Abdul Rahman Ali al-Haji made the remark in a seminar held in Kuwait on the theme of Islam in Andalusia.
The seminar was organized by Ibn Hazm Center for research on Islam and Islamic civilization, Al-Anba website reported.
He said during the Islamic period, 95 percent of the region’s Muslims were locals.
According to the scholar, there were some 4000 mosques in Andalusia in that period, including the Cordoba Mosque, which was one of the main places of worship in the region.
Al-Haji regretted that after the fall of Andalusia, inquisition courts burned thousands of precious manuscripts that could have been used today to shed light on the history of the great Islamic period in the region.
Andalusia was part of Muslim Spain or Islamic Iberia,a medieval Muslim cultural domain and territory occupying at its peak most of what are today Spain and Portugal.
At its greatest geographical extent in the eighth century, southern France—Septimania—was briefly under its control.
Muslims’ conquest of Andalusia came in the eighth century C.E.
At the end of the century, the whole of Andalusia was the most populous, cultured and industrious land of all Europe, and remained so for centuries.
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