An odour of sanctity

***9th century Spain--an age of brutal battles to the death and dungeons equipped with thumbscrews and spiked boots.*** An age of perfumed harems where acts of love were spiced with the erotic mysteries of the Orient. a time when merchants, princes, thieves and whores, Christians, Islamic Arabs, Berbers, Yemenites, Greeks and Jews were trapped in an inferno of embattled peoples and faiths.