Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The little-visited site is now the Museum of Visigothic Culture, but it was built as the Church of San Roman, in the aftermath of what is called the Christian Reconquest of Toledo of 1085. Toledo had been the ancient Visigothic capital, and the original site almost certainly had seen a Visigothic church on it. . . . Why do the conquerors intertwine their own heritage and culture with the most distinctive aspects of the heritage and culture of the conquered? . . . The relentless warfare among all the Muslim-held cities, and the especially ferocious competition between al-Mamun’s Toledo and Abbadid Seville, defined political life for decades. . . . Alliances and rivalries crossed religious lines every day: Christian cities whose Muslim allies helped them defeat Christian rivals became as commonplace as the Muslim taifas whose Christian allies helped them take other Muslim cities. The brilliant al-Mamun led Toledo to a series of significant military victories. . . . At the top of the highest hill in Toledo, in the triumphant Christian church inscribed with its love for the Islamic arts, we can see both the aesthetic victories of the Andalusian taifas and the political price paid for them . . ." [Ornament of the World, p. 130-5]