Seville in the context of "Bolero (Spanish dance)"

A scroll (from the Old French escroe or escroue), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing.

Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Europe and the fourth-most populous European Union (EU) member state. Spanning the majority of the Iberian Peninsula, its territory also includes the Canary Islands, in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean; the Balearic Islands, in the Western Mediterranean Sea; and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in mainland Africa. Peninsular Spain is bordered to the north by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; to the east and south by the Mediterranean Sea and Gibraltar; and to the west by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga, Murcia, and Palma de Mallorca.

In early antiquity, the Iberian Peninsula was inhabited by Celts, Iberians, and other pre-Roman peoples. The Roman conquest of the Iberian peninsula created the province of Hispania, which became deeply Romanised and later Christianised. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the peninsula was conquered by tribes from Central Europe, among them the Visigoths, who established the Visigothic Kingdom centred on Toledo. In the early 8th century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate, with Al-Andalus centred on Córdoba. The northern Christian kingdoms of Iberia launched the so-called Reconquista, gradually repelling and ultimately expelling Islamic rule from the peninsula, culminating with the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. The dynastic union of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon in 1479 under the Catholic Monarchs is often seen as the de facto unification of Spain as a nation state.

Andalusia (UK: /ˌændəˈluːsiə, -ziə/ AN-də-LOO-see-ə, -⁠zee-ə, US: /-ʒ(i)ə, -ʃ(i)ə/ -⁠zh(ee-)ə, -⁠sh(ee-)ə; Spanish: Andalucía [andaluˈθi.a] , locally also [-ˈsi.a]) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain, located in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern Europe. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognized as a historical nationality and a national reality. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga, and Seville. Its capital city is Seville, while the seat of its High Court of Justice is the city of Granada.

Andalusia is immediately south of the autonomous communities of Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha; west of the autonomous community of Murcia and the Mediterranean Sea; east of Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean; and north of the Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar. The British Overseas Territory and city of Gibraltar, located at the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar, shares a 1.2 kilometres (3⁄4 mi) land border with the Andalusian province of Cádiz.

Science in the medieval Islamic world was the science developed and practised during the Islamic Golden Age under the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, the Umayyads of Córdoba, the Abbadids of Seville, the Samanids, the Ziyarids and the Buyids in Persia and beyond, spanning the period roughly between 786 and 1258. Islamic scientific achievements encompassed a wide range of subject areas, especially astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. Other subjects of scientific inquiry included alchemy and chemistry, botany and agronomy, geography and cartography, ophthalmology, pharmacology, physics, and zoology.

Medieval Islamic science had practical purposes as well as the goal of understanding. For example, astronomy was useful for determining the Qibla, the direction in which to pray, botany had practical application in agriculture, as in the works of Ibn Bassal and Ibn al-'Awwam, and geography enabled Abu Zayd al-Balkhi to make accurate maps. Islamic mathematicians such as Al-Khwarizmi, Avicenna and Jamshīd al-Kāshī made advances in algebra, trigonometry, geometry and Arabic numerals. Islamic doctors described diseases like smallpox and measles, and challenged classical Greek medical theory. Al-Biruni, Avicenna and others described the preparation of hundreds of drugs made from medicinal plants and chemical compounds. Islamic physicists such as Ibn Al-Haytham, Al-Bīrūnī and others studied optics and mechanics as well as astronomy, and criticised Aristotle's view of motion.

Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer best known for planning and leading the 1519–22 Spanish expedition to the East Indies. During this expedition, he discovered the Strait of Magellan, performed the first European crossing of the Pacific Ocean, and made the first known European contact with the Philippines. Magellan himself was killed in battle in the Philippines in 1521, but his crew, commanded by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, completed the return trip to Spain in 1522, achieving the first circumnavigation of Earth in history.

Born around 1480 into a family of minor Portuguese nobility, Magellan became a skilled sailor and naval officer in the service of the Portuguese Crown in Asia. However, King Manuel I refused to support Magellan's plan to reach the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, by sailing westwards around the American continent. Magellan then proposed the same plan to King Charles I of Spain, who approved it. In Seville, he married, fathered two children, and organized the expedition. In 1518, for his allegiance to the Hispanic monarchy, Magellan was appointed an admiral of the Spanish fleet and given command of the expedition—the five-ship "Armada of Molucca." He also was made a Commander of the Order of Santiago, one of the highest military ranks of the Spanish Empire.

The Province of Seville (Spanish: Sevilla) is a province of southern Spain, in the western part of the autonomous community of Andalusia. It borders the provinces of Málaga and Cádiz in the south, Huelva in the west, Badajoz in the north and Córdoba in the east. Seville is the province's as well as the Andalusian autonomous community's capital.

Abū Muḥammad Jābir ibn Aflaḥ (Arabic: أبو محمد جابر بن أفلح, Latin: Geber/Gebir; 1100–1150) was an Arab Muslim astronomer and mathematician from Seville, who was active in 12th century al-Andalus. His work Iṣlāḥ al-Majisṭi (Correction of the Almagest) influenced Islamic, Jewish, and Christian astronomers.

Abū Marwān ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr (Arabic: أبو مروان عبد الملك بن زهر), traditionally known by his Latinized name Avenzoar (/ˌɑːvənˈzoʊər/; 1094–1162), was an Arab physician, surgeon, and poet. He was born at Seville in medieval Andalusia (present-day Spain), was a contemporary of Averroes and Ibn Tufail, and was the most well-regarded physician of his era. He was particularly known for his emphasis on a more rational, empiric basis of medicine. His major work, Al-Taysīr fil-Mudāwāt wal-Tadbīr ("Book of Simplification Concerning Therapeutics and Diet"), was translated into Latin and Hebrew and was influential to the progress of surgery. He also improved surgical and medical knowledge by keying out several diseases and their treatments.

Ibn Zuhr performed the first experimental tracheotomy on a goat. He is thought to have made the earliest description of bezoar stones as medicinal items.

Ibn Bassal (Arabic: ابن بصال) was an 11th-century Andalusian Arab botanist and agronomist in Toledo and Seville, Spain who wrote about horticulture and arboriculture. He is best known for his book on agronomy, the Dīwān al-filāha (An Anthology of Husbandry).

Abu ʾl-Khayr al-Ishbīlī (fl. 11th century), called al-Shajjār ('the arboriculturist'), was an Andalusī agronomist and the author of two Arabic works on agriculture and botany. Little is known of his life. He was born in Seville and lived during the reign of the Emir al-Muʿtamid (1069–1091), in whose gardens he probably worked. He was a student of Ibn Baṣṣāl and Ibn al-Lūnquh.

The two works attributed to Abu ʾl-Khayr are:

The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See (Spanish: Catedral de Santa María de la Sede), better known as Seville Cathedral (Catedral de Sevilla), is a Catholic cathedral in Seville, Andalusia, Spain. It was registered in 1987 by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, along with the adjoining Alcázar palace complex and the General Archive of the Indies. It is one of the largest churches in the world and the largest Gothic cathedral.

After its completion in the early 16th century, Seville Cathedral supplanted Hagia Sophia as the largest cathedral in the world, a title the Byzantine church had held for a thousand years. The Gothic section alone has a length of 126 m (413 ft), a width of 76 m (249 ft), and a central nave height of 36 m (118 ft) (40 m (130 ft) at the crossing). The total height of the Giralda tower from the ground to the weather vane is 104.5 m (342 ft 10 in). The Archbishop's Palace is located on the northeastern side of the cathedral.

The Spanish coup of July 1936 was a military uprising that was intended to overthrow the Spanish Second Republic, but precipitated the Spanish Civil War, in which Nationalists fought against Republicans for control of Spain. The coup was organized for 18 July 1936, although it started the previous day in Spanish Morocco. Instead of resulting in a prompt transfer of power, the coup split control of the Spanish military and territory roughly in half. The resulting civil war ultimately led to the establishment of a fascist regime under Francisco Franco, who became ruler of Spain as caudillo.

The rising was intended to be swift, but the government retained control of most of the country including Málaga, Jaén and Almería. Cádiz was taken by the rebels, and General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano managed to secure Seville. In Madrid, the rebels were hemmed into the Montaña barracks, which fell with much bloodshed. On 19 July, the cabinet, headed by the newly appointed prime minister José Giral, ordered the distribution of weapons to the unions. With the defeat of the rebels in Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia, anarchists took control of large parts of Aragon and Catalonia. The rebel General Goded surrendered in Barcelona and was later sentenced to death and executed. The rebels secured the support of around half of the Spanish Army, which totalled about 66,000 men, including large numbers who were on leave, as well as the 30,000-strong army of Africa. The army of Africa was Spain's most professional and capable military force. The government retained less than half the supply of rifles, heavy and light machine guns, and artillery pieces. Both sides had few tanks and outdated aircraft, while naval capacity was reasonably even. The defection of many regular officers weakened Republican units of all types.

The Andalusian dialects of Spanish (Spanish: andaluz, pronounced [andaˈluθ], locally [andaˈluh, ændæˈlʊ]) are spoken in Andalusia, Ceuta, Melilla, and Gibraltar. They include perhaps the most distinct of the southern variants of peninsular Spanish, differing in many respects from northern varieties in a number of phonological, morphological and lexical features. Many of these are innovations which, spreading from Andalusia, failed to reach the higher strata of Toledo and Madrid speech and become part of the Peninsular norm of standard Spanish. Andalusian Spanish has historically been stigmatized at a national level, though this appears to have changed in recent decades, and there is evidence that the speech of Seville or the norma sevillana enjoys high prestige within Western Andalusia.

Due to the large population of Andalusia, Andalusian dialects are among the most widely spoken dialects in Spain. Within the Iberian Peninsula, other southern varieties of Spanish share some core elements of Andalusian, mainly in terms of phonetics  – notably Extremaduran Spanish and Murcian Spanish as well as, to a lesser degree, Manchegan Spanish.

High-speed railways in Spain have been in operation since 1992 when the first line was opened connecting the cities of Madrid, Córdoba and Seville. Unlike the rest of the Iberian broad gauge network, the Spanish High-speed network mainly uses standard gauge. This permits direct connections to outside Spain through the link to the French network at the Perthus Tunnel. High-speed trains run on a network of high-speed rail track owned and managed by ADIF (Administrador de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias), where the dominant service is AVE while other high speed services such as Avant, Alvia, Avlo, Euromed, Ouigo España and Iryo, as well as mid-speed (InterCity) services also operate.

AVE trains are operated by Renfe, the national passenger high-speed rail operator in Spain, but other companies such as Ouigo España and Iryo compete on the Madrid–Barcelona and other routes in accordance with the European Union legislation. French TGV services run from the border to Barcelona under the TGV inOui brand. Alvia and Euromed trains are also operated by Renfe and have the ability to use both Iberian gauge and standard gauge lines offering high-speed services across the whole Spanish network.

Ibn al-'Awwam (Arabic: ابن العوام), also called Abu Zakariya Ibn al-Awwam (Arabic: أبو زكريا بن العوام), was an Al-Andalus agriculturist who flourished at Seville (modern-day southern Spain) in the later 12th century. He wrote a lengthy handbook on agriculture entitled in Arabic Kitāb al-Filāḥa (Arabic: كِتَاب الفِلَاحَة, lit. ''Book on Agriculture''), which is the most comprehensive treatment of the subject in medieval Arabic, and one of the most important medieval works on the subject in any language. It was published in Spanish and French translations in the 19th century.