being essential for health and the prevention of disease. Dietary guidelines were written for different age groups, different body types and different seasons of the year. The amount of food to be ingested, the number of meals recommended and the order in which the food should be consumed were all issues that were discussed. A variety of foods were thought to have medicinal properties, some of which are known today. The diet in al-Andalus was varied and very probably made a substantial contribution to the origin of the present-day Mediterranean diet, rich in olive oil, wholemeal cereals, fruit and vegetables, fish, lamb, poultry, nuts and spices. We also find that many of the terms in current use in diet and agriculture are a living testimony to the Arabic influence, as are many of the dishes of our varied Mediterranean gastronomy.