The Omyyad dynasty in Spain was established in 756 by the only surviving prince of the bloodbath that had decimated the Omyyads in Damascus at the hands of the first Abbasids.

In 929 Abd Ar-Rahman proclaimed himself Caliph, thereby challenging the spiritual authority of the Baghdad Caliphate.

He made Islamic Spain a cultural center of the world and his capital Cordoba the largest city in Europe. Here the great optician Al Hassan investigated the functioning of the human eye and Abu Kasim wrote the first illustrated book on surgery.

Moorish Spain was the center from which medical education in Europe largely came from.