Meet the Neighbors

Like their geological counterparts, the fault lines of history seem to converge on the countries of the Mediterranean basin. It was in the Spanish city of Granada that King Boabdil, the last Moorish monarch of Muslim al-Andalus, made his final stand against the Christian forces of the reconquista before fleeing to North Africa. Here, too, are buried Ferdinand of Aragon and his queen, Isabella of Castile, who ousted Boabdil in 1492 and later reneged on a promise to allow religious tolerance in their newly conquered kingdom.

These days Ferdinand and Isabella must be spinning in their shared mausoleum....