In the town of Murcia, we have some monuments which date back to the Iberian people (Santuario de la Luz, Verdolay…) and Hispanic- Romans (Martyrium de la Alberca, the Paleo-Christian Basilica of Algezares, Los Garres…).

However, it was the Moorish civilisation which left a deep imprint on what we call Murcia today. The city and the Murcian "Huerta" (agricultural countryside) stem from the Middle Ages. Madinat Musiya, as our city was known, was founded by the Cordoban Emir Abderrahman II in the year 825. He wanted to have political control over the Southeast of Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), creating the capital in the centre of the region and in a crossroads which linked Andalucia, The East, La Mancha and La Meseta. Very soon, together with the Hispanic Romans they established noble Moorish families and a diverse mixture of peoples: Moors, Egyptians, Syrians, and Magrebis.

Murcia was a place where Muslims, Jews and Christians all lived together. During the 12th and 13th Centuries it was to become one of the most important western Muslim cities, as significant as other Spanish-Muslim cities such as Cordoba, Toledo, Sevilla, Valencia and Granada.